Distance Learning: Political Education in the Persian Letters

Montesquieu's Persian Letters offers a remarkable guide into the methods and substance of political education, and especially political education at a distance. In two particular series of epistolary exchanges between distant letter writers and recipients we are shown a talented educator in action, one especially adept on two fronts. First, in these exchanges Usbek shows himself to be uniquely sensitive to the concerns of his interlocutors. Second, his sensitivity to these concerns shapes not only the methods by which he presents his political teaching but also its substance. This paper argues that Usbek's political education speaks, by design, to the inclinations of its recipients, and that this political education is itself grounded on the teaching that the best regime in practice is that which most effectively responds to the inclinations of its inhabitants.