"They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?"
About this Quote
Montesquieu isn’t politely entering a metaphysical seminar; he’s calling time on an opponent by making their view sound socially and logically ridiculous. The key move is the phrase “blind fatality,” a loaded label that turns materialist or proto-atheist explanations into something crude: not just impersonal causation, but a kind of dead, stupid force. Then he drops the rhetorical trap: “can anything be more unreasonable...?” It’s less an invitation to debate than a performance of incredulity, designed to make the listener feel that disbelief in design is an affectation only a sophist could maintain.
The intent is defensive but also strategic. In early Enlightenment Europe, thinkers were pushing against clerical authority while still operating inside a culture where God was the default premise of moral and political order. Montesquieu, best known for dissecting institutions and power, isn’t offering a scientific argument; he’s policing the boundaries of respectable explanation. If humans are “intelligent beings,” the subtext goes, their existence implies an intelligence behind the world - and by implication, a basis for law, legitimacy, and moral constraint.
What makes the line work is how it smuggles in its conclusion. It assumes that intelligence cannot arise from non-intelligence, a premise framed as common sense rather than contested philosophy. The sneer (“talk very absurdly”) does the heavy lifting: it converts a difficult question about causation into a judgment about taste, reasonableness, and who gets to count as serious.
The intent is defensive but also strategic. In early Enlightenment Europe, thinkers were pushing against clerical authority while still operating inside a culture where God was the default premise of moral and political order. Montesquieu, best known for dissecting institutions and power, isn’t offering a scientific argument; he’s policing the boundaries of respectable explanation. If humans are “intelligent beings,” the subtext goes, their existence implies an intelligence behind the world - and by implication, a basis for law, legitimacy, and moral constraint.
What makes the line work is how it smuggles in its conclusion. It assumes that intelligence cannot arise from non-intelligence, a premise framed as common sense rather than contested philosophy. The sneer (“talk very absurdly”) does the heavy lifting: it converts a difficult question about causation into a judgment about taste, reasonableness, and who gets to count as serious.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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