{"id":40,"date":"2008-04-12T09:14:42","date_gmt":"2008-04-12T04:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=40"},"modified":"2021-04-12T00:20:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T04:20:26","slug":"montesquieu-on-the-betrayal-of-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"Montesquieu on the betrayal of truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/Montesquieu.png\" alt=\"Montesquieu\" class=\"rightbox\"\/><br \/>\nFrom Montesquieu&#8217;s <u>Spirit of the Laws<\/u><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dans les monarchies extr\u00eamement absolues, les historiens trahissent la v\u00e9rit\u00e9, parce qu\u2019ils n\u2019ont pas la libert\u00e9 de la dire : dans les Etats extr\u00eamement libres, ils trahissent la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 \u00e0 cause de leur libert\u00e9 m\u00eame, qui, produisant toujours des divisions, chacun devient aussi esclave des pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s de sa faction, qu\u2019il le serait d\u2019un despote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>In absolute monarchies, historians betray the truth because they lack the freedom to say it. In politically free countries, they betray the truth because of their very freedom which then produces factions so that each one becomes a slave of his faction, which, for him, is equivalent to a despot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I suppose it is pointless to comment since Montesquieu says it as well as it can be said. It is as useless to implore partisans to reject their partisanship as it would be to command the waves to recede. Partisans are under the sway of <em>thymos<\/em>, which is the blind will to &#8220;dominate&#8221;; philosophers are dominated by <em>nous<\/em>, the pursuit of wisdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Partisans are under the sway of thymos, which is the blind will to \u201cdominate\u201d; philosophers are dominated by nous, the pursuit of wisdom. <span class=\"continue-reading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=40\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-montesqueu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14291,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/14291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}