Abstract

Montesquieu's comparative method was his greatest contribution to the human sciences. Eighteenth-century European thinkers had developed many different models and conflicting evaluations of regimes and societies outside their continent. Thus Montesquieu had to create a method for comparative analysis, master data from the vast travel literature, and decide among competing interpretations of it. Montesquieu used comparison to show differences and to demonstrate similarities among the laws and practices of different peoples, as well as in a given people at different periods; to specify the range of variations among those similarly classified; and, above all, to explain both uniformities and diversities. He devised five distinct modes of comparison, each phrased in a different set of categories. From them were to be generated many of the disciplines and special fields in the human sciences.1