Another fleeting thought

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France, and to a lesser extent Germany, lay claim to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as to a kind of national treasure and heritage; and the rest of the West tends to agree. Yet those elements of the Enlightenment that had a permanent, positive and enduring impact on the West came neither from Paris nor from the university towns of Germany, but from Edinburgh (Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations), Milan (Cesare Beccaria's Crimes and Penalties) and from the fledgling, English-speaking United States of America. No work of any French or German author, not even Voltaire or Kant, compares.

Comments

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At any rate, I never said that France and Germany did not have important En. figures. I only said that nobody I could think of had the immediate and enduring effect of Smith and Beccaria, whose work not only went around Europe in years, but induced both immediate reforms and a permanent alteration of the way to look at the civil commonwealth. Montesquieu may have a comparable claim, but he had neither the same immediate impact nor the same universal permanence; people don't frame the question in his terms as they frame economy in the terms set by Smith or the debate on criminal law in the terms set by Beccaria.

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You didn't actually say "Nobody I could think of", you said "No work of any French or German author, not even Voltaire or Kant, compares." Perhaps you meant to be speaking from your limited knowledge, but you sounded like a sweeping claim.

Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws was in 1748; the Constitution in 1787. It seems to have spread rapidly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_the_Laws Translated into English in a year, and prohibited by the Catholic Church within 3. Catherine the Great referred to him 20 years later. Seems perfectly comparable to Smith, or Beccaria, whom to be honest I'd forgotten if I'd ever heard of him before; and every time someone talks about separation of powers they are using Montesquieu's terms.

Wikipedia credits him with popularizing the terms "feudalism" and "Byzantine Emprie", too.

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No, no, no. Everyone who speaks of separation of powers used the Founders' terms, and I tell you that as a continental, because people always refer to the English expression "checks and balances" when they do so. They are not impressed by
Montesquieu (incidentally, the fact that the Church condemned his work is not a compliment, especially since we are talking about the Church of Benedict XIV), but by the living and functioning example of a practical republic. And your ignorance of Beccaria, who brought about immediate and profound judicial reform throughout Europe within a few years of his publication, just supports what I said. Beccaria and Smith changed the landscape by the mere force of their thought; Montesquieu had to wait forty years for an armed revolution to begin to give relevance to his cogitations.

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I've seen "checks and balances" credited to Montesquieu himself, though I can't find a primary citation (and of course it'd be filtered through translation), but he certain had a concept of the different branches balancing each other, not just being separated in their own spheres. If the Continent looks to the US -- well, that's nice, and practical, but the US looked to Montesquieu; not our fault if y'all have forgotten that. And "separation of powers" is used as much as "checks and balances".

"forty years" is specious; it's easier to change penal or economic laws than the very structure of government.

I freely acknowledge my ignorance of Beccaria. You seem determined to downplay the French contribution.