Montesquieu & Benjamin Franklin

Advocado

Denmark994 Posts

December 29 2010 11:32 GMT

I'm a Danish university law student doing an written assigment of 2400 words on the topic concerning Principles of Government and the 3 powers of state (executive, legislative and judicial). The subject is mainly going to be lawphilosophy, but also touching on subject regarding Lawhistory.

Unfortunately it's not going too good at all. I've found Montesquieus main piece Spirit of the Laws almost too abstract to work with (especially the original version) and then resorted to a conversation between Montesquieu & Benjamin Franklin.

My biggest problem is that most of the passages deal with the fact that Hereditary titles follow the propietros/large owners of the land thereby. The hereditary titles merely lockdown the distribution of land and new titles could not happen in a country where the equality was already fair. As such the hereditary titles stems primarily from the propietors of the land in medieval England. As you can probably see this doesn't have a whole lot to do with philosphy and I'm kinda lost. It goes into depth with more aristocratic. But I'm not sure if this is on the level of Locke, Karl marx etc.

Bah, fuck assigments over christmas man.

gongryong

Korea (South)1430 Posts

December 29 2010 12:34 GMT

Im not sure how deep you want to go. Grundrisse practically outlines the corpus of 19th Century AngloSaxon dynamics on property ownership and attendant legal structure. Kapital is sort of a break from this metaphysics as Marx moved to formulas and systems. But late Marx reverted to philosophy and superstructure. His later works dealt with the evolution of Industrial Rev Europe (mainly UK, France, Switzerland, and Germany) legal system as not a product of a linear maturity of codes and mores, as one would expect from a Marxist work, but rather interventions from an emerging classes brought about by the new wealths of the IR. The gem of this turn is that he was effectively reorganizing his early thoughts on the "dialectics" of economic power vis-a-vis state functions.

Of course, the problem with Marx in this time and age is pretty obvious. One has to be truly in love with it to still be anchoring one's work to Marxism or in pursuit of shredding it apart. There are current pertinent readers tho, especially on the current financial crisis. But they touch more on global geopolitics and wealth mobility than actual hardcore philosophy of law.

Advocado

Denmark994 Posts

December 29 2010 16:24 GMT

Well I'm not completely looking for the philosophy on property ownership. I'm trying to find a good entry into my assignment with the focus on the philosophy of Montesquieu. I was thinking of going towards some of Marx's work because a certain quote made me think directly of him.

I'll come back with that quote a bit later.

Cheers for responding gongryong!

gongryong

Korea (South)1430 Posts

December 29 2010 16:28 GMT

Cheers! xD

Advocado

Denmark994 Posts

December 30 2010 00:28 GMT

Alright here's the rundown

Benjamin Franklin:
It's a text called The Principles of Representive Government and therein he observes that the property is the original element of political power and which produce all other elements of effect. He pinpoints that the inequality is restored over longer periods of time through the distribution of the estates to the children. The inequality starts whenever unjust and revolting regulations are created by undivideable greater estates (the rich get richer). The feudal law in europe was such a way of locking everyone down and preventing the spreading of estates.

He continues on to talk about the foundation of the relationship between proprietors and labourers ala Karl Marx, but is much more soft in that any conflict between proprietors and labourers is not a conflict between branches of government but rather a conflict of nation. The conflict therefore would be a civil war.

More frustration but at least it helps to write some garbage. I really wish I could link to this article, but it's stored in a database and the pdf is locked.