The Ƶ College of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences recently hosted the latest installment of the Montesquieu Forum, featuring political science professor Dr. Vickie Sullivan. On campus in the historic Sullivan Room, Dr. Sullivan delivered a lecture entitled “The Letters on Population in Montesquieu's Persian Letters" to an audience of Roosevelt students, faculty and local community members. The presentation discussed Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, identified the text’s key themes, and parsed the intent of 1721 literary work.
Both informative and humorous, Dr. Sullivan led her audience on an exploration of “the sacred heart in the spirit of the letters.” According to Dr. Sullivan, these letters reveal Montesquieu’s assessment of topics like population, legislation, mildness, labor and slavery. She asserts that through the author’s use of language, repeated phrases and sarcasm, the Persian Letters articulate the issues that obstruct and how to achieve social progress. These issues include the efficacy of legislators that craft laws that encourage citizens to take pride in their work and to embrace aspects of the natural world. The Letters also expressly condemn the system of slavery as working against the interests of a productive society, though it does so with biting sarcasm. According to Dr. Sullivan, an investigation of the Persian Letters reveals how “themes blossom in the spirit of the new laws.” The lecture captivated her audience and concluded with a rousing discussion. Dr. Sullivan’s lecture was an excellent example of how studying the humanities can help identify tools for progress in the physical world.
Dr. Sullivan was invited to campus by Philosophy Professor Stuart Warner, director of the Montesquieu Forum, an initiative founded in 2008 to advance “the study of classical and European heritage that informed the American Founding.”
Dr. Sullivan is the Cornelia M. Jackson Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, and specializes in political thought, philosophy and the intersection of politics and literature. Her latest book, Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2017.
