JULIA KRISTEVA
89
the possibility of social peace. Whether it be Christian charity, or the
ideal of the whole of mankind achieving the satisfaction of all, or the
liberal trade economy of the time - there are numerous, heterogeneous
factors that, with Montesquieu, come together and enable
The Spirit oj
the Laws
to be founded on such an intrinsic sociability, which govern–
ment policies should both make explicit and guarantee. Now, I shall ex–
tract Montesquieu's concern for
totality
and one of its major conse–
quences - his
cosmopolitanism.
A totality encompassing
nature
and
culture; men
and
institutions; laws
and
mores;
the
particular
and the
universal; philosophy
and
history:
These are
multiple series among which
mediations
are at work which at the same
time insure the tempering of institutions and that of human beings. In–
deed, "On Laws and the Relationships They Have with the Principles that
Shape the General Spirit, the Customs, and the Manners of a Nation" is
the title of the fundamental XIXth Book of
The Spirit oj the Laws.
Here
an
ideality
has been positied (the "general spirit"), of which the stoic and
Christian, natural and "liberal" genealogy has been pointed out, and
which is a fundamenetal prospect of Montesquieu's political thought.
This
Jully-social,
which is also considered here on the level of the
nation, neverthless reaches its climax when Montesquieu tackles the
total–
ity
of
the
species.
His thinking is weighed down with fatalistic determinism
(particularly climatic) and conceives the political fabric of the globe on
the basis of the sociability and "general spirit" that govern the human
species finally restored to its actual universality through the modern
expansion of trade. The nation's burden, so often acknowledged, is then
transposed in order to be absorbed at the heart of a
borderless
political
philosophy dominated by politics, understood as the maximal integration
of mankind in a moderate, attainable ideality. Traces of it may be found
in the less technical text of Montesquieu's
Thoughts.
To be sure, he
asserted, "I love only my homeland." But also: "When I traveled in
foreign countries, I became attached to them as to my own; I shared in
their lot, and I should have liked them to be in a flourishing state." His
political reflections, national as they may be, were not nationalistic: the
good State was conceived for others, for all. Mankind, thus united by
the ethical will of the political thinker becomes nevertheless
historically
specified as an international society made possible by the development of
trade, dominated by Europe, and dependent on a moderate regulation of
the £low of goods and currency. We should note this observation,
astonishing for its modern tone:
Europe is no more than a Nation made up of several others, France
