"This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under one genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most attention. So many humors, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions, laws and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform our understanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, which is no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough to make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our hopes ridiculous of eternizing our names by the taking of half-a-score of light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin... Pythagoras was wont to say, that our life resembles the great and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize; others bring merchandise to sell for profit; there are, also, some (and those none of the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their own." From "Essais," by Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton.
Last Sunday, a now very repentant friend stood me up for brunch by mistake. Too far from the townhouse on the UES where I'm spending my last few weeks of summer, I decided to do something I haven't done or been in a while-- hang out solo until my next scheduled rendezvous. Chelsea Market is my new favorite Manhattan spot so I took myself there, bought myself a New Yorker and sat down at Ronybrook Farm's Milk Bar (again) for a lovely breakfast involving raisin-walnut bread, cinnamon butter, and a mysterious egg-in-a-hole, and of course, quelques tasses du cafe. I could have bought Vanity Fair or Harper's but the New Yorker took my breath away with the fact that there was an article on Michel de Montaigne hiding within. What better date for a quiet morning with oneself than the man who invented the very concept?
In her article Jane Kramer picked up on the very best of Montaigne-- his struggle to know himself and how exactly this plays out in his essays. In this post though, I want to move away from that and examine an excerpt where Montaigne engages briefly with the route to selfhood: it's from "Of the Education of Children," and M talks at length about the schooling of a young boy. This passage is kind of special for me because it's one of the rare moments in the Canon where a writer speaks without judgment, censure, or bias. Maybe I've had too much of Dante and Hell and Heaven and Purgatory, but Montaigne is and always has been a breath of fresh air. The best education cannot be got from an ecole or seminary, but from being a citizen of the world. This is now an old and cliched idea, but it remains unappreciated for not enough of us walk the map. To know ourselves in a "true bias," says Montaigne, we must know not the other, but others. It is this philosophical effort at people-watching that might free us from the shackles that we're placed in by what is familiar to us in our immediate lives.
We're far from the Divine Comedy where Dante loves to assign his fellow Italians, his literary heroes, and figures in history to the infernal, the purgative, and the heavenly. Instead, Montainge gives us the power to judge ourselves and not in terms of virtue or vice, but in terms of who we are in relation to those around us. I'm reminded of the age-old parent to child line: "It doesn't matter what your friends do or think, so long as you're a good person."
Is Montaigne then suggesting a new way of being a "good" or as I would take it, contributing citizen of the world? Is virtue important only insofar as it is able to relate to the rest of the human race. Does it derive from what it means to be human, or what it means to be a human in the face of God? Montaigne was not exactly the most devout Catholic, several members of his family went over to Luther without causing a schism. When Montaigne chalks out this program for education, does he somehow see himself as a prophet of the world we live in today-- a world where to try and know only what is familiar is almost a sin?
The other for Montaigne is very different for what other will become just a couple of centuries later. For someone whose intent is to "essai" or try to know himself, Montaigne is surprisingly permeable. I wonder then, at the end of the Essais, is it just Montaigne the mayor, father, squire, or is it the man who has discovered the larger, happier secret of what it means to have a self?
Last Sunday, a now very repentant friend stood me up for brunch by mistake. Too far from the townhouse on the UES where I'm spending my last few weeks of summer, I decided to do something I haven't done or been in a while-- hang out solo until my next scheduled rendezvous. Chelsea Market is my new favorite Manhattan spot so I took myself there, bought myself a New Yorker and sat down at Ronybrook Farm's Milk Bar (again) for a lovely breakfast involving raisin-walnut bread, cinnamon butter, and a mysterious egg-in-a-hole, and of course, quelques tasses du cafe. I could have bought Vanity Fair or Harper's but the New Yorker took my breath away with the fact that there was an article on Michel de Montaigne hiding within. What better date for a quiet morning with oneself than the man who invented the very concept?
In her article Jane Kramer picked up on the very best of Montaigne-- his struggle to know himself and how exactly this plays out in his essays. In this post though, I want to move away from that and examine an excerpt where Montaigne engages briefly with the route to selfhood: it's from "Of the Education of Children," and M talks at length about the schooling of a young boy. This passage is kind of special for me because it's one of the rare moments in the Canon where a writer speaks without judgment, censure, or bias. Maybe I've had too much of Dante and Hell and Heaven and Purgatory, but Montaigne is and always has been a breath of fresh air. The best education cannot be got from an ecole or seminary, but from being a citizen of the world. This is now an old and cliched idea, but it remains unappreciated for not enough of us walk the map. To know ourselves in a "true bias," says Montaigne, we must know not the other, but others. It is this philosophical effort at people-watching that might free us from the shackles that we're placed in by what is familiar to us in our immediate lives.
We're far from the Divine Comedy where Dante loves to assign his fellow Italians, his literary heroes, and figures in history to the infernal, the purgative, and the heavenly. Instead, Montainge gives us the power to judge ourselves and not in terms of virtue or vice, but in terms of who we are in relation to those around us. I'm reminded of the age-old parent to child line: "It doesn't matter what your friends do or think, so long as you're a good person."
Is Montaigne then suggesting a new way of being a "good" or as I would take it, contributing citizen of the world? Is virtue important only insofar as it is able to relate to the rest of the human race. Does it derive from what it means to be human, or what it means to be a human in the face of God? Montaigne was not exactly the most devout Catholic, several members of his family went over to Luther without causing a schism. When Montaigne chalks out this program for education, does he somehow see himself as a prophet of the world we live in today-- a world where to try and know only what is familiar is almost a sin?
The other for Montaigne is very different for what other will become just a couple of centuries later. For someone whose intent is to "essai" or try to know himself, Montaigne is surprisingly permeable. I wonder then, at the end of the Essais, is it just Montaigne the mayor, father, squire, or is it the man who has discovered the larger, happier secret of what it means to have a self?
No comments:
Post a Comment