Abstract
Montaigne’sEssays (originally published in successively revised and expanded edition, 1580–1595) is one of the major sources through which knowledge of the classical tradition was dispersed in western Europe during the late Renaissance. Much of theEssays reads, in fact, like a pastiche of quotations from a great variety of classical authors, along with countless anecdotes concerning assorted figures from Greek and Roman antiquity. But what was the intent underlying Montaigne’s use of the ancients? Was he an unqualified admirer of classical republicanism, was he aiming to revive philosophy in its classic form, or did his presentation of the classics embody and generate a fundamental revision in how both classical philosophy and republicanism are understood? In this paper I argue for the third of these alternatives.
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(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
The mockery is elaborated in the 1588 edition: III, xii, 1033 [808]). Parenthetic citations in the text refer successively to book, chapter, and page numbers of theEssais in the Pléiade edition of Montaigne,Oeuvres complètes, ed. Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat, (Paris: Gallimard, 1962); The fourth, bracketed number identifies pages in Donald Frame’s translation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), which I have followed with occasional modification. I omit book and chapter numbers in successive references to a single chapter.
InThe Great Instauration Bacon explains the need to win a reader’s confidence by first “tell[ing] him that which is in his own heart” (Works, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, IV London: Longmans, 1860; various reprints, e.g., Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989] 22). Cf. Heidi Studer’s observation in her review essay on Robert Faulkner,Francis Bacon and the Politics of Progress, “That whatever seems a defense of antiquity in Bacon’s writing is put there by Bacon in order that the ‘odor’ or ‘scent’ of antiquity will appeal to learned lovers of antiquity, who will not find Bacon a harsh antagonist,” enabling him thereby to “insinuate his modern teachings under the old veils,” (“Bacon, Philosopher or Ideologue?,”Review of Politics, vol. 59, no. 4 [Fall, 1997], p. 920). Also compare the proems to Books I and II of Machiavelli’sDiscorses on Livy.
Robert Eden, “The Introduction of Montaigne’s Politics,”Perspectives in Political Science, 20:4 (Fall, 1991), pp. 211–220.
As David Quint observes, the passage in III, xiii, alludes to an instance of Alexander’s cruelty equally horrifying with, and drawn from the some source as, the account of the death of Betis in I, i:Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 35. Quint also speaks of the contrast between Alexander and a more humane (but fictionalized) Epaminondas, modeled on Montaigne himself, as providing a “frame” for Book III of the “Essays” (pp. 40–41, 151 n. 33).
See Cicero’sTusculan Disputations, II, xxv, 61. Significantly, this dismissal of the Stoic posture derives from the first edition of theEssays. (TheTusculan Disputations are an important source for Montaigne of the Stoic view that he challenges. His rhetorical strategy of citing the multitude of people who fearlessly rushed towards death to show that it is not an evil follows I, xxxvii of that work. And his mockery of Posidonius’ dismissal of pain is prefigured by the treatment of Epicurus and the Stoics elsewhere in theTusculan Disputations [II, vii, xii], Similarly, atTusculan Disputations II, xiv, it is argued that without denying the reality of pain, we should be able to overcome it through “patience,” as Montaigne will suggest.)
In II, xii, Montaigne describes philosophy’s advice to kill oneself if one cannot endure life as a confession of its “impotence” (474–6 [365–6]). See also II, iii,3334 [254–5]) regarding the folly of suicide as a recourse from “ills.”
The Political Philosophy of Montaigne, pp. 291–2.
See the account in Cicero’sTusculan Disputations (II, xviii, 43) of the reason for the derivation ofvirtus fromvir and hence the emphasis on the virtue of courage or manliness.
Here again Montaigne’s source is theTusculan Disputations (I, xxx, 74), where it is claimed that Cato Must have “rejoiced” in finding this occasion to kill himself.
The chapter “Of Virtue” (II, xxix) is correspondingly filled with stories of cruelty.
As Quint observes, “Of Cruelty” closely mirrors Seneca’s Epistle 90, only to reverse Seneca's elevation of the virtue that results from self-mastery over the natural innocence and aversion to cruelty that he attributes to primitive peoples (Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy, p. 56). Montaigne’s essay “Of Cannibals,” along with the discussion that almost concludes the preceding essay, “Of Moderation” (I, xxx, 199 [149]), nonetheless demonstrates that he was under no illusions about any such primitive distaste for cruelty. On the naturalness of the instinct for cruelty, see also I, xxiii, 108 [78]; III, i, 768 [599]). (The latter passage describes the “natural” root of cruelty even while denouncing it as an “unnatural” vice.)
The last remark of course contradicts the assertion earlier in the chapter that the Epicurean doctrine was no less rigorous than the Stoic.
Actually, according to Montaigne’s source Diogenes Laertius (VI.85–94), Crates was a Cynic, not a Stoic. Cf. III, viii, 921 [720], where Montaigne proposes abandoning “these popular rules of civility [civilité] in favor of truth and liberty”, as he professes to do by writing “only of myself”.
I develop this interpretation of the “Apology” in chaps. 2–4 ofThe Political Philosophy of Montaigne.
For instance, just after citing the teaching of Apollo (according to Xenophon) that “the true cult for each man was that which he found according to the practice of the place he was in” to show man’s “ignorance of the divine being,” such that “religion was only a creature of their own invention, suitable to bind their society together,” Montaigne thanks “our sovereign creator for having freed our belief from the folly of those vagabond and arbitrary devotions, and having based it on the eternal foundation of his holy word.” yet his citation of Apollo was occasioned by a reference to the instability of Christian beliefs, as attested by the changes in English practice during the Reformation (562–3 [436–7])!
Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics, II.9.
Ibid. Aristotle, 1109a24–30 (cf. 1109b14, 1137a10–17).
Ibid., Aristotle X.1, 1172a29–b8 (quoted from the Ross translation: Aristotle,The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, ser. The World’s Classics [London: oxford University Press, 1954]). In the sequel (X.2, 1172b9–18) Aristotle remarks that the arguments of Eudoxus, who identified the good with pleasure, were credited largely on account of his own virtue and self-control—such as Montaigne remarked of Aristippus in “Of Cruelty.”
This use of Socrates is all the more remarkable in that Montaigne borrowed the title of I, xx, “That to Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die,” from Socrates (as depicted in Plato’sPhaedo 67D and Cicero’sTusculan Disputations I, xxx, 74). But a speaker in theDisputations also denies that we have much need for philosophizing in order to overcome the fear of death (I, xxxvii, 89).
Montaigne hedges on the issue of whether Socrates’ virtue resulted from such a “correction.” Only a page or so earlier he interpreted Socrates’ claim (in Cicero’sTusculan Disputations) to have corrected his natural inclination towards certain vices by training as a jest, since “so excellent a soul was never self-made” (1035 [810]). That account harmonized with Montaigne’s contrast between Socrates and Cato in “Of Cruelty.”
See his lament that philosophy “in our century” has become “an empty and fantastic name” (I, xxvi, 159 [118]); also I, Ivi, 308 [234], recommending that theology be kept apart from philosophy.
Cf. I, xxxix, 232 [174] on the pretense of owing oneself to the public as a cover for the pursuit of “private profit” at the expense of the public good.
Recall the remark quoted earlier from the conclusion of theEssays on how the attempt to transform themselves into something superhuman as Alexander did genuinely makes men into beasts.
On the channeling of private vice to promote the public good see III, ix, 933–34 [730] with II, ii.
On medicine and economics, see, respectively,Essays II, xxxvii and I, xxii. I address these themes respectively in pp. 118–131 and 377–79/392–94 of my book.
Cf. I, liii, 296 [224] regarding the insolubility of the philosophers’ debate over “the sovereign human good”, with Thomas Hobbes,Leviathan, chap. 11, first paragraph, and John Locke,Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ed. Nidditch), II, chap. 21, secs. 54–5; alsoEssays II, xvi, 605–6 [471]: “Since philosophy has not been able to find a way to tranquility that was good for all, let everyone seek it individually!” As the title of the first chapter of theEssays begins with a reference to “diverse” means, the last word of the concluding chapter of Book II (which ended the original edition of the whole book) is “diversité.”
For Montaigne’s compassion, see the remarks cited above from I, i; II, xi; and III, xiii.
SeeThe Political Philosophy of Montaigne, chapter 12. On the connection of Montaigne’s thought to that of the prototypical philosopher of liberal, commercial republicanism, John Locke, see Peter C. Meyers,Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 24–26, 161–64,et passim.
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Schaefer, D.L. Montaigne and the classical tradition. Int class trad 8, 179–194 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02701805
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02701805