On this day 336 years ago, on January 18, 1689 (December 27, 1688 lunar calendar), Montesquieu, the founder of the "separation of powers" theory, was born. French writer and philosopher Montesquieu On January 18, 1689, Montesquieu, the representative of the French Enlightenment thought movement and the founder of bourgeois state theory and legal theory, was born in the La Brette estate near Bordeaux, France. His grandfather and uncle successively served as the president of the court of Bordeaux, and his father was a soldier. The influence of his family made him concerned with national political affairs from an early age, especially with a strong interest in law. After hard study, he received a Bachelor of Laws degree at the age of 19, served as a consultant to the court of Bordeaux at the age of 25, and succeeded his uncle at the age of 27. Montesquieu did not have much interest in the position of president of the court, he was enthusiastic about scientific research. Especially in various social occasions, he witnessed the lustful and extravagant life of the upper class, lost confidence in the feudal autocracy, and actively explored a new path. In order to concentrate on his research, Montesquieu sold the hereditary position of president of the court of Bordeaux at a high price in 1726, obtained a large sum of money, moved to Paris, and entered the French Academy of Sciences as an academician. In 1728, Montesquieu spent three years traveling around Europe, conducting an in-depth investigation of the political laws, national systems, and folk customs of various countries, and obtained a wealth of materials. In 1734, his "On the Causes of the Rise and Fall of Rome" was published, which shocked the European academic community and brought him a high reputation. However, what really made Montesquieu a world-famous bourgeois thinker was his important work "The Spirit of the Laws" published in 1748. In this work, he not only sharply exposed the feudal autocracy and opposed Catholicism and theology, but more importantly, he put forward the theory of the bourgeois state and law in this work. In particular, in this book he put forward the theory of "separation of powers", that is, the state power is divided into legislative, executive, and judicial powers, which are controlled by parliament, monarch, and court, each independent of each other, checked and balanced with each other to maintain the unity of the country. His doctrine of separation of powers became the basic principle of the bourgeois political system. Illustration of Montesquieu's work "Letters of the Persians"