The title of this chapter is ambiguous by necessity rather than design. The term “translating” conveys in this context two meanings, each of which plays a significant role. The obvious meaning, linguistic transformation, requires little comment, though there are special considerations affecting the translation of Montesquieu in the first sense that derive from the meaning of translation in the second sense. That second sense is conveyed best by “metamorphosis” (as in Ovid) or even “metempsychosis.” To convey this fully, the commentary here consists almost entirely of exegesis, having reviewed the organization of Spirit of the Laws above.

Because Montesquieu's work organizes itself above all else around his deliberate translation of power in the second sense—the transformation of a being into a being of a different kind—the linguistic translator of Montesquieu encounters the special burden of conveying the translation Montesquieu cared most about while yet achieving fidelity in the linguistic translation of the text.

The explanation of the central translation problem in Spirit of the Laws occurs most fitly in the context of the analysis of Book 11, because that is the book in which Montesquieu's translation project achieves its linguistic consummation.

Montesquieu defines politics as a system of relations of power from the outset in Spirit of the Laws. More precisely, he acknowledges the predominance of mere force as the source of what becomes politics. However, he opposes Thomas Hobbes's reduction of politics to mere force and will, for, he urges, Hobbes's approach is actually destructive rather than constitutive and explanatory of politics. This is the meaning of Montesquieu's observation that Hobbes attributes to men in the state of nature what describes them only in society—that is, such habits as locking their doors. This for Montesquieu is rather a metaphor than an empirical observation. The locking of doors is suggestive of patterned, settled relations that cannot spring to life except when men have come to be sheltered from brute force.