This first comprehensive commentary on The Spirit of the Laws uncovers and explicates the plan of Montesquieu's famous but baffling treatise. Pangle brings to light Montesquieu's rethinking of the philosophical groundwork of liberalism, showing how The Spirit of the Laws enlarges and enriches the liberal conception of natural right by means of a new appeal to History as the source of basic norms.

Thomas L. Pangle is professor of political science and chairman of the American Studies Committee at the University of Toronto. Among his many works is The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, also published by the University of Chicago Press.