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Literary Review
Classics Revisited
Montaigne’s experiments with truth
BY RAVI VYAS
The Self, he discovered, consisted in endless variations set in time, in series upon series of thoughts, feelings....
The Complete Essays, Michel de Montaigne, translated by M.A Screech, Penguin Classics, Latest reprint, 2003, $20.
Essays come in all shapes and sizes. There are essays on Human Understanding, and What I Did in the Holidays; essays on Truth and The (Potato) Crisp at the Crosswords. Even more than most literary forms, the essay defies strict definition. It can sha
de into the character sketch, the travel sketch, the memoir or a book review, or what George Orwell described his columns, “I Write as I Please”. Yet, amid all this variety, there is a central tradition of essay-writing — a tradition that goes back to the first and greatest essayist, Michel De Montaigne (1533-1592). No matter how large its subject, the distinguishing marks of an essay by Montaigne are intimacy and informality, like masters of the art of talking on paper. He did not set up for a philosopher, wit, orator moralist, but he became all these by merely daring to tell whatever passed through his mind.
“I am myself the matter of my books,” he said. He did not seek verbal subtleties but tried to portray himself in all truth, to find solid facts, what Man really is, and practical counsel about how he should live and die by studying himself, as Socrates did (“Know thyself”) coolly, probingly and without self-love. That advice he sought not from theology but philosophy that involved large tracts of ethics but also offered readers the consolation of rational philosophy.
As he delved into himself, Montaigne became aware that he was not gazing into a solid, stationary object, a unified Ego but at something ever changing, ever flowing. The Self, he discovered, consisted in endless variations set in time, in series upon series of thoughts, feelings, desires, actions and reactions. Montaigne borrowed several ideas from Plato and Aristotle but he came to the conclusion that to study one man — the best person would be himself — is, in a sense, to study all men. Not that all are identical but all are interrelated in some way or another. Montaigne also discovered that to think about women and their sexuality would also tell you much about men and vice versa since men and women are cast in the same mould.
What Montaigne discovered in himself was a Self which was governed by a “master mould” that resisted any attempt to change it either by education or indoctrination. Without this mould, Montaigne would have found himself in endless flux with no sense of identity. It was this awareness of flux and change in all human beings that led them to stick to religions. (Montaigne was stuck to the Roman Church.) Without this anchor, the common man would find nothing but uncertainty anywhere. What is important here is to stress that Montaigne always treated philosophy as a complement to theology, not the other way around. Where necessary, philosophy had to yield to theology: it did not have to constantly compromise with it. As a philosopher, Montaigne was not concerned with being dead but with bearing life and its discontents with fortitude and detachment. Of course there are areas where theology and philosophy overlap: so the Essays at times touch upon theology but always in the spirit of philosophy. Like the French novel, the Essays are nothing but a philosophy expressed in images.
The Complete Essays are divided into three big books. Each book contains many chapters and each chapter many essays. Montaigne did not himself refer these chapters as essays (this was done by publishers and editors for the convenience of readers): the chapters are convenient groupings of several essays on all manner of subjects. All the essays are self-contained and you could read them in any order you like. Its great advantage is the variety, the promise that it contains something for everyone: dipping backwards and forwards, you can put it down, wander around and come back to it afresh. Probably because of this versatility, the volume has been described as Europe’s perennial bedside read though Montaigne had warned readers that they should give him an hour or so at a stretch to make sense of what he had written.
Some of the best
So, here are some random quotes from each of his books:
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie. (Book 1, On Liars)
If I was pressed to say why I loved him, I feel my only reply could be: “Because it was he, because it was I.” (Book 1, On Affectionate Relationships.)
There’s as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. (Book 2, On the Inconstantcy of Our Actions).
I cannot vouch to other people for my reasonings: I can scarcely vouch for them to myself and am by no means satisfied with them. If any one is looking for knowledge let him go where such fish are to be caught: there is nothing I lay claim to less. These are my own thoughts, by which I am striving to make known not matter but me. (Book 2, On Books)
Virtue will have nothing to do with ease…it demands a steep and thorny road. (Book 2, On Cruelty.
Many a man has been a wonder to the world, whose wife and valet have seen nothing in him that was even remarkable. Few men have been admired by their servants. (Book 3, On the Useful and Honorable)
The world is but a school of inquiry. (Book 3, On the Art of Conversation).
No desire is more natural than the desire for knowledge. We assay all the means that can lead us to it. When reason fails us we make use of experience: “By repeated practice, and with example showing the way, experience constructs an art.” Experience is a weaker and less dignified means: but truth is so great a matter that we must not disdain any method which leads us to it. Reason has so many forms that we did not know which to resort to; experience has no fewer. (Book 3, On Experience.)
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears. (Book 3, On Experience).
This is for starters; you can check out the rest which will be worth any trouble you take.
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