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Of Cannibals and Kings: Montaigne's Egalitarianism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

David Lewis Schaefer
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Extract

It is paradoxical that an author whose thought is widely recognized to have had a profound influence on such revolutionary thinkers as Locke, Bayle, and Rousseau should be regarded as having himself been an extreme conservative in questions of political practice. Yet such is the almost unanimous judgment of contemporary scholars on Michel de Montaigne. While Montaigne endeavored in the Essays to question radically the grounds of all accepted beliefs and practices, and specifically denounced the unreasonableness and unjustness of many laws and customs practiced in his time, it is believed that he nonetheless opposed all attempts at political innovation or reform, fearing that any such change would only make matters worse.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 43 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1981

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References

1 See, for instance, Brown, Frieda S., Religious and Political Conservatism in the “Essais” of Montaigne (Geneva, 1963)Google Scholar; Friedrich, Hugo, Montaigne, trans. Rovini, Robert (Paris, 1968), pp. 206–210Google Scholar; Keohane, Nannerl O., “Montaigne's Individualism,” Political Theory, 5, no. 3 (08 1977), 377–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1978), 2:278–84.Google Scholar A suggestive exception among recent studies is Fleuret, Colette, “Montaigne et la société civile,” Europe, 50, no. 513–14 (1972), 107–123.Google Scholar See also my article “Montaigne's Political Reformation,” Journal of Politics, 42, no. 3 (1980).Google Scholar

2 For instance: I, xxiii, 117–20; II, xvii, 639; III, ix, 934–35. (All citations of the Essays refer to the French edition of Montaigne, 's Oeuvres Complètes, edited by Thibaudet, Albert and Rat, Maurice and published by Gallimard [Paris, 1962]Google Scholar; the three numbers in each citation refer successively to book, chapter, and page. I have usually followed the translation by Frame, Donald in his edition of The Complete Works of Montaigne [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957]Google Scholar, Book and chapter references have been omitted for “Of Cannibals,” “Of Inequality,” and “Of Sumptuary Laws.” For longer references, the locus for the Frame translation is given in brackets following the citation to the French.)

3 Sayce, R. A., The Essays of Montaigne: A Critical Exploration (Evanston, Illinois: 1972), pp. 258–59.Google Scholar

4 Keohane, , “Montaigne's Individualism,” p. 371.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 378. See also Zeitlin, Jacob, ed. and trans., The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, 3 vols. (New York, 1935), 1:379–80Google Scholar: while “it would be easy to see revolutionary suggestions in such remarks,” Montaigne “would have recoiled before any proposal to give them practical application.”

6 Sayce, , Essays, p. 259.Google Scholar

7 I have discussed the nature of Montaigne's defensive rhetoric in “Montaigne's Intention and His Rhetoric,” Interpretation, 5, no. 1 (1975), 58–90.Google Scholar

8 Cf. I, xxiii, 106–107; I, xxvi, 156–57; I, xlix, 284–85; III, vi, 886.

9 Cf. the similar reflection in Machiavelli, , Discourses on Livy, II, vGoogle Scholar, where the theological implication of this theme — the questionableness of the biblical account of the world's history — is suggested more explicitly; also, Essais, II, xii, 559Google Scholar; Plato, Laws 676b ff.Google Scholar

10 This irony has been pointed out by White, Howard in his Copp'd Hills Towards Heaven: Shakespeare and the Classical Polity (The Hague, 1970), p. 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See Chinard, Gilbert, L'exotisme américain dans la littérature française au seizième siècle (Geneva, 1970Google Scholar; originally published Paris, 1911), chap. 9; Zeitlin, , Essays, 1:378Google Scholar; Françon, Marcel, “On a Source of Montaigne's Essays,” Modern Language Review, 48, no. 4 (10 1953), 443–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Montaigne et les Brésiliens,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne, 5th series, no. 16 (1975), 73–74.Google Scholar

12 A further indication on Montaigne's part of the factual unreliability of his account of the cannibals is his lament at the incapacity of the interpreter during his alleged conversation with one of the American natives (I, xxxi, 213).

A simple faith in Montaigne's professions of honesty causes even a scholar such as Zeitlin, who acknowledges the evidently “borrowed” character of parts of Montaigne's account, to assume that the remainder did come from the essayist's employee (Essays, 1: 378). I have tried to demonstrate that such faith is misplaced in “Montaigne's Intention and His Rhetoric.”

13 On the sense in which “knowledge” of nature is possible despite its infinitely varying character, see II, xxxvii, 762–63; III, xiii, 1041–42, 1045–47; also my article “Montaigne's Political Skepticism,” Polity, 11, no. 4 (1979), 527–30.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Schaefer, , “Montaigne's Intention and His Rhetoric,” pp. 89–90Google Scholar; on “Of Cannibals,” Zeitlin, , Essays, 1:379.Google Scholar

15 This passage is best known to English-speaking readers through Shakespeare's adaptation of it in Gonzalo, 's speech in The TempestGoogle Scholar, act 2, sc. 1, lines 143–67.

16 The Essays contains a number of explicit references to both the Republic and the Laws.

17 That the first human beings were cannibals is indicated somewhat more explicitly by the Stranger in book 6, at 782b. (I have employed Pangle, Thomas's translation of the Laws [New York: Basic Books, 1980]Google Scholar, and have also benefited from reading Pangle's accompanying commentary.)

18 Quotations from the Republic follow the translation by Bloom, Allan (New York: Basic Books, 1968).Google Scholar

19 I have been guided in my understanding of the reasons for the transcendence of the city of sows by Bloom's excellent discussion in the “Interpretive Essay” accompanying his translation, pp. 345–48.Google Scholar Bloom summarizes the problem as follows: “A human solution [to the political problem] requires the emancipation of desire, for only then can virtue arise. Humanity requires a self-overcoming; not because life is essentially struggle, but because man's dual nature is such that the goods of the soul cannot be brought to light without the body's being tempted and, therefore, without a tyranny of soul over body” (p. 348).

20 Cf. Aristotle's distinction between the original reason for the establishment of political societies and the true purpose of a fully developed political order: Politics 1252b 29–31.Google Scholar

21 Some of the tortures perpetrated by the American natives resemble the self-tortures Montaigne describes as having been practiced by classical exemplars of heroic “virtue,” notably Cato: cf. I, xiv, 59; II, xi, 403; II, xiii, 594–95; Schaefer, , “The Good, the Beautiful, and the Useful: Montaigne's Transvaluation of Values,” American Political Science Review, 73, no. 1 (03 1979), 139–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 That the fragility of the American natives' way of life when it is brought into contact with European society constitutes a fundamental defect of the former in Montaigne's judgment, is demonstrated by Trafton, Dain A., “Ancients and Indians in Montaigne's ‘Des Coches,’” Symposium, 27, no. 1 (1973), 76–88.Google Scholar

23 I refer here to monarchs who truly rule their countries, not to the “constitutional” monarchs of contemporary Western Europe, whose positions are essentially symbolic, and who therefore are less reluctant to abdicate for personal reasons.

24 See Strauss, Leo, On Tyranny (Glencoe, Illinois, 1963), pp. 45–47, 87–88.Google Scholar

25 See ibid., pp. 49–50, regarding a similar ambiguity in the Hiero on this point.

26 This is not to deny that they would be disadvantages for Montaigne, who expressly disdains the pleasures of command as too bothersome, by comparison with those of freedom (III, vii, 896; III, ix, 925, with I, xlii, 255). Montaigne particularly emphasizes his love of travel, a pleasure which Hiero laments is denied him (III, ix, passim; III, xiii, 1049; I, xlii, 256–57). The theme of travel is best understood as a metaphor for the intellectual “journey” of the philosopher (see III, ix, 951, with the text and references preceding note 13 supra): from the point of view of the philosopher, rulership in the conventional sense is not worth the trouble it entails (see I, xxv, 133–34 for the classical view; but cf. III, x, 998–1002, for Montaigne's account of a manner of governing which did not require him to forsake his freedom).

27 Aristotle Politics 3.7; cf. Strauss, , pp. 22–23 and 110Google Scholar, n. 1, referring to the denial of the king-tyrant distinction by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Montesquieu. On the connection between Montaigne's exposure of the true nature of princes in “Of Inequality” and the political teaching of Machiavelli, see Nicolaï, Alexander, “Le Machiavellisme de Montaigne,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne, 3rd series, no. 9 (1959), 18–30, especially pp. 26–30.Google Scholar

28 Montaigne's version of the remark slightly alters the sense of the original, since in Plutarch Anarcharsis refers to the determination of the better and the worse, rather than “precedence,” by virtue and vice, respectively. The original context of the remark is also significant: it is made in response to the question of what is the best form of democratic or republican (as opposed to monarchical) rule. (Plutarch, Banquet of the Seven Sages 154d–e).Google Scholar Cf. also Essais, III, ix, 959Google Scholar: “I should find myself more at home in a country where these orders [of rank] were either regulated or despised.”

29 Note that “virtue” [vertu], as distinguished from “goodness” [bonté], has a somewhat pejorative meaning in the Essays, owing to its association with cruelty and unnecessary self-sacrifice: cf. Essays, II, vii, xi, xxixGoogle Scholar; Schaefer, , “The Good, the Beautiful, and the Useful.”Google Scholar

30 See, for instance, the description of the ancient philosophers at I, xxv, 134; and II xii, 481.

31 Cf. also III, v, 855: through the sexual act nature makes all men equal, and “put[s] on the same level the fools and the wise, and us and the beasts.” Note that Hobbes's argument for men's natural equality similarly emphasizes their parity of physical strength while denying the naturalness of differences of knowledge; Hobbes passes over the issue of whether there are natural inequalities in people's capacity for attaining knowledge: Leviathan, ed. Oakeshott, Michael (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), chap. 13, p. 80Google Scholar; com pare the reasoning for the ninth law of nature, chap. 15, pp. 100–101. In justifying “natural” slavery in the Politics (1254b15–40), Aristotle also acknowledges the gap between the natural and conventional hierarchies, since he notes that the inequalities among men's souls are far less manifest than those among their bodies. He and Montaigne disagree concerning the political consequence to be derived from recognizing this phenomenon.

32 Sayce, , Essays, p. 240.Google Scholar

33 See Zeitlin, , Essays, 1:400.Google Scholar

34 Cf. Fleuret, , “Montaigne et la société civile,” pp. 118–19.Google Scholar

35 I have used the translation of Jowett, Benjamin, in McKeon, Richard, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941).Google Scholar

36 Cf. Bloom, , pp. 408–12.Google Scholar

37 I have discussed this program more extensively in my articles “Montaigne's Political Reformation” and “The Good, the Beautiful, and the Useful.”

38 On the liberation of acquisitiveness, see especially I, xiv, 65 (“put a stop to thrift”); I, xxii; I, xxiii, 116Google Scholar (citing “the ingenious opinion of Isocrates” that a king should “render the commerce and dealings of his subjects free, open, and lucrative”). Also, compare Montaigne's observation of how a “commodious and just society” could be built up on the basis of men's “very vices” in a way superior to what any art could produce (III, ix, 933), with Mandeville's doctrine equating private vice with public virtue, and Adam Smith's doctrine of an “invisible hand” naturally directing men's self-interested economic activities in ways that serve the public good.

For a practical manifestation of Montaigne's egalitarian principles, see the Letter of Remonstrance to Henry III he submitted as Mayor of Bordeaux, on behalf of the town government, protesting the exemption of the richest local families from paying royal taxes, and recommending a lightening of the economic burden on the people of supporting the royal courts (Oeuvres Complètes, pp. 1373–78)Google Scholar; also his letter to Henry IV urging him to “lend and submit yourself to the little people” just as Montaigne himself professes to do (ibid., 1397; Essais, III, xiii, 1079).Google Scholar

39 In “L'essai Des Cannibales de Montaigne” (Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne, 5th series, no. 7–8 [1973], 37–38)Google Scholar, Guy Mermier notes the connection between Montaigne's thought and that of Claude Lévi-Strauss, but patronizes Montaigne by saying that “for someone living in the 16th century who was [not] … an anthropologist by profession, he had an extraordinary structuralist intuition.” This interpretation of Montaigne as a proto-structuralist depends on the erroneous assumption that the foundation of Montaigne's reflection on the cannibals was an attitude of cultural relativism (ibid., p. 35; contrast Trafton, , “Ancients and Indians”).Google Scholar It would be more correct, I believe, to view Lévi-Strauss's doctrine as a depoliticized and therefore ultimately less profound (albeit far more elaborate) version of some provisional remarks in “Of Cannibals.”

40 I suspect that the tendency of scholars like Sayce, Keohane, and Zeitlin to downplay or deny the “revolutionary” character of Montaigne's practical intention is rooted partly in the assumption that to give his “theoretical” critique of French society a practical effect would have required violent political changes directed at securing an equality of economic condition (as distinguished from an equality of political rights, and legal opportunities for self-advancement) among men, as exemplified by the subsequent French and Russian revolutions. They are surely correct in denying that Montaigne intended political changes of this sort. (Nor was Montaigne, an ardent individualist, in any sense an advocate of what Sayce calls “socialism or communism.”) But it would be wrong to underestimate the importance of nonviolent political transformations brought about both by appealing to men's self-interests and by gradually changing the fundamental ideas that move them; or the extent to which the (essentially nonviolent) “liberal” revolution or evolution that occurred in countries like England and America in the centuries after Montaigne wrote — and which largely accorded, I believe, with his intention — did serve to elevate the position of the common man, to whose well-being Montaigne dedicated his efforts (Essais, III, xiii, 1079Google Scholar; cf. Fleuret, , “Montaigne et la société civile.”Google Scholar Indeed, it may be that only “revolutions” like the American one, which are rooted in a realistic understanding of human nature and moderate expectations from politics like Montaigne's, can ultimately be successful in advancing the cause of justice and freedom (see Kristol, Irving, “The American Revolution As a Successful Revolution”Google Scholar; Diamond, Martin, “The Revolution of Sober Expectations,”Google Scholar both published by the American Enterprise Institute [Washington, D.C., 1973, 1974]). On the link between the Essays and the American spirit, cf. Strowski, Fortunat, Montaigne, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1931), pp. 337–42.Google Scholar