The study of the relevant textual evidence suggests that Montesquieu became very
influenced in his views on public administration by the teachings of Mandeville. Indeed, in
his description of honour in monarchy, Montesquieu adopted Mandeville’s reversal between
ethics and politics. Montesquieu said that “in monarchies, politics accomplishes great things
with as little virtue as it can” (EL III, 5 p.25 & Ibid III, 6 p.26). In this regard, Montesquieu
rejected virtue’s relevance to monarchical government and replaced it with a selfish passion,
honour.110 He said that when honour is “joined with the force of the laws, it can lead to the
goal of government as does virtue itself” (EL III, 6 p.26). Moreover, he said that honour drives
109 On this point, this study concurs with Mosher, who argues that Montesquieu considered obedience “provisional by requiring every subject to draw a prior conclusion about the continuing worth or honourableness of the higher authority in question” (Blom, et al, 2007, p. 106).
110 Montesquieu defined the purpose of politics as the attainment of security. This is explained in detail in Ch.2, section II.
men’s actions so that “each person works for the common good, believing he works for his
individual interests” (EL III, 5, 7 p.27). Based on these claims, Montesquieu suggested that
men’s pursuit of honour, founded on a selfish passion, can foster social utility and the
common good with the same efficacy as virtue. Hence, insofar as Montesquieu compromised
ethical considerations and encouraged individuals to pursue their selfish passions for the
sake of social utility, it may be argued that he conceived his notion of honour under the
influence of Mandeville.
However, there are still significant differences between Montesquieu’s notion of honour
and its Mandevillian counterpart. Indeed, although both notions derive social utility by
capitalising on men’s selfish passions, textual evidence suggests that Montesquieu’s honour
generates significantly more complex behavioural patterns. Unlike Mandeville,
Montesquieu suggested that honour inclines the individual to do much more than merely
obeying the sovereign authorities. Montesquieuian honour inclines men to defy political
authority when obedience would dishonour them. As a result, by inclining individuals to
engage critically with political authority, Montesquieu suggested that honour fosters
security by protecting the state against the monarch’s centralising tendencies. Moreover,
unlike Mandeville, Montesquieu did not define honour merely as the individual’s desire to
be esteemed by others (self-liking). Rather, he deemed that honour also inclines one to
preserve the good opinion he has of himself. In this regard, Montesquieuian honour inclines
individuals to pursue ends that extend beyond the accumulation of wealth and even the good
opinions of other men.
The fact that Montesquieu did not link his notion of honour to the pursuit of wealth or
material gain invites analogy to Machiavelli’s notion of gloria. It was shown earlier that
neither Machiavelli’s prince nor Montesquieu’s man of honour is interested in the attainment
of monetary wealth. Rather, the two men seek to attain glory by doing things that are ‘great’
and ‘extraordinary’. Moreover, both thinkers conceived the individual’s pursuit of glory in
for restoring Rome to its glory and Montesquieu admired Crillon and Orte for resisting the
King’s absolutism. Therefore, both thinkers deemed glory or honour to be attainable only
by individuals whose self-interest inclines them to perform extraordinary actions that are
not guided by principles of revenue-maximisation.
However, there is a crucial difference between Montesquieu’s notion of honour and its
Machiavellian counterpart. Machiavelli deemed that the prince’s main preoccupation should
be the preservation of his dominion over the state. To attain that end, he thought that the
prince must be ready to employ violence and cunning (virtù). He also thought that the prince
must be proactive and treat the vicissitudes (fortuna) of power in politics with determination:
he said that ‘it is better to be impetuous than cautious’. Although Montesquieu agreed with
Machiavelli that the preservation of the state is the supreme law, he was sceptical about the
means that Machiavelli endorsed toward this end. Montesquieu thought that the prince’s
determination to gain power inclined him to engage “great acts of authority” that were often
“clumsy” (EL XX, 20 p.389). In contrast to Machiavelli and his example of Cesare Borgia,
Montesquieu rejected the use of brute force in modern politics.111
Brute force and cunning,
he thought, could not procure the state’s long-term preservation. That is why Montesquieu’s
Viscount of Orte did not engage in the killing of innocents; there is nothing, at least in
principle, that would prevent Machiavelli’s prince from doing so. Hence, unlike
Machiavellian glory, Montesquieuian honour inclines one to pursue his desire for honour
while adhering to a certain code of conduct.
Despite this difference, the pursuit of honour in Montesquieu has much more in
common with Machiavelli’s notion of glory than with Mandeville’s liberal motif of private
111 Montesquieu wrote in his Pensées that “As for conquerors, I will tell them that it is a common trait to love war; that there are many bellicose princes, just as there are many private individuals who have a violent passion for acquisition; that it is moderation, as the rarest virtue, that ought to constitute heroism; that it is not surprising that so many princes have sought to make themselves famous by their aggression against their neighbours, since nothing is so easy for them as to let themselves be led by their passions, whereas the role of a moderate and just prince is all the more laborious for being merely reasonable; that these sorts of virtues cost a great deal to princes because they are real” (Pensées 1987 p.514).
vices public benefits. That is because both Montesquieu and Machiavelli conceived their
notions in relation to committing great actions that surpassed the ambitions and
expectations of the common people and furthered the security of the state. For this reason,
one should not overemphasise the conceptual affinity between Montesquieu’s notion of
honour and Mandeville’s liberalism. Indeed, for all its similarity with Mandeville’s liberal
motif, as Hirschman put it, the idea of an ‘invisible hand’ in Montesquieu’s thought “was
formulated in connection with the search for glory, rather than with the desire for money”