French writer and philosopher Montesquieu

On January 18, 1689, Montesquieu, a representative figure of the French Enlightenment Thought Movement and the founder of the bourgeois state theory and legal theory, was born at the La Brete Estate near Bordeaux, France. His grandfather and uncle successively served as president of the Bordeaux Court, and his father was a soldier. The influence of his family made him care about national political affairs since he was a child, especially with a strong interest in law. After hard work, he obtained a bachelor's degree in law at the age of 19, served as a consultant to the Bordeaux court at the age of 25, and succeeded his uncle's position at the age of 27.

Montesquieu was not very interested in the position of president of the court. He was enthusiastic about scientific research. In particular, in various social occasions, he witnessed with his own eyes the extravagant life of upper society, lost confidence in the feudal autocracy, and actively explored a new path. In order to allow himself to concentrate on research, Montesquieu sold his hereditary position as president of the Bordeaux Court at a high price in 1726, obtained a huge sum of money, moved to Paris, and joined 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, people's customs and customs of various countries, and obtained rich materials. In 1734, his "On the Causes of the Rise and Fall of Rome" was published, which caused a sensation in European academic circles and brought him a high reputation.

However, what really made Montesquieu a world-famous outstanding bourgeois thinker was his important book "The Spirit of Law" published in 1748. In this work, he not only sharply exposed the feudal autocracy and opposed Catholicism and theology, but more importantly, he completely proposed the theory of bourgeois state and law in this work. Especially in this book, he proposed the theory of "separation of powers", that is, state power is divided into three types: legislative, executive, and judicial, which are respectively managed by the parliament, the monarch, and the court. Each is independent, checks each other, and balances 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 "Letters from the Persians"