Michel Eyquem, Monsieur de Montaigne, was born in Périgueux, France, in 1533 and died in Bordeaux, France, in 1592. He was a writer whose fundamental works are the Essays (1580 and 1588). Before writing them, he travelled and obtained material for his work. The essays deal with various topics such as religion, politics and philosophy. Their approach seeks to fight against prejudices and dogmatisms and to encourage open minds and intellectual lucidity. These essays can be seen as an invitation for dialogue, critique and thinking.
The following are some excerpts, which we have translated, from Montaigne’s Essays with comments in the style of the Minerva Strategy Blog.
“I would excuse our people for having no other standard or rule of perfection than their own habits and customs; for it is a general vice not only of the vulgar, but of almost all men, to confine their gaze to the sphere in which they were born”(Cap. XLIX ”De las costumbres antiguas” en Montaigne, Ensayos).
This is linked to the strength of localisms, which give an unusual moral weight to the place of one’s birth. Specifically, this passage from Montaigne alludes to ethnocentrism, which William Graham Sumner defines in his book Folkways (1906) as “is the technical name for this view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it “.
Ethnocentrism conceives that the values of the group set the standard of what is human and outside the group, differences occur as stigmas. Procrustean bed versus heterodoxy by combining the identity/alterity binomial.
“There is nothing barbarous or savage in that nation, according to what I have been told, but that everyone considers barbarous what does not belong to his own customs. Indeed, we seem to have no other view of truth and reason than the model and idea of the opinions and usages of the country in which we are. There is always the perfect religion, the perfect government, the perfect and finished practice of everything” (Cap. XXXI “De los caníbales” en Montaigne, Ensayos).
What is interesting here is to distinguish between critical morality – rational or justified morality – and social morality – the moral values of the majority of society – on the one hand, and the debate between scepticism/relativism versus universalism on the other. It may be argued that Montaigne’s scathing critique of customs, opinions and usages goes against relativism and favours some version of universalist critical morality compatible with a moderate vital scepticism, which is often attributed to the author of the Essays.
“I consider that there is greater barbarism in eating a living man than in eating the dead, in tearing a still sentient body with tortures and torments, roasting it little by little, giving it to dogs and pigs to bite and tear to pieces (something we have not only read about, but also seen recently, not among old enemies but among neighbours and fellow citizens and, what is worse, under the pretext of piety and religion), than roasting and eating it after death” (Cap. XXXI “De los caníbales” en Montaigne, Ensayos).
In classical Antiquity, the Greeks claimed that they were civilised and their neighbours were barbarians. Thus began a dichotomy that has subsequently had various applications. For example, it played a role in the Valladolid Controversy between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda.
In this case, Montaigne asks who is more barbaric, the cannibalistic indigenous peoples he encountered on his travels in Latin America or the Europeans who burned human beings alive in the public square once condemned by the Inquisition. Here it becomes difficult to establish gradualisms or weightings to barbarism.
“We may well call them barbarians, if we consider the rules of reason, but not if we consider ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarism” (Cap. XXXI “De los caníbales” en Montaigne, Ensayos).
In his work on barbarism, Francisco Fernández Buey highlights how historical events in the 20th century in the West have made the notion of barbarism highly topical. He mentions the extermination camps in Nazi Germany such as Auschwitz, the repression of the Stalinist Gulag and the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, this 20th century barbarism incorporates two qualitatively more repulsive and malignant features: “the number of murders without compassion, in a merciless manner, and the coldness and even asepsis with which the acts of barbarism were carried out” (Francisco Fernández Buey, La barbarie. De ellos y de los nuestros).
“Miracles depend on our ignorance of nature, and not on nature’s being; habit dulls the sight of our judgment. Barbarians do not astonish us any more than we astonish them, nor with any more reason: which all would admit if they knew how, after going over these examples, to look at their own and compare them sincerely” (cap. XXIII “De la costumbre y de cómo no se cambia fácilmente una ley recibida” en Montaigne, Ensayos).
Us and the Others, identity and otherness, group dynamics, lead to characterising those who are different as inferior and deviant – with a stigma – and members of the group as normal individuals. The paradox is that, from outside the group, from another group, its members can also be labelled as different, deviant and inferior – with a stigma. It makes sense: moderation, common sense. Keep values such as human rights and the Golden Rule of Humanity in mind on a daily basis.
In the above essay on barbarism, Fernández Buey reflects that “the violence and cruelty of others is always fanaticism and fundamentalism; the violence and cruelty of our own is the explicable passion that always drags human beings along” (Francisco Fernández Buey, La barbarie. De ellos y de los nuestros).
A suggestive contemporary reading of Montaigne can be a clear appeal against sectarianism and polarisation. Traveling, reflecting, fighting prejudice, understanding differences, appreciating human beings, and aiming for an ethical horizon.
