Scan barcode
A review by jpwright87
The Complete Works by Michel Montaigne
“We dignify our stupidities when we put them in print.”
Such is Montaigne’s thesis statement… at least at certain points, and not always completely, and also depending on who he’s quoting. Clear enough? If you’re looking for overarching narrative structure or a principled, well fleshed out worldview, you’ve come to the wrong place. The best I can say of Montaigne, and also why I think he remains a big name in intellectual history, is his honesty. In his life-long essays and ramblings we see someone who was nearly a pagan Epicurean while also a loyal Catholic during wars with Protestants, someone who would write flowery and witty letters to honorable so-and-so’s as well as on his kidney stones, and someone who could still fit a type of what we would consider French today. It’s a remarkable achievement for literature and essay writing, certainly, but it’s not one I would inflict on anybody. Over the essays, we see a man in the prime of his life emphasizing reason and service to the country slowly become more jaded and concerned with death as time goes on. One thing that shocked me, given the confessional genre, is that he seems not to be aware of St. Augustine’s Confessions. So, he’s really starting from the ground up.
Select quotes (there are many):
I honor most those to whom I show least honor.
We wish nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly.
That knowledge is the mother of all virtue, and that all vice is produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a long interpretation.
I always call reason that semblance of intellect that each man fabricates in himself.
Aristotle says that anger sometimes serves as a weapon for virtue and valor. That is quite likely; yet those who deny it answer humorously that it is a weapon whose use is novel. For we move other weapons, this one moves us; our hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds us, we do not hold it.
I am pleased to be less praised, provided I am better known.
Myself now and myself a while ago are indeed two; but when better, I simply cannot say.
It is putting a very high price on one’s conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them.
Such is Montaigne’s thesis statement… at least at certain points, and not always completely, and also depending on who he’s quoting. Clear enough? If you’re looking for overarching narrative structure or a principled, well fleshed out worldview, you’ve come to the wrong place. The best I can say of Montaigne, and also why I think he remains a big name in intellectual history, is his honesty. In his life-long essays and ramblings we see someone who was nearly a pagan Epicurean while also a loyal Catholic during wars with Protestants, someone who would write flowery and witty letters to honorable so-and-so’s as well as on his kidney stones, and someone who could still fit a type of what we would consider French today. It’s a remarkable achievement for literature and essay writing, certainly, but it’s not one I would inflict on anybody. Over the essays, we see a man in the prime of his life emphasizing reason and service to the country slowly become more jaded and concerned with death as time goes on. One thing that shocked me, given the confessional genre, is that he seems not to be aware of St. Augustine’s Confessions. So, he’s really starting from the ground up.
Select quotes (there are many):
I honor most those to whom I show least honor.
We wish nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly.
That knowledge is the mother of all virtue, and that all vice is produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a long interpretation.
I always call reason that semblance of intellect that each man fabricates in himself.
Aristotle says that anger sometimes serves as a weapon for virtue and valor. That is quite likely; yet those who deny it answer humorously that it is a weapon whose use is novel. For we move other weapons, this one moves us; our hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds us, we do not hold it.
I am pleased to be less praised, provided I am better known.
Myself now and myself a while ago are indeed two; but when better, I simply cannot say.
It is putting a very high price on one’s conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them.