Were the questions themselves translated from the French?
JM said it was lame. And I don't know why these questions sound so weird and babelfishy.
It's okay. Just read it tonight. The post will still be here tomorrow.
Yeah, I haven't read it yet either. Why don't you let this ride down the page for today, and then bump it back up to the top tomorrow?
The very literal translation cracked me up, at the time.
Did the misspellings also crack you up, or were those your own contribution?
I put those in for you, Ben! Do you not appreciate my gift?
I'm relieved that so many other people are behind on the reading. I was feeling guilty since I've been pushing to re-start the reading group, was excited about montaigne, etc. . .
I feel like I have a little bit of an excuse, however, I had two of my co-workers quit in May, so life has been a little busy.
Uh, does someone have a link to an online text?
If you follow the link in the first reading group thread, it goes to a page with all three essays, among others.
Really? I looked through that site but couldn't find it. What number is it?
I'll try to get the ball rolling a bit. In response to JM's 5 (and 6, to some extent), this essay reads to me as a fairly straightforward exercise in what is somewhat inexactly called Christian Stoicism, where Stoic apathy and self-reliance are reconfigured as the Christian reliance on things that are not of this world. The reference to Paulinus of Nola (a close associate of Augustine's, for those of you not up on your patristics) would be key here, with its further indirect reference to "storing up treasure in the kingdom of heaven," etc. The critique of extreme ascetiscism is well within the normal parameters of Catholic thought -- a Jesuit would have agreed entirely, though perhaps quietly -- and anyway, Montaigne walks back on it some in one of the post-1588 additions. I even suspect some echoes of Boethius, though there doesn't seem to be direct evidence that M. had read him.
The discussion of pedantry is probably somewhere in the genealogy of the classical (seventeenth-century) critique, but the force of it seems rather narrow to me: if you want to follow a life of retirement, you can't also be an academic. That's not to say that that isn't a perfectly good career, if you're going to have one. The classical (and to some extent Enlightenment) discourse held that such academic pursuits more or less automatically disqualified one from speaking to the public, which was a much more extreme position.
I'm not quite ready to discuss -- JWP seems about right -- but I did go through the dating question (A, B, C),
According to Frame, this piece was done in 1572-4, which puts it toward the beginning of M's work. The 1588 revisions (last edition during his lifetime) look inconsequential. There were a few things of interest added by M. betwee 1588 and his death, but the opening half-pafe and last two pages or more (starting with "Therefore, I am satisfied neither with the purpose not the means of Pliny's advice") are mostly the same as in 1574, except for the addition of a few supporting citations.
Yeah, this is one of the less-retouched essays from the first two books (the ones published in 1580). One point, though, (cribbed from Pierre Villey's headnote) is that the later additions move from a call for retreat from the world tout court to a call for retreat from the world after a life of public service, most likely because for a few years after 1580 Montaigne gave up on the whole retirement thing and served in the very politically delicate post of mayor of Bordeaux.
Read the essay this morning -- I am still finding that Montaigne's writing style makes it just about impossible for me to focus on what he's saying. My reaction to what of it I could process was, That's wrong -- isolating yourself from society is not a way of creating something good, it is destructive -- the best thing is not to understand reallity around you, but to mingle your essence with reality around you. (Understanding "reality" to include "society".) And somehow the idea that the best life is one of seclusion seems to me totally patriarchal -- throughout the essay wives and children are grouped with the dross of possessions and politics that weighs a man down and keeps him from fully experiencing his private reality.
Hey did anyone else read it last night or this morning? Could we bump this post up to the top so people will remember it's there?
I didn't finish the essay last night but I did find myself wondering if we should try to tie it in to the Linda Hirshman discussion. I see potential for overlap.
I am still behind. I swear I will read it soon.
21 -- I was thinking exactly or nearly the same thing. Though I am having trouble following the Hirschman discussion closely.
What about Montaigne's construction at the beginning of the essay: "A man must either imitate
the vicious or hate them both are dangerous things, either to resemble them because they are many or to hate many because they are unresembling to ourselves." I don't buy the "unresembling to ourselves" bit. Easiest (and hardest to avoid) to hate people for qualities that you fear mirror your own.
(there's a period or an em dash or some damn thing between "hate them" and "both".)
So are we going to have any more discussion of this essay?
Thanks for bringing this back up. I was hoping the reading group idea hadn't completely died.
I will try to be ready for discussion next week.
As I've tried to explain to people, having a love life is not a good thing.
But even when your love life goes badly, you have narrative. Drama. You make sport for your neighbors, &c.
Right. It's not a good thing for you, but it's good for the people around you.
Actually, teo, it wasn't good for me either.
Why do you want to destroy the contraceptive industry, Emerson?
I didn't know you were that close to Emerson, M/tch.
We're not really that close, it's more of a FWB type of deal.
Mr M/itch M/iller comes around and asks if he can "take out my garbage" or "scrub my floor" so I let him. He seems to enjoy this, and having a clean floor, etc., doesn't really bother me much.
When he tries to get me to "sing along", though, I draw the line.
When he tries to get me to "sing along", though, I draw the line.
Which explains 31.
So I wanted to see if I could revive this discussion today because it fit in with the discussion last night about weakness, and that in turn related to the Linda Hirshman discussion, but I'm not sure what precisely to say. I have to say that one of the reasons I've been a bad despot is that I basically agree with TMK; I don't like his style and don't get much out of these essays. He doesn't seem particularly insightful to me, nor a particularly good writer; he's responding to classical tradition that I'm not familiar with, and I know so little about intellectual history that I can't really productively discuss the things JWP talks about, and the things JWP talks about feel like the reason for reading him. I'd like to skim this stuff in history of Western thought type class, but I'm having trouble motivating myself to read it closely for its glimmering wisdom or beauty. I'm a bad despot.
As despot, I say if we continue the reading group, which I'd like to, maybe we should move on to Milton, who I think I could get more out of independently of understanding perfectly his place in a philosophical or literary tradition.
Unsurprisingly, I agreed with TMK about this: That's wrong -- isolating yourself from society is not a way of creating something good, it is destructive -- the best thing is not to understand reallity around you, but to mingle your essence with reality around you. (Understanding "reality" to include "society".) And somehow the idea that the best life is one of seclusion seems to me totally patriarchal -- throughout the essay wives and children are grouped with the dross of possessions and politics that weighs a man down and keeps him from fully experiencing his private reality.
and it seemed further implausible to me that the divesting old man is really "forbid[ding] himself to borrow". He's maybe not borrowing from his BFF's in the town square anymore, but someone's supporting him in his seclusion. M's rejection of the extremes of ascetism struck me as further hypocritical in this regard. You can't be both comfortable and divested from society. The people who are casting their wealth into the river seem to understand better what they're about. But maybe I'm being unfair; it's entirely possible that I don't understand M's argument.
But even so, I was attracted to the notion he quoted from "two philosophers" who I don't think he named: the idea of the possibility of an effortful art for one other person, or even just for yourself. Exploration of the value of communication just with yourself, or with a very small circle, seems cool to me, but the way he characterizes the corrupting quality of engagement doesn't.