Jordan Mattox

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1. By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same Ends

In this first essay of book one, Montaigne discusses two possible responses to aggression: pursuit of pity or overt obstinance. He begins the essay by discussing the contradictoriness of these methods, but then points out that they often result in the same outcome. Among his examples are Edward, Prince of Wales, showing mercy from pity, Scanderberg, prince of Epirus, showing mercy due to his respect for the resoluteness of his adversary, and many more. Midway through the essay, he discusses the flaws and strengths of each approach before, again, demonstrating how both methods are employed successfully. 

There are many takeaways from this essay, but chief among them is that the success of a method has less to do with the strength of the modus operandi and more to do with the particular circumstances and the players involved. Accepting these premises leads one to dual conclusions: one, relativism as it pertains to methods, and, two, a firm pragmatism that focuses simply on achieving an end. 

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2. Of Sadness 

In the second essay, Montaigne discusses the complicated emotion that is grief and sadness. He has a number of stories that underlie the basic reality that grief and sadness are things that paralyze us and can not be put into words: 

“But a story is told about Psammenitus, a King of Egypt. When he was defeated and captured by Cambises the King of Persia he showed no emotion as he saw his daughter walk across in front of him, dressed as a servant and sent to draw water. All his friends were about him, weeping and lamenting; he remained quiet, his eyes fixed on the ground. Soon afterwards he saw his son led away to execution; he kept the same countenance. But when he saw one of his household friends brought in among the captives, he began to beat his head and show grief.”

And when the King is asked about his feelings, he says: 

“Only the last of these misfortunes can be expressed by tears… the first two are way beyond any means of expression.”

This seems to connect with the conclusion of the book of Job. His friends all want to explain and understand his suffering, but instead Job knows that words that can’t explain away his suffering.

3. Our Feelings Reach Out Beyond Us 

This is an interesting and slightly convoluted essay. The theme is our focus on future things or things beyond our ability to see. Humans have a tendency to reach out beyond ourselves, either for control or with the view of attachment to the future. There’s also a lot of reverence for royalty scattered throughout this essay, which went through a series of revisions and additions. 

Here’s an excerpt from the essay:

I must add this other example, which is as remarkable for the sort of thing under consideration as any of the preceding. The Emperor Maximilian, great-grandfather of the present King Philip,[22] was a prince endowed to the full ​with noble qualities, among others with singular physical beauty. But among his humours was this one, — quite the opposite of that of most princes, who, for the transaction of the most important affairs, make a throne of their close-stool, — that he never had a servant so familiar that he would allow him to see him in his closet: he would go apart to make water, being as modest as a maid in not exhibiting, to a physician or anybody else, the parts which we are wont to keep hidden. (b) I myself, who am so brazen of speech, am none the less naturally inclined to this same modesty: except under great pressure of necessity or of passion, I rarely put before another’s eyes the organs and the acts which our manners ordain shall be kept out of sight; I constrain myself more about this than I think very fitting for a man, and especially for a man of the opinions I profess. (b) But he[23] reached such a pitch of superstition that he expressly ordered in his testament that they should put drawers on him when he was dead. He should have added a codicil to the effect that he who should put them on should be blindfolded.[24]

4. How the soul discharges its passions on false objects when the true are wanting 

In this essay, Montaigne discusses the idea that we invent adversaries or causes of problems when we can’t find one. That idea that suffering might not have a clear and definitive source, that there could be a number remote causes but not a specific proximate one is challenging for humans to digest. 

A few years ago, Umberto Eco published a book originally based on an article about the need to invent enemies. Here’s an excerpt (which I took from this blog post):

It seems we cannot manage without an enemy. The figure of the enemy cannot be abolished from the processes of civilization. The need is second nature even to a mild man of peace. In his case the image of the enemy is simply shifted from a human object to a natural or social force that in some way threatens us and has to be defeated. (17)

The politics of enemies is something that has been written about extensively. Here’s an excerpt from an article published in 2022 titled “The Politics of Enemies” written by Michael Ignatieff: 

It is not necessarily true, therefore, that when politicians use violent language, categorizing their opponents as enemies or traitors, these politicians are merely representing their constituents’ feelings or responding to injustices and divisions in society at large. The truth may be darker: It may be a language game not to represent grievance, but to create it, and to polarize for the sake of political advantage, with all this occurring in a digital space that has ceased to bear any relation to reality at all.

Once the leaders in a democratic system start resorting to a “politics of enemies,” the language, habits of mind, and tactics of partisan demonization practiced at the top of the system will spread out and down through media and the internet and begin to affect the political instincts of citizens at large. At first, members of the public may be wary of the leaders’ language and even resist its lethal simplifications, since these may fail to correspond to their own social experience. But over time, by dint of repetition, democratic leaders can take over and define the entire frame of reality used by their constituents and supporters to interpret their digital world.

A politics of enemies treats political opponents as threats who must be eliminated or destroyed. The core accusation is that the opponents aim to lay waste to democracy itself. Since the threat they pose is existential, all means that might be used to combat them are fair. Restraint comes to be seen as weakness, prudence as pusillanimity. The goal is “to crush your enemies and see them driven before you” while winning total victory for your own side.

A politics of enemies is venomously personal. Its purpose is to deny the opponent standing, that is, the right to be believed, even to be taken seriously. Attacks on the past, the character, the financial assets, and even the family of an opponent are designed to ensure that when an opponent speaks, listeners do not listen, because they have been persuaded that the opponent cannot be trusted. Attack a candidate’s standing and you do not have to bother with their ideas or campaign agenda. The crucial way to deny standing is to question the patriotism of the opponent, to raise doubts about their commitment to widely shared values. When standing is effectively denied, the opponent is no longer a competitor: They have become an enemy.

What makes a politics of enemies seductive is that its ruthlessness is so often packaged as a defense of democracy itself. Enemies are enemies because their actions threaten to impose tyranny, and thus, as Barry Goldwater said in 1964, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

While it is natural enough, at the height of democratic competition, to think of your opponent as an enemy and to see an electoral competition as a battle, democracy can be destroyed from within if the competition essential to it is modeled as war, and if political opponents are understood as existential foes. “We must not be enemies,” pleaded Abraham Lincoln in his First Inaugural Address, “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” There ought to be no enemies in the democratic house. The term “enemy” should be reserved solely for foreign foes and those who collude with them to betray the country. Democracy is not war by other means. It is the only reliable alternative to war.

A politics of enemies may have the false glamor of seductive simplification, but it comes with dangers for those who practice it. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. It is strongly in the interest of political competitors instead to model the struggle as a competition between adversaries. An adversary, after all, is an opponent who plays by the same rules as you do, accepts democratic outcomes, congratulates you upon your victory, and if they win, thanks you for playing your part in the contest. Moreover, an adversary today may become an ally tomorrow, or even a friend. An adversary is not necessarily nicer, more polite, more civil, or worst of all more “gentlemanly” than an enemy: An adversary is merely someone who understands the rationale for keeping electoral competition within bounds.

Carl Schmitt, the conservative legal thinker, writing in the fevered death throes of the Weimar Republic, argued that the primal division in politics is between friend and enemy, but it was precisely this view of politics that destroyed late-Weimar democracy, encouraging both Communists and Nazis, and everyone in between, to see their adversaries as enemies and traitors—in short, as people whom it was legitimate to take up arms against and eliminate.21

5. Whether the governor of a besieged place should go out to parley:

Whenever I hear the word “parley,” my mind immediately rushes to Pirates of the Caribbean:

“Parley. I invoke the right of parley. According to the Code of the Brethren set down by the pirates Morgan and Bartholomew, you have to take me to your captain.”

“I know the Code.”

“If an adversary demands parley, you can do them no harm until the parley is complete.”

―Elizabeth Swann and Pintel[src]

Parley is a way of organizing warfare and conflict. In this essay, Montaigne discusses trickery, deception, trusting your enemies, and the way victory is announced or discussed. I mentioned Erik Larson’s new book last week, and, in his interview with Fresh Air, he discusses these topics. One area that I thought was interesting was the role of honor in the South and its effect on the conflict with Fort Sumter: 

DAVIES: Yeah. And what’s interesting is that throughout all this, you know, this death-dealing preparation, there was a code of honor that they used in dealing with each other. And the Confederates would sometimes send a boat to speak to Major Anderson, the Union commander in Fort Sumter, to deal with one issue or another. And – I find this remarkable – the Confederates continued to give him mail service. He could write confidential messages to Washington, which would be picked up by the Confederates and then sent to Washington undisturbed, at least until the end, right? This is kind of remarkable.

LARSON: Yeah. Well, mail sort of sacrosanct, you know? Chivalry honors said you do not open mail – right? – which was the case until this one point in the saga that I found absolutely charming. And that is when things are really starting to devolve, and the Southerners decide, OK, we’re going to suspend mail, and we’re going to actually take this mail and bring it over to the headquarters – the Confederate headquarters of the governor of South Carolina there in Charleston, and they’re going to read this mail.

And there are three guys there. There’s the governor. One guy is Beauregard. And one guy is a former federal judge. And they’re sitting there, and nobody wants to open this thing. And so it first goes to – I believe this is the order. It first goes to the federal judge, and he’s like, you know, I’ve spent my career putting people in jail for this, so I can’t do it. Then it goes to Beauregard. He’s like, I can’t do it. And then it goes to the governor, and he ends up having to open this thing, and they find lots of really, really terrific intelligence about what’s going on at Fort Sumter.

That Intention is judge of our actions

“If I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said.” 

In this essay, Montaigne continues the themes that he’s been exploring in the essay we’ve discussed previously regarding mortality and meaning. In particular, he focuses on the way we try to extend our will beyond the grave, most typically in the form of retribution. As he’s wont to do in these essays, the subject of the anecdotes are royalty, which in my mind makes them a little reflective of the general population, but much more exciting in terms of their content. 

I found this great little article about how wills can be used to exact revenge. Here’s one story from the article: 

Michigan lumber tycoon and owner of a pun-worthy name, Wellington Burt died in 1919 with a hefty fortune under his belt (or should we say, tucked into his Wellington Burts?). A multimillionaire philanthropist in life, Burt was expected to make his family and his town very wealthy indeed upon his death.

But it wasn’t to be: reputedly smarting from a nasty family spat, Burt instead left the bulk of his fortune in a trust fund, not to be opened until 21 years after the death of his last grandchild. 

As the years went by, Burt’s six children, seven grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren have all died without seeing a penny. Meanwhile, the trust fund has grown to an estimated $100m. Relatives who finally inherited it in 2011 described it as a “legacy of bitterness,” having watched family members pass away still fruitlessly hoping to claim that fortune.

One of the points that Montaigne makes is that those who plot revenge after death risk tarnishing their legacy. This seems like the perfect instant of that, but I don’t think the dead worry about their legacy all that much either…

Of Idleness

In this essay, Montaigne expounds and waffles over the meaning and challenge of idleness. For Montaigne, idleness leads primarily to disorder and getting lost in imagination, which he apparently views as a negative activity. Later in the essay, Montaigne discusses the temptation of letting one’s mind wander in idleness, and then concludes by discussing one remedy for an idle mind: writing down one’s thoughts. 

I’ve read many defenses of idleness, including the recent book In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman. Betrand Russell’s famous essay also comes to mind here: 

The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich for thousands of years to preach the dignity of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce on the earth’s surface. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to the actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say, “I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.” I have never heard working men say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, as a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure hours that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.

Of Liars 

In this essay, Montaigne reflects on lying and liars using a number of lenses and prompts. Lying, for Montaigne, is a serious concern, believing something to the effect of man is his word. Children need to be severely disciplined out of lying. He also distinguishes between a lie and lying, viewing the former as an unfortunate and perhaps uncharacteristic mistake and the latter, using the gerund sense of the word, being a deliberate activity. Unusually, this essay contains few examples and much more exposition, indicating that Montaigne perhaps had both stronger and clearer personal feelings about the matter. 

If you haven’t read it, I greatly enjoyed Sam Harris’s book Lying, which explores these topics in a comprehensive and detailed manner that I think the topic deserves: 

A few years ago, we were reading a novel in one of my classes that had themes of lying, and I remember watching this TED-Ed video that provoked great discussion: 

The language of lying — Noah Zandan

Of Prompt or Slow Speech 

In this essay, Montaigne explores the different ways that individuals speak: some slowly with lots of preparation and some quickly with little to none. Seeing virtue in both, Montaigne identifies slow speaking as the provenance of the preaching profession and fast speech as the attribute best serving someone in the legal profession. He also devalues the role of intent in speech, pointing to accidents induced by environmental circumstances playing a large role in his communication. 

This essay reminds me of the book by Daniel Kahneman, who sadly passed away this year, called Thinking Fast and Slow, which explores some of the biases and fallacies humans engage in when they make snap judgements and quick decisions. Montaigne does not seem too concerned about these biases; he would probably respond by saying that’s what makes us humans.