Voices of Visitors

Record 8 Side A Audio Transcription - Carl J. Friedrich

Transcribed by Microsoft Word

No, he said. He's gonna put it on the air now. Are there? And he said he's gonna put on the air. So imagine you can ask. Him if you want to. You're ready, bill. Yep. 

Good evening. This is Chuck, Andy speaking to you from the friend's meeting house. Where in just a moment. Doctor Karl Friedrichs of Harvard University, speaking under the auspices of the William J Cooper Foundation and the Department of Political Science, will present a talk on the subject. The doctrine of the separation of powers. This is the second and last programme in a series of talks. By Doctor Friedrichs, the previous talk haven't been given. Last Thursday evening, his subject at that time was Montesquieu, the man and the thinker. Dr. Friedrichs was born in Germany and has been in this country for about 35 years. He is an eminent writer, lecturer and theorist. During the late unpleasantness he was an adviser to the Allied military government of Germany and recently completed a survey. Therefore them he is now head of the political science science department at Harvard University. Dr. frederick's. 

Friends and fellow students, I must not stop the lecture tonight on the doctrine of the separation of powers without. Allowing you to share and the glad news that was brought to me after the last lecture by a gentleman who had heard the lecture to the effect that more, more, 10 he was the father of five children. That being the case, which she has made no ends and most since month 10, is another one of the fellows I like. I will substitute Leibnitz for more think as unmarried. Not possessed of legitimate children at any case. The doctrine of the separation of powers which you. Have asked me to discuss tonight is the element in Montesquieu's political thought that is most widely associated with his name. And the for many decades after mosque had enunciated the doctrine. It was treated as more or less of a settled truth in political science and political philosophy, and exerted a great deal of influence. Period when the Constitution was made. As I told you last time. The Federalist refers 8 times to the to more to secure and more specifically, of course, several task separation power. The doctrine of the separation of powers has fallen upon evil days, and in particularly in reference to in reference to the. The. That is to say, the idea that that a court, in our case, the Supreme Court of the United States, should interpret the Constitution and hence should have the power the legislature uncovered. Doctor in which is specifically stated by Montesquieu in his development of the doctrine of the separation of powers. But it was so. These criticisms of the separation of powers doctrine, fundamentally. Reflect the difference in outlook and point of view with reference to political power. The When people claim that it was contrary to democracy. It uh. They said something which I believe more Jusque and his contemporaries would readily have accepted. Because they did not like democracy. As a matter of fact, Locke would have accepted it quite readily. All the writers of the of the constitutional. Were keenly interested in the limitation of governmental power. And they condemned, dressed as the classical political philosophers of ancient Greek. Ancient Greece had done. They condemned the forms of government in which political power was unrestrained. In other words, all these writers had no more confidence in the unrestrained power of the people at large than they had in the unrestrained power of a few or of one. And as a matter of fact. Never quite. You who maintain that of all the despotic forms of government, democracy was the most despotic of them all. Consequently, the objection raised in our day that this doctrine is undemocratic would, in their opinion, have been quite correct, but not a criticism, but in fact a commendation of the doctor. Now. The. Views, which have lately been urged against the separation of powers as an institutional aspect of the Constitution of the United States, were voiced earlier. By a group of writers in the later half of the of the 18th century. Who objected to the doctrine of the separation of powers? Not so much because. The the doctrine was undemocratic. As because the doctrine was unrealistic. More specifically, Bentham and Rousseau. Were avowed opponents of the doctrine of the separation of powers, and I think to them one can add Voltaire, whom I have mentioned before. He liked Bentham in his younger years, being an advocate of the benevolent despotism. The doctrine of benevolent despotism, as preached by Voltaire and the young Benton. Was essentially based on their order for a form. They realized that I restriction of governmental power would always operate as a break to change, and of course that was precisely what those who wanted to have it had in mind was to produce stability rather than Chi. Once you adopt the position which the younger Bentham, Voltaire and other advocates of enlightened despotism occupied, namely that of poor was the great task of government, obviously an undertaking which would. In peril and in danger, and make more difficult such reforms as they had in mind would appear as wholly undesirable. You may know that Bentham's approach to government underwent a gradual revolution. Bentham was the perpetually disappointed reformer. First the one thing which bent them always remained attached with the form that was the thing that he mattered. He cared about first. He addressed himself to enlightened. Comics. They looked the other way. So Bent then became an an advocate of aristocracy, and he appealed to the enlightened aristocrats. Well, they looked the other way. So finally Bentham became an armed parliamentarian. And it was in the lead period of his parliamentary phase that the Reform Act in Britain carried through the Benthamite proposition to some extent, and consequently vindicated the old man's conviction that perhaps it was. The mass to whom you must appeal if you want to get changed. Now to return to Montesquieu. The key. Political motivation. In Montesquieu and the one that leads Montesquieu to the expounding of the doctrine of the separation of powers. Was this violent aversion to despotism? The. The classification, which Montesquieu gives of the different forms of government. Is affected by this aversion to desperateness motors. Could distinguishes only three forms of government. The Republican form, the monarchical form, and the despotic form. And he really thinks of only two, namely the despotic and the non despotic are constitutional for because it defines both the Republican and the monarchical as forms which are government according to law. Are the antecedents of this violent aversion to despotism, which meant specifically in the case of Montesquieu's aversion to the kind of despotism that had arisen in France under Louis 14? Had its antecedents in the history of ideas. More specifically, as far as Western Europe is concerned, did it have its antecedents in the doctrines of tyrannicide in the 17th century? Yet. Nobody could be further from the doctrines of tyrannicide than Montesquieu. Modern skill has no use whatever for the right of revolution. And nowhere acknowledges any sympathy for. But the ideas which monitors expound. Nevertheless, hard back to ideas which were prominent in the school of the Terran asides in the late 16th and early 17th century. In this respect, Montesquieu very much resembles another very great 18th century thinker, namely Emmanuel Kant. Who also was an ardent believer in constitutional government, but also was a violent opponent. To a violent opponent of violence in any form, it was damaged, harder for Kant because Kant was a contemporary of the French Revolution and unlike Burke. Who may be living in your memory as a great Democrat and who you know became a violent. Abuser of the French Revolution. Old canto mean an ardent. Partisan of the revolution to the bitter end. But he had to go into some very violent. Tergiversation to try and figure out a way of stating. Constitutional doctrine, minus the right of revolution and yet approve of the French Revolution. It is a task worthy of a German metaphysician, I think, agree. Well, you have not asked me to come here and lecture about cats, so I will leave that to my next visit. But. The ancient roots of this body of doctrine, which in the case of Monkeysphere takes the form of the doctrine of the separation of powers, and in the earlier period takes the form of justifying to run aside and justifying the right of revolution. Is. In my opinion, tied in with doctrine of the mixed constitution. Now the mixed Constitution, as you know. Is. A. A pattern of thinking that goes back to Plato and Polybius. And in both Plato and Bolivia. 'S. It is an attempt to achieve. Balance and achieve stability. In a world which both of them are convinced is subject to continuous imbalance and instability. Polybius particularly developed the doctrine of the mixed constitution because. He. As might be the case with the contemporary European visa, visa, United States. Having been brought into contact with Rome as a prisoner of Rome. Undertook to explain to his Greek. Former fellow citizen. What was the real reason for the strength of home? What explained the fact? That within the short period of 50 years. In the course of the Punic War, such as the Mediterranean. Olympics, unlike a lot of other of his contemporaries, refused to say. This is a matter of luck, accident, military powers or what have you, he said. His woman solved the problem of the Constitution and they did it by mixing aristocratic. Monarchical and democratic elements. Now. The. Characteristic feature of the doctrine of the mixed constitution, the doctrine of tyrannicide and the doctrine of the separation of powers. The element which they have in common and which binds them together, is that the people in all of them. Amid the ultimate fountain of. 7. But they are not me. The fun, the unrestrained power of authority, as is true in an. In a doctrine of democracy which propounds the proposition, people can decide everything. These doctrines are all characterized by the peculiarity that they insist that the people can, and in fact must decide what we might. Called the fundamental part, they must make the basic decisions.