Montesquieu and « social

A number of authors have considered Montesquieu as the first to "discover the social". This essay proposes that there are actually four discoveries that introduce three different senses of the social, each relative to the political: an "ontological" sense that speaks of what influences the political from "behind"; an "epistemological" sense that examines the political from a non-political perspective; and a "substantial" sense that describes in certain regimes a sphere largely unregulated by political power or juridical laws. The conclusion considers the fate of The Spirit of the Laws, asking why the book has had so little influence in sociology and why, nonetheless, it still remains relevant. "