Montaigne, “the greatest writer of any time, anywhere.”
Orson Welles
First a little housekeeping. With Labor Day behind us, you are perhaps wondering about my summer project, is it coming to an end? After all, I titled it, “My Summer with Montaigne”. Truth be told, I feel as if I’ve hardly scratched the surface. Consequently, I’m going to take a big bite, with the understanding that changing my mind encounters no penalty: the bite being a year-long Montaigne project. So let it ring from the hills and valleys, Doug is now officially engaged in his “My Year with Montaigne” project. With that out of the way, let’s return to our usually scheduled programming.
In reading Montaigne, one gets a general sense that the French master is forever at ease in his existence. He is unflappable and joyful, curious and indefatigable. In my decades of reading philosophy and books about philosophy and philosophers, I have never encountered a thinker so calm, so joyful, so self-aware. In short, we get the impression that should he have been sentenced to the eternal recurrence he would have been ecstatic. To consider how he came to this place of such equanimity is no small matter. Indeed, I have returned to him decade after decade to better understand his path to such profound wisdom.
To recap my last post: We considered Nietzsche’s Theory of Eternal Recurrence, a thought experiment by which we consider the actions we take, whereby, should existence be eternally repeated, we can bear it–or better yet, take joy and revel in it. We can declare with Nietzsche, “…never have I heard anything more divine.” No small trick, that.
“Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from what he is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.”
III.2
His path to such deep self-acceptance fascinates me.
This passage is from the second chapter of book three, “Of Repentance”. Montaigne is mature, and he’s been working on his book for over twenty years–“In this case we go hand in hand and at the same pace, my book and I.” I am roughly ten years older than he was when he penned this. His sense of self-acceptance is palatable; whereas, a younger man might be in the throes of forming the man, as he says, the mature man must survey and assess without alteration. It is less an effort of teaching an old dog new tricks, as it is an acceptance of what has to date transpired without hesitation. But now it is done.
“Those of us especially who live a private life that is on display only to ourselves must have a pattern established within us by which to test our actions, and according to this pattern, now pat ourselves on the back, now punish ourselves. I have my own laws and court to judge me, and I address myself to them more than anywhere else.”
III.2
A self-declared Catholic, Montaigne here confides that despite the norms of his religion and of society in general, he does not turn outward for direction or self-evaluation, but within. To paraphrase Thoreau, he marches to the beat of his own drumming. Montaigne summarizes, “To found the reward for virtuous actions on the approval of others is to choose too uncertain and shaky a foundation.” Lesson: Avoid the herd.
There is a running joke in my family that I do not experience guilt. To a large extent, this is true. It really wasn’t until Montaigne, however, that I better understood how this came to be. Avoiding the herd, that is, not taking measure of oneself by comparison to others, is one aspect of a guiltless perspective. Another is acceptance: what has happened, has happened. It is over and done. Actions are reflected upon and either reinforced, rewarded, or corrected, punished—all without undue emotion, including guilt. This practice of unemotional self-evaluation betrays the Stoicism of the younger Montaigne.
To look to others for approval seems not only “uncertain and shaky”, but foolish. Outward approval or disapproval instills a false sense of self, or, conversely, lack of self, i.e. ego building or guilt inducing. What are we if we cannot regulate ourselves? Yet, we all know hubris and arrogance when we see it. Evidence abounds of the individual who cannot make an honest self-assessment, who is myopic in outlook and self-regulation, seeing the world only from an internalized, albeit, narcissistic viewpoint. “Let me here excuse what I often say,” writes Montaigne, “that I rarely repent and that my conscience is content with itself–not as the conscience of an angel or a horse, but as the conscience of a man.” The antidote to hubris and arrogance is to nurture the conscience of a man. Therein lies a degree of humility, the recognition that, “Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate.” We are all made of the same stuff; the conscience of a man, is the conscience of all humankind; none of us angels, nor beasts, but simply and fully human. To understand this in all its profundity was Montaigne’s project; it is my project too, working in his long shadow.
Until next time, remember,
“There is…no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.”