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Apology for Raymond Sebond
Under the pretense of defending an obscure treatise by a Catalan theologian, Sebond, Montaigne attacks the philosophers who attempt rational explanations of the universe and argues for a skeptical Christianity based squarely on faith rather than reason. The result is the Apology for Raymond Sebond, a classic of Counter-Reformation thought and a masterpiece of Renaissance literature.This new translation by Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene achieves both accuracy and fluency, conveying at once the nuances of Montaigne’s arguments and his distinctive literary style.
164 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1580
About the author
Michel de Montaigne
1,840 books1,626 followersMichel Eyquem de Montaigne (1532-1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to René Descartes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Stephan Zweig, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a conservative and earnest Catholic but, as a result of his anti-dogmatic cast of mind, he is considered the father, alongside his contemporary and intimate friend Étienne de La Boétie, of the "anti-conformist" tradition in French literature.
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman then as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sais-je?" ("What do I know?").
Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary nonfiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman then as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sais-je?" ("What do I know?").
Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary nonfiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.
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January 23, 2024
After his father died in 1568, Michel de Montaigne wrote “A Defence of Raymond Sebond.” His father asked Montaigne to translate Sebond’s Theologia Naturalis from Latin to French and there must have been a big spark to get behind an essay of more than two-hundred pages.
Raymond Sebond (1385-1436) was a Catalan scholar who wrote his manuscript on “natural theology” but it was not published until 1484. Written in Latin mixed with Catalan words and not following classic Latin structure, it made it interesting for Montaigne to translate.
Natural theology pushes the idea that the book of nature and the Bible are not separate ideas but both “divine revelations.” (Wikipedia) Of course by writing this meant that Sebond’s book would not be looked upon favourably by the church. In 1595 Theologia Naturalis was put on the prohibited book list.
Montaigne lived in a turbulent 16th century when France was rocked by several religious wars between the a Catholics in power and the Huguenots. The Protestant Huguenots were supported by Henry of Navarre, who was married to Marguerite de Valois, sister to three French Catholic kings. Henry would later become the next French king. Montaigne, a Catholic had to tread lightly around this subject matter. Montaigne even makes a poetic address to Marguerite, quoting Martial, “Faire l’amour ou la guerre, dit-elle. Ah!” Is this a way of smoothing his path forward?
It became an essay on belief that questions the human condition, in particular philosophical views. For Montaigne, it was good to believe but when belief becomes dogma, no matter what side you are on, then problems arrive. What is truth? The soul? The senses? How do they help or hinder? These questions lie at the heart of his essay.
Montaigne was an animal lover, seeing animals in a different light than his peers of the day. Humans may appear to rule the world but are we better than the animal world? His most memorable line is, “when I am playing with my cat, how do I know whether my cat is actually playing with me?” (1)
Montaigne was born into high class. His father (and later Michel) owned a an estate, complete with a villa and a tower where he wrote and maintained a library. Montaigne was also the mayor of Bordeaux. You can say he had a privileged life and yet he states, “I have seen in my time, hundreds of artisans and labourers who are more wise and more happy than university rectors, and so I would prefer to be like them.” (2)
Humans are prone to desire, arrogance and ambition. This can bring out the worst in them and that causes problems, and thus making the animal world appear better at times. “Our language, it’s weakness and faults, like all the others and the questions of languages are the origin of so many troubles in the world.” (3)
One can’t argue with this. Montaigne was a lover of the ancient world, being well versed in the Greek and Latin writers. There are no shortages of quotes and he knows his philosophers, especially Socrates (another humble man). Yes he finds flaws with so many of them and comes closest to Pyrrho and Timon who developed Pyrrhonism in the fourth century BCE. Here Montaigne grabs the concept of skepticism. It’s better to understand something but never fully accept anything as dogmatic truth. The bottom line is that it’s okay to question things.
Which comes back to our cat analogy. How do we know we are being played? We read something and our brain says, yes I believe it, but how true is this, what am I becoming? Is this the right path for me? As he maintains, “human nature is always in a half path between being born and death” (4) and everything is in a “state of flux and a perpetual state of movement.” (5) No one knows what their life will be or how things will turn out? Die young or live a long life, be poor, or be rich, or even to die violently? So much is unknown.
Montaigne never stops defending the Catholic Church. He openly, perhaps smartly, shows his religion. He attacks atheists claiming that they all, when faced with death, change their tune. Although the essay is in defence of a specific religious writing, in some ways it transcends this. What appears certain to Montaigne is that one needs to have faith, be humble, be open minded, and yet be wary and remember to question things, especially when it looks to good to be true. Remember the Tuscan proverb:
Chi troppo s'assottiglia, si scavezza.
Who makes himself too wise, becomes a fool.
Not too bad for a sixteenth century view.
A big thanks to my friends in the GR Montaigne Discussion Group with their invaluable insights.
(1) Quand je joue avec ma chatte, qui sait si je ne suis pas son passe-temps plutôt qu’elle n’est le mien?
(2) J’ai vu en mon temps cent artisans et cent laboureurs plus sages et plus heureux que des recteurs de l’université, et c’est à eux que je préférerais ressembler.
(3) Notre langage a ses faiblesses et ses défauts, comme tout le reste, et les questions de langage sont à l’origine de la plupart des troubles qui agitent le monde.
(4) la nature humaine est toujours à mi-chemin entre la naissance et la mort, et ne peut donner d’elle-même qu’une apparence obscure et voilée, une idée faible et incertaine.
(5) toutes les choses sont un flux, une mouvance, une variation perpétuelle
Raymond Sebond (1385-1436) was a Catalan scholar who wrote his manuscript on “natural theology” but it was not published until 1484. Written in Latin mixed with Catalan words and not following classic Latin structure, it made it interesting for Montaigne to translate.
Natural theology pushes the idea that the book of nature and the Bible are not separate ideas but both “divine revelations.” (Wikipedia) Of course by writing this meant that Sebond’s book would not be looked upon favourably by the church. In 1595 Theologia Naturalis was put on the prohibited book list.
Montaigne lived in a turbulent 16th century when France was rocked by several religious wars between the a Catholics in power and the Huguenots. The Protestant Huguenots were supported by Henry of Navarre, who was married to Marguerite de Valois, sister to three French Catholic kings. Henry would later become the next French king. Montaigne, a Catholic had to tread lightly around this subject matter. Montaigne even makes a poetic address to Marguerite, quoting Martial, “Faire l’amour ou la guerre, dit-elle. Ah!” Is this a way of smoothing his path forward?
It became an essay on belief that questions the human condition, in particular philosophical views. For Montaigne, it was good to believe but when belief becomes dogma, no matter what side you are on, then problems arrive. What is truth? The soul? The senses? How do they help or hinder? These questions lie at the heart of his essay.
Montaigne was an animal lover, seeing animals in a different light than his peers of the day. Humans may appear to rule the world but are we better than the animal world? His most memorable line is, “when I am playing with my cat, how do I know whether my cat is actually playing with me?” (1)
Montaigne was born into high class. His father (and later Michel) owned a an estate, complete with a villa and a tower where he wrote and maintained a library. Montaigne was also the mayor of Bordeaux. You can say he had a privileged life and yet he states, “I have seen in my time, hundreds of artisans and labourers who are more wise and more happy than university rectors, and so I would prefer to be like them.” (2)
Humans are prone to desire, arrogance and ambition. This can bring out the worst in them and that causes problems, and thus making the animal world appear better at times. “Our language, it’s weakness and faults, like all the others and the questions of languages are the origin of so many troubles in the world.” (3)
One can’t argue with this. Montaigne was a lover of the ancient world, being well versed in the Greek and Latin writers. There are no shortages of quotes and he knows his philosophers, especially Socrates (another humble man). Yes he finds flaws with so many of them and comes closest to Pyrrho and Timon who developed Pyrrhonism in the fourth century BCE. Here Montaigne grabs the concept of skepticism. It’s better to understand something but never fully accept anything as dogmatic truth. The bottom line is that it’s okay to question things.
Which comes back to our cat analogy. How do we know we are being played? We read something and our brain says, yes I believe it, but how true is this, what am I becoming? Is this the right path for me? As he maintains, “human nature is always in a half path between being born and death” (4) and everything is in a “state of flux and a perpetual state of movement.” (5) No one knows what their life will be or how things will turn out? Die young or live a long life, be poor, or be rich, or even to die violently? So much is unknown.
Montaigne never stops defending the Catholic Church. He openly, perhaps smartly, shows his religion. He attacks atheists claiming that they all, when faced with death, change their tune. Although the essay is in defence of a specific religious writing, in some ways it transcends this. What appears certain to Montaigne is that one needs to have faith, be humble, be open minded, and yet be wary and remember to question things, especially when it looks to good to be true. Remember the Tuscan proverb:
Chi troppo s'assottiglia, si scavezza.
Who makes himself too wise, becomes a fool.
Not too bad for a sixteenth century view.
A big thanks to my friends in the GR Montaigne Discussion Group with their invaluable insights.
(1) Quand je joue avec ma chatte, qui sait si je ne suis pas son passe-temps plutôt qu’elle n’est le mien?
(2) J’ai vu en mon temps cent artisans et cent laboureurs plus sages et plus heureux que des recteurs de l’université, et c’est à eux que je préférerais ressembler.
(3) Notre langage a ses faiblesses et ses défauts, comme tout le reste, et les questions de langage sont à l’origine de la plupart des troubles qui agitent le monde.
(4) la nature humaine est toujours à mi-chemin entre la naissance et la mort, et ne peut donner d’elle-même qu’une apparence obscure et voilée, une idée faible et incertaine.
(5) toutes les choses sont un flux, une mouvance, une variation perpétuelle
September 17, 2011
An Apology for Raymond Sebond has to be one of the defining texts of pre-modernism, or perhaps post-modernism. Being written several decades before such great writers and thinkers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and other such deconstructive, perspective and phenomena based writers, Montaigne flirts with ideas and notions that are dominate in today’s thinking. In fact, Montaigne writes with such clarity and insight that his work should actually be read before taking on other more developed, although more convoluted, writers and thinkers.
Although at times he over uses examples, as there are pages upon pages of examples of animals displaying human qualities, when a few examples would have been enough to put the point across, and that like Nietzsche his prose can at times be deceptively simple. Montaigne in the Apology for … defends the religious point of view expressed by Sebond, ie that religion, and for Montagine this extends to life, some things are better left to faith, when confronted with the paradoxes of reason. Montaigne’s use of Pyrrhonnic argument within the book to expose the limits and problems within reason and logic, are used against philosophy, some theology and Man’s arrogance in the face of Nature and the Universe. His deceptive prose can lead the reader to pose this same Pyrrhonnic attitude to the religion he, Montaigne and Sebond takes on faith. Rather than being a criticism of Montaigne, I’d rather guess that this is his underlying attack on religion, his own religion. This being the attitude Pyrrho adopted in the face of living life with a ubiquitous agnosticism, to adopt the customs (ie religion) of your culture without ever really being enslaved by them.
Montaigne attitude towards existence is a very contemporary attitude: his attitude towards science can be read as similar to Kuhn’s ideas about scientific paradigm shifts, his thoughts on judgements always being permeated by moods and dispositions is very Heideggerian, his play with language a simple comment on post-structuralism and literary theory, his return to the phenomena within the body reminiscent of Merleau-Ponty, etc. It isn’t surprising to find out that Montaigne’s though has permeated many a great thinkers of today, his essays being a steady source for reflection from Nietzsche to Wittgenstein.
All in all, of the works of Montaigne I have read this is the finest, if not one of the finest essays I have read to date (except for the 30 pages on animal’s being quite clever, noble, emotive, etc, as most of us do accept already that we are basically intelligent apes with digital watches).
Although at times he over uses examples, as there are pages upon pages of examples of animals displaying human qualities, when a few examples would have been enough to put the point across, and that like Nietzsche his prose can at times be deceptively simple. Montaigne in the Apology for … defends the religious point of view expressed by Sebond, ie that religion, and for Montagine this extends to life, some things are better left to faith, when confronted with the paradoxes of reason. Montaigne’s use of Pyrrhonnic argument within the book to expose the limits and problems within reason and logic, are used against philosophy, some theology and Man’s arrogance in the face of Nature and the Universe. His deceptive prose can lead the reader to pose this same Pyrrhonnic attitude to the religion he, Montaigne and Sebond takes on faith. Rather than being a criticism of Montaigne, I’d rather guess that this is his underlying attack on religion, his own religion. This being the attitude Pyrrho adopted in the face of living life with a ubiquitous agnosticism, to adopt the customs (ie religion) of your culture without ever really being enslaved by them.
Montaigne attitude towards existence is a very contemporary attitude: his attitude towards science can be read as similar to Kuhn’s ideas about scientific paradigm shifts, his thoughts on judgements always being permeated by moods and dispositions is very Heideggerian, his play with language a simple comment on post-structuralism and literary theory, his return to the phenomena within the body reminiscent of Merleau-Ponty, etc. It isn’t surprising to find out that Montaigne’s though has permeated many a great thinkers of today, his essays being a steady source for reflection from Nietzsche to Wittgenstein.
All in all, of the works of Montaigne I have read this is the finest, if not one of the finest essays I have read to date (except for the 30 pages on animal’s being quite clever, noble, emotive, etc, as most of us do accept already that we are basically intelligent apes with digital watches).
June 18, 2024
This is one of the essays that is usually included in "collections of essays by Montaigne." It is by far the longest essay of his and is sometimes published separately as is the case for this edition. It deserves to be considered its own book since it consists of 190 pages of essay text. The title indicates that Montaigne's intent in writing this essay is to defend a book written by Raymond Sebond. (You can read about Sebond and his book at this link.)
Early in this essay Montaigne indicates that there are two criticisms of Sebond’s book which he will address. The first objection is that Sebond should not have tried to combine Christian faith with human reason. Montaigne responds with several dozen paragraphs that perhaps can be construed to be a defense of Sebond, but I didn’t think his narrative addressed the question very directly. Many of Montaigne’s comments at this location consists of descriptions of bad behavior and conditions found in Christian communities that are inconsistent with Christian principles.
Then after about ten pages of text Montaigne brings up the second objection that critics have raised against Sebond—“that his arguments are weak and unfit to prove what he proposes.” A couple paragraphs later Montaigne states the following:
Montaigne discusses skepticism, faith, revelation, philosophy, and the limits of human knowledge and reason. He is critical of dogmatism in both religious and secular circles. He even includes a section in which he describes reports of intelligent behavior on the part of animals. The point of addressing animal behavior was to cast doubt of the claim of exceptionalism on the part of humans.
Montaigne’s original text—including this separate edition of this essay—did not include heading titles. Thankfully, I had access to an edition where the translator has divided this essay into sections with titles headings to help orient the reader regarding changes in topics addressed ( The Complete Essays of Montaigne , Donald Frame-translator). I have copied those headings below which I think can serve as a summary of material included in this essay.
_____________________________
Below are some post-script comments and an excerpt:
In the above review I said, "Beyond this point Sebond’s name and his book are not mentioned again in this essay." Well, a computer word search has revealed that Sebond's name is mentioned again one more time under the section title "Warning to the princess." I've decided to admit to this fact here rather than change the wording in my review since I believe that, except for this one mention of Sebond's name, Montaigne shows few signs of awareness of the initial purpose of this essay.
In my review I accused Montaigne of getting lost in his writing. The following excerpt from the essay caught my attention because in it he sort of admits to this very thing:
Early in this essay Montaigne indicates that there are two criticisms of Sebond’s book which he will address. The first objection is that Sebond should not have tried to combine Christian faith with human reason. Montaigne responds with several dozen paragraphs that perhaps can be construed to be a defense of Sebond, but I didn’t think his narrative addressed the question very directly. Many of Montaigne’s comments at this location consists of descriptions of bad behavior and conditions found in Christian communities that are inconsistent with Christian principles.
Then after about ten pages of text Montaigne brings up the second objection that critics have raised against Sebond—“that his arguments are weak and unfit to prove what he proposes.” A couple paragraphs later Montaigne states the following:
Let us see then if man has within his power other reasons more powerful than those of Sebond, or indeed if it is in him to arrive at any certainty by argument and reason.Montaigne spends the rest of the essay—approximately 180 pages—responding to the above challenge exploring what seemed to me to be every conceivable aspect of religion and philosophy with frequent quotations from Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, Biblical scriptures, and Christian apologists. Beyond this point Sebond’s name and his book are not mentioned again in this essay. It appears to me that from this point on Montaigne’s writing has become lost in his thoughts about philosophy and religion and he has forgotten the essay's title and the purposed goal stated at its beginning.
Montaigne discusses skepticism, faith, revelation, philosophy, and the limits of human knowledge and reason. He is critical of dogmatism in both religious and secular circles. He even includes a section in which he describes reports of intelligent behavior on the part of animals. The point of addressing animal behavior was to cast doubt of the claim of exceptionalism on the part of humans.
Montaigne’s original text—including this separate edition of this essay—did not include heading titles. Thankfully, I had access to an edition where the translator has divided this essay into sections with titles headings to help orient the reader regarding changes in topics addressed ( The Complete Essays of Montaigne , Donald Frame-translator). I have copied those headings below which I think can serve as a summary of material included in this essay.
Sebond and his bookI've not read Sebond but it's my understand that he was trying to combine faith and rational reasoning, and it seems to me that Montaigne has not come up with "reasons more powerful than those of Sebond." Near the end of this essay Montaigne says the following:
First objection to Sebond: Defense
First objection to Sebond: Conclusion
Second objection to Sebond: The objectors
Second objection to Sebond: Defense
Counterattack: The vanity of man and of man's .................... knowledge without God
Man is no better than the animals
Man's knowledge cannot make him happy
Man's knowledge cannot make him good
Man has no knowledge
Warning to the princess
Man can have no knowledge
The senses are inadequate
Changing man cannot know changing things
Changing man cannot know unchanging God
Conclusion: Man is nothing without God
Nor can man raise himself above himself and humanity; for he can see only with his own eyes, and seize only with his own grasp.I interpret the above to be an admission that religious faith and rational reasoning are not compatible.
_____________________________
Below are some post-script comments and an excerpt:
In the above review I said, "Beyond this point Sebond’s name and his book are not mentioned again in this essay." Well, a computer word search has revealed that Sebond's name is mentioned again one more time under the section title "Warning to the princess." I've decided to admit to this fact here rather than change the wording in my review since I believe that, except for this one mention of Sebond's name, Montaigne shows few signs of awareness of the initial purpose of this essay.
In my review I accused Montaigne of getting lost in his writing. The following excerpt from the essay caught my attention because in it he sort of admits to this very thing:
Even in my own writings I do not always find again the sense of my first thought; I do not know what I meant to say, and often I get burned by correcting and putting in a new meaning, because I have lost the first one, which was better. I do nothing but come and go. My judgment does not always go forward; it floats, it strays, ...The above quote and also the ones shown in my review are from Frame's translation. I am unable to provide page numbers for my excerpts because I am using an ebook format with no page numbers.
August 25, 2020
Apologie de Raymond Sebond anticipates Pascal's Pensées, particularly the one referred to as "Concerning The Disproportion of Man" (La Disproportion de l'homme). Montaigne's essay is a meditation on human fallibility and inconstancy. It's about the limitations that prevent us from knowing the truth by Reason or our own senses (which is the only way we experience the world). We are also not so very different from other animals. Animal-lovers will appreciate the respect he shows toward the smallest of animals. This is a brilliant essay, just don't expect anything about Raymond Sebond.
Read
March 9, 2015Don't shut the door on a complicated book, cuz it might be simple as much as it seems complicated.
December 2, 2021
De “Apologie voor Raymond Sebond” is een essay van Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), uit het gelijknamige boek “Essays”, uiteraard. Boek II, hoofdstuk 12 om precies te zijn. Het is het langste essay dat hij schreef. Enkele van zijn essays zijn amper een bladzijde lang, de meesten ergens tussen de vijf en de vijftig en gaan over van alles en nog wat: over wreedheid, over vriendschap, over paarden, over verzen van Vergilius, … Alleen de inhoudstafel lezen is al intrigerend. Maar de “apologie” is dus 202 bladzijden lang, kleine druk. Een boek op zichzelf.
Raymundo de Sabondi stierf ongeveer een eeuw voor de geboorte van Montaigne. Hij was een Catalaanse theoloog die een boek schreef in koeterlatijn dat in het bezit was van zijn vader, die Montaigne kort voor zijn dood had gevraagd om het naar het Frans te vertalen. Wat Montaigne ook deed.
Montaigne schrijft daarbovenop ook dit essay “ter verdediging” van deze Raymond. Volgens Montaigne is de “Theologia naturalis, sive liber creaturarum”, zoals het werk heet, een “best of” van de inzichten van Thomas van Aquino (1225-1274), de nog oudere theoloog. Met voorop de gedachte dat God zich niet alleen in de Heilige Schrift openbaart, maar ook in zijn Schepping. In de natuur of in de realiteit dus. Daaruit volgt dan dat het bestuderen en bevragen van het waarneembare een legitieme en eerbare bezigheid is. Het is nu moeilijk te begrijpen, maar Katholieke fundamentalisten vonden toen helemaal niet dat het aan de mens of aan het menselijke verstand toekwam om de glorie van God te verklaren en te duiden. Er was Openbaring, door middel van de Bijbel, die alles schonk wat men diende te weten. Met het eigen verstand de realiteit te lijf gaan was hoogmoed. En vaak ook ketterij. Een hellend vlak naar het atheïsme.
We mogen niet vergeten dat in 1517 Luther zijn fameuze brief schreef die gezien wordt als de start van het Protestantisme. De eeuw van Montaigne werd getekend door godsdienstoorlogen waar schrijven over dergelijke kwesties niet geheel zonder gevaar was. Men kan het wat vergelijken met de fanatici die vandaag de Koran als enige en ultieme bron van de waarheid zien. Het hanteren van de menselijke Rede als instrument van de waarheid zal pas later in de Verlichting tot volle wasdom komen. Sapere Aude!
Maar voor Montaigne is het denken vooralsnog een bijkomend instrument die de Goddelijke Openbaring kan ondersteunen, door die vrijelijk in te zetten om associërend en citerend zijn wonderlijke meanderende gedachtestroom in woorden om te zetten. En blijkbaar zag hij Raymond als een soort “brother in arms”, denk ik.
Niet dat Raymond veel in het essay voorkomt, eigenlijk helemaal niet buiten de eerste bladzijden. In de plaats krijgen we een uitgebreide toepassing van het vrije nadenken als instrument. Montaigne heeft het over epistemologische kwesties (hoe kunnen we zeker zijn van wat we weten?) en de verschillende Griekse filosofische scholen over hoe we de werkelijkheid kunnen beschrijven, hij heeft het over de aard en het wezen van de Mens. Daarbij maakt hij heel uitgebreid gebruik van vergelijkingen met het gedrag van dieren en maakt hij observaties die Darwin later goed zouden uitkomen. Niet dat Montaigne het over biologische verwantschap heeft, dat is ondenkbaar vooralsnog.
Montaigne blijft helemaal binnen de Christelijke orthodoxie en de Openbaring blijft de ultieme waarheid, maar zolang we daarvan vertrekken en daar ook aankomen, kunnen we onderweg met alles spelen waar we zin in hebben. Raymond mag dat doen van Montaigne. En ondertussen doet hij het zelf ook. Hij twijfelt, stelt veel in vraag, een voorafspiegeling van de methodische twijfel van Descartes.
Wie echt op een beetje een gestructureerde manier wil weten wat de historische of filosofische relevantie van Montaigne is, leest natuurlijk beter een goed boek over Montaigne. Bijvoorbeeld van Susan Bakewell of -bij ons- van Alexander Roose. Montaigne zelf lezen, biedt een ander plezier: het directe contact met een virtuoos denkende, erudiete en ook wel sympathieke en erg open mens uit de zestiende eeuw. De lezer ziet hem kronkelen van deze gedachte naar de tegenovergestelde, ziet hem soms een synthese maken of de tegenstelling onbeslecht laten.
Men moet wel appetijt hebben voor conceptuele discussie en vrij veel abstractie. Als Montaigne bijvoorbeeld over lust praat zal hij wel kort humoristisch vertellen wat zijn eigen ervaring er mee is (spijtig dat het beter was toen hij nog jonger was), maar hij zal het toch vooral hebben over hoe het thema bij de Ouden (Grieken en Romeinen) aan bod kwam, met talloze citaten. En hij probeert dan op die basis te formuleren wat zoal de mogelijkheden zijn om als mens (of als man eigenlijk; Montaigne was niet woke) met lust om te gaan. En dan doet u er verder uw goesting mee natuurlijk. Want hij probeert maar wat, het is een essay.
Ik lees al 15 jaar in het verzameld werk van Montaigne, heel onregelmatig, met lange tussenpauzen en kris kras. Maar in 2020 ben ik begonnen met de essays systematisch van begin tot einde te lezen. Ik ben nu ongeveer halfweg. De “Apologie voor Raymond Sebond” zou ik aanraden om eens te proeven van de schriftuur van Montaigne: een soort ketting van ideeën, citaten en “bon mots”, die zelf niet zelden tot citaten uitgroeiden. Het is een inspanning, vaak vind ik hem moeilijk om volgen en nooit is het mij helemaal duidelijk wat hij nu precies wil zeggen. Maar puntige gedachten, om op door te kauwen,zijn er legio, er is elke keer wel wat te vinden. Er is niet voor niets al een hele bibliotheek volgeschreven over Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. Ook Stefan Zweig bijvoorbeeld schreef een kleine biografie.
De brugfunctie die hij vervult is dubbel: enerzijds poogt hij de klassieke filosofen te vertalen naar zijn eigen tijd, anderzijds is hij nog steeds een stem, die levensecht klinkt en die duidelijk maakt dat fundamenteel de ervaring van het mens zijn van toen toch nog wel heel erg gelijk is aan ook die van nu. Door Montaigne lijkt Plato een heel stuk dichterbij.
Ik ben ook al op bedevaart geweest naar Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne waar de toren waarin hij zich terugtrok om te denken en te schrijven nog altijd kan bezocht worden. Bovenaan in de toren op de houten structuren van het dak staan nog de Latijnse en Griekse spreuken en citaten die hem het meest inspireerden. Hij liet die daar aanbrengen om ze bij het ijsberen nog eens te kunnen lezen. Men kan er ook wijn kopen: een Bergerac, Chateau Michel de Montaigne, wat anders? Wie wat over Montaigne wil keuvelen mag hem komen proeven.
December 13, 2014
I heard this was a classic of skeptical philosophy, but I wasn't impressed by it. There was nothing really new in the Apology for a person interested in skepticism. Montaigne frequently draws on Sextus Empiricus, but better to just read Sextus directly. Why settle for whiskey and water, when you can drink the straight shot? Redeeming qualities: Montaigne's pleasant prose style, and lots of fine classical quotations, mostly from Plutarch and Cicero. Apparently the Apology played some role in inspiring Pascal to write the Pensées, but the Pensées is deeper and more penetrating; definitely more worthwhile for a modern reader despite its defective Christian apologetics. Also, whatever happened to poor Raymond Sebond? The Apology says basically nothing about him!
March 7, 2017
Aunque es posible que no haya entendido todo la profundidad del texto, me atrevo a decir que podría decir lo mismo en 100 páginas menos.
August 3, 2023
Raymond Sebond was a 15th century scholar and theologian whose Natural Theology (1484) made the case that revelation from God comes not only thru the Bible but also thru the natural world. The Catholic Church placed Natural Theology on its Index of forbidden books because it discounted the Church’s role in revelation. Eighty-five years later Montaigne translated Natural Theology into French as a counter to Luther, his Ninety-Five Theses (1517), and Protestantism. An Apology for Raymond Sebond (1576) is ostensibly a defense of Sebond’s views and a rebuttal of Luther, but it morphs into broader reflections on religion, on knowledge, and humankind. In the tradition of Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, Montaigne reflects on his own experiences, observations, and judgments though the lenses of Stoicism, Skepticism, and in his case, the Renaissance.
Montaigne lived during, and reflects, the artistic and intellectual ferment of the Renaissance (his life overlapped Michelangelo’s and Galileo’s). He observed and studied not the physical world, but himself. He wrote, “I am myself the matter of my book.” His observations, reflections, and insights he called “Essais,” in English “Tries,” today called Personal Essays. This was a new literary form of which he was the first and is perhaps the foremost practitioner.
For many years I have been an admirer of Montaigne’s work and thought. Book length An Apology for Raymond Sebond is his longest essay. Who are we? What can we know? What is true, or more accurately, can anything be true? Can we help but do bad things? These are the kinds of profound questions Montaigne addresses with unblinking eyes and a frankness about himself that I find stunning. One needn’t begin Montaigne with the Apology; study several of his essays and be amazed how relevant his thought is today more than 400 years later.
Montaigne lived during, and reflects, the artistic and intellectual ferment of the Renaissance (his life overlapped Michelangelo’s and Galileo’s). He observed and studied not the physical world, but himself. He wrote, “I am myself the matter of my book.” His observations, reflections, and insights he called “Essais,” in English “Tries,” today called Personal Essays. This was a new literary form of which he was the first and is perhaps the foremost practitioner.
For many years I have been an admirer of Montaigne’s work and thought. Book length An Apology for Raymond Sebond is his longest essay. Who are we? What can we know? What is true, or more accurately, can anything be true? Can we help but do bad things? These are the kinds of profound questions Montaigne addresses with unblinking eyes and a frankness about himself that I find stunning. One needn’t begin Montaigne with the Apology; study several of his essays and be amazed how relevant his thought is today more than 400 years later.
July 21, 2026
Books like this one are why I am always looking for new authors, new works, new ideas, etc. Montaigne had the privilege of a 21st century class library while in the 15th century and he used it to good effect, not merely by reading the ancients (and ALL of them at that) but by serving as a bridge for those authors to reach out to the many great thinkers who would come after. And yet I think you'd be hard pressed to find an English teacher in America who understands how indebted their profession is to the format Montaigne practically invented.
What do I know? If our senses and powers reasons are so deeply flawed how are we to reach solid conclusions? (By the way you don't need modern psychology to make this observation; if anything we don't beat this drum enough in the "scientific" era) If our world was created by a God, what obligation could that God possibly have to us? From these premises, Montaigne pens the final word on theology, epistemology and ethics, 200+ years before the "enlightenment".
Hella Mediterranean.
What do I know? If our senses and powers reasons are so deeply flawed how are we to reach solid conclusions? (By the way you don't need modern psychology to make this observation; if anything we don't beat this drum enough in the "scientific" era) If our world was created by a God, what obligation could that God possibly have to us? From these premises, Montaigne pens the final word on theology, epistemology and ethics, 200+ years before the "enlightenment".
Hella Mediterranean.
September 26, 2026
Is this perhaps the greatest essay ever written?
Nominally a review of Raymond Sebond's book, in true Montaigne fashion, Montaigne very quickly switches off the topic to bring mankind down from the pedestal that we have constructed, forgetting that the pedestal is not part of the statue. Bringing us down from our arrogant position by showing us that we are no superior to any of the other animals, our minds are too small to know truth (if such a thing exists), we are constantly shifting souls, often shifting irrationally. Unlike his other essays, this one reaches a conclusion, that humans can’t understand anything for real without God (who we also can’t understand, and Montaigne, under the eye of the Renaissance Catholic Church censors, straddles the line that our version of God may be an artificial creation). It probably could have taken Montaigne 50 pages or less to say but as with any Montaigne essay, the journey to get there is full of enlightening detours.
Pyrrhonism skepticism is not read in our day and age but those few that read Montaigne can get a more up to date primer (even if it is 500 years old) on that school of philosophy here.
This essay is Montaigne's longest, at nearly 200 pages. It is a mini version of Montaigne's complete essays. You will find many common Montaigne themes here: attacks against mankind's arrogance, virtues of moderation and temperance, Socrates and Plutarch adulation, our inability to comprehend truth, empathy with animals, idealization of the common uneducated peasant, skepticism against every philosophical concept, Montaigne being upfront about himself, and the long unstructured train of thought. If one is hesitant about picking up the 1200+ complete essays, taking a 200-page bite out of it with this essay would be a good taste test. I will save any more thoughts for my write up on Montaigne's complete essays
----------------------------------
Quotes/Excerpts:
How can he, from the power of his own understanding, know the hidden motivations of animate creatures? What comparison between us and them leads him to conclude that they have the attributes of senseless brutes? When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?
we would be right to treat Nature as a very unjust stepmother.... We are, they say, the only animal abandoned naked on the naked earth; we are in bonds and fetters, having nothing to arm or cover ourselves with but the pelts of other creatures; Nature has clad all others with shells, pods, husks, hair, wool, , spikes, hide, down, feathers, scales, fleece or silk, according to the several necessities of their being; she has armed them with claws, teeth and horns for assault and defence; and, as is proper to them, has herself taught them to swim, to run, to fly or to sing. Man, on the other hand, without an apprenticeship, does not know how to walk, talk, eat or to do anything at all but wail:
I have gone into all this to emphasize similarities with things human, so bringing Man into conformity with the majority of creatures. We are neither above them nor below them. ‘Everything under the sky’ said the Wise Man, ‘runs according to like laws and fortune.”
Granted that, of all the animals, Man alone has freedom to think and such unruly ways of doing so that he can imagine things which are and things which are not, imagine his wishes, or the false and the true! but he has to pay a high price for this advantage — and he has little cause to boast about it, since it is the chief source of the woes which beset him: sin, sickness, irresolution, confusion and despair.
Referring to Animals: Should we pride ourself on our ability to capture them and make them work for us? But that is no more than the advantage we have over each other: our slaves are in the same condition.
Even the majority of free men and women, for very slight advantages, place themselves in the power of others....Have tyrants ever failed to find men sworn and devoted to them —.even though some require them to follow them in death as in life?Whole armies have been bound to their captains that way. The men who serve us do so more cheaply than our falcons, our horses or our hounds; and they are less carefully looked after— [C] what menial tasks will we not bow to for the convenience of those animals! The most abject slaves, it seems to me, will not willingly do for their masters what princes are proud to do for such creatures. When Diogenes saw his parents striving to purchase his freedom he exclaimed: “They must be fools: my Master looks after me and feeds me; he is my servant!’”! So too those who keep animals can be said to serve them, not be served by them.
that there is a greater difference between one man and another than between some men and some beasts.
The souls of Emperors and of cobblers are cast in the same mould. We consider the importance of the actions of Princes and their weight and then persuade ourselves that they are produced by causes equally weighty, equally important. In that we deceive ourselves. They are tossed to and for by the same principles as we are
We may note en passant that we are the only animals whose physical defects are offensive to our fellows; we are also the only ones to hide from others of our species when answering the calls of Nature.
To get back to the subject: we have been allotted inconstancy, hesitation, doubt, pain, superstition, worries about what will happen (even after we are dead), ambition, greed, jealousy, envy, unruly, insane and untameable appetites, war, lies, disloyalty, backbiting and curiosity. We take pride in our fair, discursive reason and our capacity to judge and to know, but we have bought them at a price which is strangely excessive if it includes those passions without number which prey upon us.
What good did their great erudition do for Varro and Aristotle? Did it free them from human ills? Did it relieve them of misfortunes such as a common porter? Could logic console them for the gout — and did they feel it any the less because they knew how that humour lodged in their joints? Did it help them to come to terms with death, knowing that whole tribes take delight in it? Did they not mind being cuckolded, since they knew that in some place or other men have wives in common? Not at all
Have we discovered that health and pleasure taste better if you know astrology or grammar — [Men who cannot read do not find it harder to get an erection, do they?]
The first temptation came to humankind from the opposite extreme: the Devil first poured his poison into our ears with promises about knowledge and understanding: ‘Eritis sicut dii, scientes bonum et malum’ [Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil]. [C] In Homer, when the Sirens wished to deceive Ulysses, draw him into their dangerous snares and so destroy him, they offered him the gift of knowledge.'
There is a plague on Man: his opinion that he knows something
It does seem true that Nature allotted us one thing only to console us for our pitiful, wretched condition: arrogance. Epictetus agrees, saying that Man has nothing properly his own except his opinions. For our portion we have been allotted wind and smoke.'
On Cicero: In practice, thousands of little women in their villages have lived lives more gentle, more equable, more constant than his.
ancient philosophical opinion that sovereign good lies in recognizing the weakness of our powers of judgement.
Is it not true that the soul can be most readily thrown into mania and driven mad by its own quickness, sharpness and nimbleness — in short by the qualities which constitute its strength? Does not the most subtle wisdom produce the most subtle madness? As great enmities are born of great friendships and fatal illnesses are born of radiant health, so too the most exquisite and delirious of manias are produced by the choicest and the most lively of the emotions which disturb the soul. It needs only a half turn of the peg to pass from one to the other.
Plato says that melancholics are the most teachable and the most sublime; yet none has a greater propensity towards madness.
But the wretchedness of our human condition means we have less to relish than to banish: the most extreme pleasures touch us less than the lightest of pains: We are far less aware of perfect health than of the slightest illness:
To be free from ill is the greatest good that Man can hope for.
The appetite which enraptures us when we lie with women merely aims at banishing the pain brought on by the frenzy of our inflamed desires; all it seeks is rest and repose, free from the fever of passion. The same applies to all other appetites.
Truly, anyone who could uproot all knowledge of pain would equally eradicate all knowledge of pleasure and finally destroy Man: [That ‘freedom from pain’ has a high price: cruelty in the soul, insensate dullness in the body]. For Man, ill can be good at times; it is not always right to flee pain, not always right to chase after pleasure
It greatly advances the honour of Ignorance that Learning has to throw us into her arms when powerless to stiffen our backs against the weight of our ills; she has to make terms, slipping the reins and giving us leave to seek refuge in the lap of Ignorance, finding under her protection a shelter from the blows and outrages of Fortune.
When Socrates was told that the god of Wisdom had called him wise, he was thunderstruck; he ransacked his mind and shook himself out but could find nothing to base this divine judgement upon. He knew other men who were as just, temperate, valiant and wise as he was: others he knew to be more eloquent, more handsome, more useful to their country. He finally concluded that, if he was different from others and wiser, it was only because he did not think he was; that his God thought any human who believed himself to be knowledgeable and wise was a singularly stupid animal; that his best teaching taught ignorance and his best wisdom was simplicity.!
I think Man will confess, if he speaks honestly, that all he has gained from so long a chase is knowledge of his own weakness.'** By long study we have confirmed and verified that ignorance does lie naturally within us. The truly wise are like ears of corn: they shoot up and up holding their heads proudly erect - so long as they are empty; but when, in their maturity, they are full of swelling grain, their foreheads droop down and they show humility. So, too, with men who have assayed everything, sounded everything; within those piles of knowledge and the profusion of so many diverse things, they have found nothing solid, nothing firm, only vanity. They then renounce arrogance and recognize their natural condition.'
Other people are prejudiced by the customs of their country, by the education given them by their parents or by chance encounter: normally, before the age of discretion, they are taken by storm and, without judgement or choice, accept this or that opinion of the Stoic or Epicurean sects. There they stay, mortgaged, enslaved, caught on a hook which they cannot get off - [C] ‘ad quamcumque disciplinam velut tempestate delati, ad eam tangquam ad saxum adhaerescunt’ [they cling to any old teaching, like sailors washed up on a rock]. But why should people like these not also be allowed their freedom, making up their own minds without bonds and slavery?
‘What ought I to choose?’ — ‘Anything you wish, so long as you choose something.’ A daft enough reply! Yet it seems to be the one reached by every kind of dogmatism which refuses us the right not to know what we do not know
They have sworn loyalty to the word énéym: ‘I am in suspense’; I will not budge.’ (also inscribed on Montaigne's library
Where morals are concerned, they conform to the common mould. They find it appropriate to yield to natural inclinations, to the thrust and constraints of their emotions, to established laws and customs and to the traditional arts.
No system discovered by Man has greater usefulness nor a greater appearance of truth [than Pyrrhonism] which shows us Man naked, empty, aware of his natural weakness, fit to accept outside help from on high
Socrates.... He says that the only thing he knew how to do was to make objections.
Man is indeed out of his mind. He cannot even create a fleshworm, yet creates gods by the dozen.
it is necessary (they said) that people should not know many things which are true and should believe many things which are false,... [since man only wants to find such truth as sets him free, it can be thought expedient for him to be deceived].?
it is for their present state that their whole immortality will receive its acknowledged rewards: each is entirely account- able for the life of a human being. But it would be an act of gross injustice to lop off the soul’s powers and resources, to strip her of all her weapons and then to take the very time when she lies weak and ill in prison — a time of repression and constraint — and to make that the basis for a judgement leading to endless, everlasting punishment; it would be unjust to limit consideration to so short a span, to a life that may have lasted a mere two hours or, at the very worst a hundred years — an instant in proportion to infinity ~ and then, from that momentary interlude, to order and establish, once and for all, the whole state of her future existence. To reward or punish on the basis of so short a life would be disproportionate and iniquitous.
From this evidence Man realizes that such truth as he does find out for himself is due to Fortune and to chance. Even when truth drops into his hands, Man has no means of seizing hold of it; his reason does not have power enough to establish any rights over it. Every single idea which results from our own reflections and our own faculties — whether it is true or false — is subject to dispute and uncertainty
To what degree of arrogance and insolence do we not carry our blindness and our brutish stupidity
And what can anyone understand who cannot understand himself? ‘ [As though one could measure anything and not know how to measure oneself]. Protagoras was really and truly having us on when he made Man the measure of all things — Man, who has never known even his own measurements. If Man cannot have it, then his dignity will not let any other creature have it: yet Man is so full of contradictions and his ideas are so constantly undermining each other that so favourable a proposition is simply laughable: it leads to the inevitable conclusion that both measure and the measurer are nothing.
Keep to the beaten track: it can hardly be good to be so subtle and so clever. Remember the Tuscan proverb, ‘Chi troppo s’assottiglia si scavezza’ [He who becomes too clever is lost]. [A] My advice to you is to cling to moderation and temperance, as much in your opinions and arguments as in your conduct, fleeing what is merely new or odd. All roads which wander from the norm displease me.
Our minds are dangerous tools, rash and prone to go astray: it is hard to reconcile them with order and moderation.
Fortune may shift us five hundred times, may treat our powers of belief like a pot to be endlessly emptied and filled with ever-differing opinions: nevertheless, the present one, the last one, is always sure and infallible!
We may have changed our opinions and beliefs in the past, yet we still maintain current opinions and beliefs are infallible
Our condition is subject to error: that ought, at very least, to lead us to be more moderate and restrained in making changes. We ought to admit that, no matter what we allow into our understanding, it often includes falsehoods which enter by means of the same tools which have often proved contradictory and misleading.
our soul’s weakness when faced with pain and suffering serves to nurture repentance and remorse within our conscience and to feel the chastisements with which God scourges us as well as the chastisements of political punishment. Compassion acts as a stimulus to clemency; prudent self-preservation and self-control are awakened by our fear; and how many fair actions are awakened by ambition? And how many by arrogance? In short, not one eminent or dashing virtue can exist without some strong, unruly emotion
What varied thoughts and reasons, what conflicting notions, are presented to us by our varied passions! What certainty can we find in something so changeable and unstable as the soul, subject by her condition the dominance of perturbations, and who never moves except under external constraint.
To conclude: there is no permanent existence either in our being or in that of objects. We ourselves, our faculty of judgement and all mortal things are flowing and rolling ceaselessly: nothing certain can be established about one from the other, since both judged and judging are ever shifting and changing.*
To prove that this is so: if we remained forever one and the same, how is it that we can delight in one thing now and later in another? How can we each be one if we love or hate contradictory things, first praising them, then condemning them? How can we have different emotions, no longer retaining the same sentiment within the same thought? For it is not likely that we can experience different reactions unless we ourselves have changed; but whoever suffers change is no longer the same one: he no longer is. For his being, as such, changes when his being one changes, as each personality ever succeeds another. And, consequently, it is of the nature of our senses to be misled and deceived. Because they do not know what being is, they take appears to be for it.
Nominally a review of Raymond Sebond's book, in true Montaigne fashion, Montaigne very quickly switches off the topic to bring mankind down from the pedestal that we have constructed, forgetting that the pedestal is not part of the statue. Bringing us down from our arrogant position by showing us that we are no superior to any of the other animals, our minds are too small to know truth (if such a thing exists), we are constantly shifting souls, often shifting irrationally. Unlike his other essays, this one reaches a conclusion, that humans can’t understand anything for real without God (who we also can’t understand, and Montaigne, under the eye of the Renaissance Catholic Church censors, straddles the line that our version of God may be an artificial creation). It probably could have taken Montaigne 50 pages or less to say but as with any Montaigne essay, the journey to get there is full of enlightening detours.
Pyrrhonism skepticism is not read in our day and age but those few that read Montaigne can get a more up to date primer (even if it is 500 years old) on that school of philosophy here.
This essay is Montaigne's longest, at nearly 200 pages. It is a mini version of Montaigne's complete essays. You will find many common Montaigne themes here: attacks against mankind's arrogance, virtues of moderation and temperance, Socrates and Plutarch adulation, our inability to comprehend truth, empathy with animals, idealization of the common uneducated peasant, skepticism against every philosophical concept, Montaigne being upfront about himself, and the long unstructured train of thought. If one is hesitant about picking up the 1200+ complete essays, taking a 200-page bite out of it with this essay would be a good taste test. I will save any more thoughts for my write up on Montaigne's complete essays
----------------------------------
Quotes/Excerpts:
How can he, from the power of his own understanding, know the hidden motivations of animate creatures? What comparison between us and them leads him to conclude that they have the attributes of senseless brutes? When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?
we would be right to treat Nature as a very unjust stepmother.... We are, they say, the only animal abandoned naked on the naked earth; we are in bonds and fetters, having nothing to arm or cover ourselves with but the pelts of other creatures; Nature has clad all others with shells, pods, husks, hair, wool, , spikes, hide, down, feathers, scales, fleece or silk, according to the several necessities of their being; she has armed them with claws, teeth and horns for assault and defence; and, as is proper to them, has herself taught them to swim, to run, to fly or to sing. Man, on the other hand, without an apprenticeship, does not know how to walk, talk, eat or to do anything at all but wail:
I have gone into all this to emphasize similarities with things human, so bringing Man into conformity with the majority of creatures. We are neither above them nor below them. ‘Everything under the sky’ said the Wise Man, ‘runs according to like laws and fortune.”
Granted that, of all the animals, Man alone has freedom to think and such unruly ways of doing so that he can imagine things which are and things which are not, imagine his wishes, or the false and the true! but he has to pay a high price for this advantage — and he has little cause to boast about it, since it is the chief source of the woes which beset him: sin, sickness, irresolution, confusion and despair.
Referring to Animals: Should we pride ourself on our ability to capture them and make them work for us? But that is no more than the advantage we have over each other: our slaves are in the same condition.
Even the majority of free men and women, for very slight advantages, place themselves in the power of others....Have tyrants ever failed to find men sworn and devoted to them —.even though some require them to follow them in death as in life?Whole armies have been bound to their captains that way. The men who serve us do so more cheaply than our falcons, our horses or our hounds; and they are less carefully looked after— [C] what menial tasks will we not bow to for the convenience of those animals! The most abject slaves, it seems to me, will not willingly do for their masters what princes are proud to do for such creatures. When Diogenes saw his parents striving to purchase his freedom he exclaimed: “They must be fools: my Master looks after me and feeds me; he is my servant!’”! So too those who keep animals can be said to serve them, not be served by them.
that there is a greater difference between one man and another than between some men and some beasts.
The souls of Emperors and of cobblers are cast in the same mould. We consider the importance of the actions of Princes and their weight and then persuade ourselves that they are produced by causes equally weighty, equally important. In that we deceive ourselves. They are tossed to and for by the same principles as we are
We may note en passant that we are the only animals whose physical defects are offensive to our fellows; we are also the only ones to hide from others of our species when answering the calls of Nature.
To get back to the subject: we have been allotted inconstancy, hesitation, doubt, pain, superstition, worries about what will happen (even after we are dead), ambition, greed, jealousy, envy, unruly, insane and untameable appetites, war, lies, disloyalty, backbiting and curiosity. We take pride in our fair, discursive reason and our capacity to judge and to know, but we have bought them at a price which is strangely excessive if it includes those passions without number which prey upon us.
What good did their great erudition do for Varro and Aristotle? Did it free them from human ills? Did it relieve them of misfortunes such as a common porter? Could logic console them for the gout — and did they feel it any the less because they knew how that humour lodged in their joints? Did it help them to come to terms with death, knowing that whole tribes take delight in it? Did they not mind being cuckolded, since they knew that in some place or other men have wives in common? Not at all
Have we discovered that health and pleasure taste better if you know astrology or grammar — [Men who cannot read do not find it harder to get an erection, do they?]
The first temptation came to humankind from the opposite extreme: the Devil first poured his poison into our ears with promises about knowledge and understanding: ‘Eritis sicut dii, scientes bonum et malum’ [Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil]. [C] In Homer, when the Sirens wished to deceive Ulysses, draw him into their dangerous snares and so destroy him, they offered him the gift of knowledge.'
There is a plague on Man: his opinion that he knows something
It does seem true that Nature allotted us one thing only to console us for our pitiful, wretched condition: arrogance. Epictetus agrees, saying that Man has nothing properly his own except his opinions. For our portion we have been allotted wind and smoke.'
On Cicero: In practice, thousands of little women in their villages have lived lives more gentle, more equable, more constant than his.
ancient philosophical opinion that sovereign good lies in recognizing the weakness of our powers of judgement.
Is it not true that the soul can be most readily thrown into mania and driven mad by its own quickness, sharpness and nimbleness — in short by the qualities which constitute its strength? Does not the most subtle wisdom produce the most subtle madness? As great enmities are born of great friendships and fatal illnesses are born of radiant health, so too the most exquisite and delirious of manias are produced by the choicest and the most lively of the emotions which disturb the soul. It needs only a half turn of the peg to pass from one to the other.
Plato says that melancholics are the most teachable and the most sublime; yet none has a greater propensity towards madness.
But the wretchedness of our human condition means we have less to relish than to banish: the most extreme pleasures touch us less than the lightest of pains: We are far less aware of perfect health than of the slightest illness:
To be free from ill is the greatest good that Man can hope for.
The appetite which enraptures us when we lie with women merely aims at banishing the pain brought on by the frenzy of our inflamed desires; all it seeks is rest and repose, free from the fever of passion. The same applies to all other appetites.
Truly, anyone who could uproot all knowledge of pain would equally eradicate all knowledge of pleasure and finally destroy Man: [That ‘freedom from pain’ has a high price: cruelty in the soul, insensate dullness in the body]. For Man, ill can be good at times; it is not always right to flee pain, not always right to chase after pleasure
It greatly advances the honour of Ignorance that Learning has to throw us into her arms when powerless to stiffen our backs against the weight of our ills; she has to make terms, slipping the reins and giving us leave to seek refuge in the lap of Ignorance, finding under her protection a shelter from the blows and outrages of Fortune.
When Socrates was told that the god of Wisdom had called him wise, he was thunderstruck; he ransacked his mind and shook himself out but could find nothing to base this divine judgement upon. He knew other men who were as just, temperate, valiant and wise as he was: others he knew to be more eloquent, more handsome, more useful to their country. He finally concluded that, if he was different from others and wiser, it was only because he did not think he was; that his God thought any human who believed himself to be knowledgeable and wise was a singularly stupid animal; that his best teaching taught ignorance and his best wisdom was simplicity.!
I think Man will confess, if he speaks honestly, that all he has gained from so long a chase is knowledge of his own weakness.'** By long study we have confirmed and verified that ignorance does lie naturally within us. The truly wise are like ears of corn: they shoot up and up holding their heads proudly erect - so long as they are empty; but when, in their maturity, they are full of swelling grain, their foreheads droop down and they show humility. So, too, with men who have assayed everything, sounded everything; within those piles of knowledge and the profusion of so many diverse things, they have found nothing solid, nothing firm, only vanity. They then renounce arrogance and recognize their natural condition.'
Other people are prejudiced by the customs of their country, by the education given them by their parents or by chance encounter: normally, before the age of discretion, they are taken by storm and, without judgement or choice, accept this or that opinion of the Stoic or Epicurean sects. There they stay, mortgaged, enslaved, caught on a hook which they cannot get off - [C] ‘ad quamcumque disciplinam velut tempestate delati, ad eam tangquam ad saxum adhaerescunt’ [they cling to any old teaching, like sailors washed up on a rock]. But why should people like these not also be allowed their freedom, making up their own minds without bonds and slavery?
‘What ought I to choose?’ — ‘Anything you wish, so long as you choose something.’ A daft enough reply! Yet it seems to be the one reached by every kind of dogmatism which refuses us the right not to know what we do not know
They have sworn loyalty to the word énéym: ‘I am in suspense’; I will not budge.’ (also inscribed on Montaigne's library
Where morals are concerned, they conform to the common mould. They find it appropriate to yield to natural inclinations, to the thrust and constraints of their emotions, to established laws and customs and to the traditional arts.
No system discovered by Man has greater usefulness nor a greater appearance of truth [than Pyrrhonism] which shows us Man naked, empty, aware of his natural weakness, fit to accept outside help from on high
Socrates.... He says that the only thing he knew how to do was to make objections.
Man is indeed out of his mind. He cannot even create a fleshworm, yet creates gods by the dozen.
it is necessary (they said) that people should not know many things which are true and should believe many things which are false,... [since man only wants to find such truth as sets him free, it can be thought expedient for him to be deceived].?
it is for their present state that their whole immortality will receive its acknowledged rewards: each is entirely account- able for the life of a human being. But it would be an act of gross injustice to lop off the soul’s powers and resources, to strip her of all her weapons and then to take the very time when she lies weak and ill in prison — a time of repression and constraint — and to make that the basis for a judgement leading to endless, everlasting punishment; it would be unjust to limit consideration to so short a span, to a life that may have lasted a mere two hours or, at the very worst a hundred years — an instant in proportion to infinity ~ and then, from that momentary interlude, to order and establish, once and for all, the whole state of her future existence. To reward or punish on the basis of so short a life would be disproportionate and iniquitous.
From this evidence Man realizes that such truth as he does find out for himself is due to Fortune and to chance. Even when truth drops into his hands, Man has no means of seizing hold of it; his reason does not have power enough to establish any rights over it. Every single idea which results from our own reflections and our own faculties — whether it is true or false — is subject to dispute and uncertainty
To what degree of arrogance and insolence do we not carry our blindness and our brutish stupidity
And what can anyone understand who cannot understand himself? ‘ [As though one could measure anything and not know how to measure oneself]. Protagoras was really and truly having us on when he made Man the measure of all things — Man, who has never known even his own measurements. If Man cannot have it, then his dignity will not let any other creature have it: yet Man is so full of contradictions and his ideas are so constantly undermining each other that so favourable a proposition is simply laughable: it leads to the inevitable conclusion that both measure and the measurer are nothing.
Keep to the beaten track: it can hardly be good to be so subtle and so clever. Remember the Tuscan proverb, ‘Chi troppo s’assottiglia si scavezza’ [He who becomes too clever is lost]. [A] My advice to you is to cling to moderation and temperance, as much in your opinions and arguments as in your conduct, fleeing what is merely new or odd. All roads which wander from the norm displease me.
Our minds are dangerous tools, rash and prone to go astray: it is hard to reconcile them with order and moderation.
Fortune may shift us five hundred times, may treat our powers of belief like a pot to be endlessly emptied and filled with ever-differing opinions: nevertheless, the present one, the last one, is always sure and infallible!
We may have changed our opinions and beliefs in the past, yet we still maintain current opinions and beliefs are infallible
Our condition is subject to error: that ought, at very least, to lead us to be more moderate and restrained in making changes. We ought to admit that, no matter what we allow into our understanding, it often includes falsehoods which enter by means of the same tools which have often proved contradictory and misleading.
our soul’s weakness when faced with pain and suffering serves to nurture repentance and remorse within our conscience and to feel the chastisements with which God scourges us as well as the chastisements of political punishment. Compassion acts as a stimulus to clemency; prudent self-preservation and self-control are awakened by our fear; and how many fair actions are awakened by ambition? And how many by arrogance? In short, not one eminent or dashing virtue can exist without some strong, unruly emotion
What varied thoughts and reasons, what conflicting notions, are presented to us by our varied passions! What certainty can we find in something so changeable and unstable as the soul, subject by her condition the dominance of perturbations, and who never moves except under external constraint.
To conclude: there is no permanent existence either in our being or in that of objects. We ourselves, our faculty of judgement and all mortal things are flowing and rolling ceaselessly: nothing certain can be established about one from the other, since both judged and judging are ever shifting and changing.*
To prove that this is so: if we remained forever one and the same, how is it that we can delight in one thing now and later in another? How can we each be one if we love or hate contradictory things, first praising them, then condemning them? How can we have different emotions, no longer retaining the same sentiment within the same thought? For it is not likely that we can experience different reactions unless we ourselves have changed; but whoever suffers change is no longer the same one: he no longer is. For his being, as such, changes when his being one changes, as each personality ever succeeds another. And, consequently, it is of the nature of our senses to be misled and deceived. Because they do not know what being is, they take appears to be for it.
May 3, 2012
Beautiful and illuminating book by Montaigne, written with great wit and irony, a wonderful read and an important text in itself.
Read
July 9, 2026Reading this was a treat. Here is a reflection I wrote on it:
Quite unlike Jean de Brie's _Le Bon Berger_, which evaluates sheep according to their *utilité* and *prouffitable* while nonetheless insisting upon an ethic of shepherdly care and protection, Montaigne’s “Apologie de Raimond Sebond” demarcates a more radical vision of human-animal relations. Rather than organizing animals within a framework of human utility, Montaigne praises and illustrates animals’ capacity for speech, reason, and intelligence, those faculties traditionally reserved for humans. His admiration for animals is grounded in a pervasive sense of ontological equality among all creatures under heaven. This equality antagonizes hierarchical distinctions between human and animal life:
"Nous ne sommes ny au dessus, ny au dessoubs du reste: tout ce qui est sous le Ciel, dit le sage, court une loy et fortune pareille... Il y a quelque difference, il y a des ordres et des degrez; mais c'est soubs le visage d'une mesme nature... Il faut contraindre l'homme et le renger dans les barrieres de cette police" (459).
Montaigne does not deny difference, but relocates it within a shared natural order. Degrees and distinctions exist, but they do so “soubs le visage d’une mesme nature.” Such is his refusal of the theological or metaphysical elevation of humankind above the rest of creation. Humanity must be constrained—_contraint_—and reordered within this broader natural polity, rather than regarded as its divine exception.
Even if it were true that humans possessed a unique freedom of thought and imagination, Montaigne argues that such freedom would offer little cause for pride. In fact, such unique freedom would only demonstrate humanity’s vulnerability to suffering and moral failure, “car de là naist la source principale des maux qui le pressent: peché, maladie, irresolution, trouble, desespoir” (460). Human rationality, if such a singular and incommunicable attribute existed, would be a liability rather than a privilege.
Accordingly, Montaigne refuses the assumption that animals servilely obey natural necessity while humans act freely out of curiosity or reason. Instead, he tells a series of examples that attribute deliberation, wisdom, and even spirituality to animals: elephants who act cunningly evasive, perhaps even religiously; birds endowed with a faculty of divination; a mule that strategically avoids carrying salt; a friendly and comforting lion; mathematically inclined tunnies; architecturally adept halcyons; and a fox capable of gauging the thickness of ice. These examples dissolve that long since fortified boundary that reserved intelligence, foresight, and intentionality for humans alone.
Situated within Montaigne’s broader assault on the pretensions and follies of human reason—an assault directed in particular against the natural theology of Sebond—animals emerge as integral members of a dehierarchized network of life. In this flattened ontology, the sharpest differences do not necessarily separate humans from animals but may instead divide humans from one another. As Montaigne famously claims, “…qu'il se trouve plus de difference de tel homme à tel homme que de tel animal à tel homme” (466). This assertion raises a few questions: what constitutes the degrees of difference between humans and why does Montaigne’s sustained attention to animals occasion a discrimination among humans?
One possible answer surfaces later in the "_Apologie_," when Montaigne turns to animal reproduction as a model of natural wisdom from which humans should take heed. Animals, he suggests, exemplify the most effective and orderly reproductive practices:
“La generation est la principale des actions naturelles: nous avons quelque disposition de membres qui nous est plus propre à cela; toutesfois ils nous ordonnent de nous ranger à l'assiete et disposition brutale, comme plus effectuelle... Et rejettent comme nuisibles ces mouvements indiscrets et insolents que les femmes y ont meslé de leur creu, les ramenant à l'exemple et usage des bestes de leur sexe, plus modeste et rassis” (470).
For Montaigne, animals function not as inferior beings but as normative guides who might correct human excess and unnaturalness. This specific animal model of moderation and natural propriety is, however, pedagogically directed at women, whose pursuit of pleasure Montaigne characterizes as exceeding natural limits. In this way, is Montaigne's study of animal life at once a refusal of hierarchy between species and an insistence upon a hierarchy within humanity, where putatively insolent women are figured as those who must learn from animals' intelligence and natural prudence?
Quite unlike Jean de Brie's _Le Bon Berger_, which evaluates sheep according to their *utilité* and *prouffitable* while nonetheless insisting upon an ethic of shepherdly care and protection, Montaigne’s “Apologie de Raimond Sebond” demarcates a more radical vision of human-animal relations. Rather than organizing animals within a framework of human utility, Montaigne praises and illustrates animals’ capacity for speech, reason, and intelligence, those faculties traditionally reserved for humans. His admiration for animals is grounded in a pervasive sense of ontological equality among all creatures under heaven. This equality antagonizes hierarchical distinctions between human and animal life:
"Nous ne sommes ny au dessus, ny au dessoubs du reste: tout ce qui est sous le Ciel, dit le sage, court une loy et fortune pareille... Il y a quelque difference, il y a des ordres et des degrez; mais c'est soubs le visage d'une mesme nature... Il faut contraindre l'homme et le renger dans les barrieres de cette police" (459).
Montaigne does not deny difference, but relocates it within a shared natural order. Degrees and distinctions exist, but they do so “soubs le visage d’une mesme nature.” Such is his refusal of the theological or metaphysical elevation of humankind above the rest of creation. Humanity must be constrained—_contraint_—and reordered within this broader natural polity, rather than regarded as its divine exception.
Even if it were true that humans possessed a unique freedom of thought and imagination, Montaigne argues that such freedom would offer little cause for pride. In fact, such unique freedom would only demonstrate humanity’s vulnerability to suffering and moral failure, “car de là naist la source principale des maux qui le pressent: peché, maladie, irresolution, trouble, desespoir” (460). Human rationality, if such a singular and incommunicable attribute existed, would be a liability rather than a privilege.
Accordingly, Montaigne refuses the assumption that animals servilely obey natural necessity while humans act freely out of curiosity or reason. Instead, he tells a series of examples that attribute deliberation, wisdom, and even spirituality to animals: elephants who act cunningly evasive, perhaps even religiously; birds endowed with a faculty of divination; a mule that strategically avoids carrying salt; a friendly and comforting lion; mathematically inclined tunnies; architecturally adept halcyons; and a fox capable of gauging the thickness of ice. These examples dissolve that long since fortified boundary that reserved intelligence, foresight, and intentionality for humans alone.
Situated within Montaigne’s broader assault on the pretensions and follies of human reason—an assault directed in particular against the natural theology of Sebond—animals emerge as integral members of a dehierarchized network of life. In this flattened ontology, the sharpest differences do not necessarily separate humans from animals but may instead divide humans from one another. As Montaigne famously claims, “…qu'il se trouve plus de difference de tel homme à tel homme que de tel animal à tel homme” (466). This assertion raises a few questions: what constitutes the degrees of difference between humans and why does Montaigne’s sustained attention to animals occasion a discrimination among humans?
One possible answer surfaces later in the "_Apologie_," when Montaigne turns to animal reproduction as a model of natural wisdom from which humans should take heed. Animals, he suggests, exemplify the most effective and orderly reproductive practices:
“La generation est la principale des actions naturelles: nous avons quelque disposition de membres qui nous est plus propre à cela; toutesfois ils nous ordonnent de nous ranger à l'assiete et disposition brutale, comme plus effectuelle... Et rejettent comme nuisibles ces mouvements indiscrets et insolents que les femmes y ont meslé de leur creu, les ramenant à l'exemple et usage des bestes de leur sexe, plus modeste et rassis” (470).
For Montaigne, animals function not as inferior beings but as normative guides who might correct human excess and unnaturalness. This specific animal model of moderation and natural propriety is, however, pedagogically directed at women, whose pursuit of pleasure Montaigne characterizes as exceeding natural limits. In this way, is Montaigne's study of animal life at once a refusal of hierarchy between species and an insistence upon a hierarchy within humanity, where putatively insolent women are figured as those who must learn from animals' intelligence and natural prudence?
September 24, 2026
The Apology for Raymond Sebond is the lengthiest of Montaigne's 100+ essays. Montaigne had translated Sebond's Natural Theology into French at the request of his father, and the 'Apology' (defense) of Sebond's work Montaigne wrote for a 'Patroness' (136), Margaret of Valois? Montaigne defends Sebond against two objections: 1. it is wrong to support the Catholic faith by use of reason/ argument; 2. Sebond's arguments are 'weak.'
Montaigne's response to the first objection--as far as I can tell--echoes Aquinas. If God endowed us with reason, then, when used rightly, it ought not to lead to conclusions or doctrine that contradict God's revealed Truths/ faith. Montaigne spends about 8 pages developing this response.
Montaigne's response to the second objection, that Sebond's arguments are weak, occupies the remaining 170 odd pages of the work, although his response amounts to--"sure Sebond's arguments are weak, but can you find any better?" (11) Montaigne relies chiefly on the Ancient skeptics, those who advocated that we 'suspend judgment'--going so far as to submit we can't "know that we don't know" since that would be knowledge. But more generally, this section criticizes Man's vanity and pride, thus the opening 40 pages wherein Montaigne argues that other animals are equal, if not superior to, Man, in all the faculties and virtues we pride ourselves on (including reason).
I worry I am oversimplifying, but I suspect Montaigne deploys such skeptical arguments so as to advise on the wisdom of just sticking with the doctrines you were raised with. At one juncture (136-38), he pauses to address directly his Patroness. He warns her that the philosophy (skepticism) he has deployed to defend Sebond is a double edged sword, a "desparate act of dexterity, in which you must surrender your own arms to force your opponent to lose his" (136). Continuing: "my advice to you is to cling to moderation and temperance, as much in your own opinions and arguments as in your conduct, fleeing from whatever is merely new or odd" (137).
Reading the text--one can easily forget that the essay aims to defend the work of another text/ author, since Montaigne often goes dozens of pages without mentioning Sebond at all, and I don't think Montaigne quoted from the work once. M.A. Screech's (to whom we owe a huge debt for translating and annotating Montaigne's work) translation--both the stand alone Apology and The Complete Essays, provide Montaigne's translation of Sebond's Preface to his Natural Theology, which had been placed on the index of prohibited books of Pope Paul IV (xiii). Though Montaigne's translation waters it down--its no wonder the Preface was prohibited. In it Sebond promises a great deal from the study of his Natural Theology, claiming it has the key to both Old and New Testaments, that his work presents a foundational science, and that laypersons (anyone) can learn it on one's own, without prior study of the trivium. Sebond likens study of his work to learning the alphabet--necessary to read the Book of Nature and the Book of Scriptures, aright. (Talk about pride and vanity.)
Although I can't claim to have read many, I find the other (shorter and more focused) Montaigne essays I have read (particularly 'On Solitude') much more rewarding.
Yes, the text is entertaining. There are so many funny anecdotes/ examples taken second/ third hand from philosophers even 'professionals' spend little time with today, like Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius, and its very quotable. But its extraordinarily repetitive and unorganized. And inasmuch as Montaigne is weaponizing a philosophical school he does not really adhere to, if you read only this text, you're not really getting Montaigne himself--the man credited with inaugurating the 'assay'/ essay genre and who sought to 'know himself' and thereby acquire insight into the human condition.
I'm going to be re-reading Apology for Raymond Sebond, very shortly, but very slowly, since I am participating in a 5 week discussion group on the text, and along the way I intend to read many more of the essays. Another review may be forthcoming early November, in which maybe I can provide more context for this work using the other hundred plus essays this stand alone work is extracted from.
Montaigne's response to the first objection--as far as I can tell--echoes Aquinas. If God endowed us with reason, then, when used rightly, it ought not to lead to conclusions or doctrine that contradict God's revealed Truths/ faith. Montaigne spends about 8 pages developing this response.
Montaigne's response to the second objection, that Sebond's arguments are weak, occupies the remaining 170 odd pages of the work, although his response amounts to--"sure Sebond's arguments are weak, but can you find any better?" (11) Montaigne relies chiefly on the Ancient skeptics, those who advocated that we 'suspend judgment'--going so far as to submit we can't "know that we don't know" since that would be knowledge. But more generally, this section criticizes Man's vanity and pride, thus the opening 40 pages wherein Montaigne argues that other animals are equal, if not superior to, Man, in all the faculties and virtues we pride ourselves on (including reason).
I worry I am oversimplifying, but I suspect Montaigne deploys such skeptical arguments so as to advise on the wisdom of just sticking with the doctrines you were raised with. At one juncture (136-38), he pauses to address directly his Patroness. He warns her that the philosophy (skepticism) he has deployed to defend Sebond is a double edged sword, a "desparate act of dexterity, in which you must surrender your own arms to force your opponent to lose his" (136). Continuing: "my advice to you is to cling to moderation and temperance, as much in your own opinions and arguments as in your conduct, fleeing from whatever is merely new or odd" (137).
Reading the text--one can easily forget that the essay aims to defend the work of another text/ author, since Montaigne often goes dozens of pages without mentioning Sebond at all, and I don't think Montaigne quoted from the work once. M.A. Screech's (to whom we owe a huge debt for translating and annotating Montaigne's work) translation--both the stand alone Apology and The Complete Essays, provide Montaigne's translation of Sebond's Preface to his Natural Theology, which had been placed on the index of prohibited books of Pope Paul IV (xiii). Though Montaigne's translation waters it down--its no wonder the Preface was prohibited. In it Sebond promises a great deal from the study of his Natural Theology, claiming it has the key to both Old and New Testaments, that his work presents a foundational science, and that laypersons (anyone) can learn it on one's own, without prior study of the trivium. Sebond likens study of his work to learning the alphabet--necessary to read the Book of Nature and the Book of Scriptures, aright. (Talk about pride and vanity.)
Although I can't claim to have read many, I find the other (shorter and more focused) Montaigne essays I have read (particularly 'On Solitude') much more rewarding.
Yes, the text is entertaining. There are so many funny anecdotes/ examples taken second/ third hand from philosophers even 'professionals' spend little time with today, like Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius, and its very quotable. But its extraordinarily repetitive and unorganized. And inasmuch as Montaigne is weaponizing a philosophical school he does not really adhere to, if you read only this text, you're not really getting Montaigne himself--the man credited with inaugurating the 'assay'/ essay genre and who sought to 'know himself' and thereby acquire insight into the human condition.
I'm going to be re-reading Apology for Raymond Sebond, very shortly, but very slowly, since I am participating in a 5 week discussion group on the text, and along the way I intend to read many more of the essays. Another review may be forthcoming early November, in which maybe I can provide more context for this work using the other hundred plus essays this stand alone work is extracted from.
June 14, 2025
Apology for Raymond Sebond by Michel de Montaigne – The Essays of Michel de Montaigne have been included on The Greatest Books of All Time lists, from The Norwegian Book Club all the way to the newest GOAT site – I have a few hundred reviews on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... including on Montaigne
10 out of 10
Michel de Montaigne had some very nice things to say about animals, some quotes from past luminaries, stories told by others – “There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it…”
We can also look at the animals we have and learn so much, he observed, and I agree, for I have had scores of dogs – at one point, five borzoi and a mixed breed, all at the same time, for these were my spouse’s wishes, we clash perpetually, have been doing so for what, maybe two decades now, or more, just like in:
- Games People Play https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a classic of psychology by Eric Berne
The most played game would be IIWFY aka If It Weren’s For You, which is played by partners, blaming on the other whatever failure, unfulfilled aspiration they can fathom, notwithstanding the fact that studies show we tend to select another half for this reason (and others) so that we do not do what we cannot, or do not really wish anyway
A Warning should have been inserted up there – it could be done, it is so easy nowadays – but I did not really know where this is taking me, and it looks as if it will be about My Family and Other Animals https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... like in the Gerald Durrell book
We have two Macaws, one blue and gold, Balzac, who is fifteen (or thereabouts) and a green and red one, Puccini, and they are the main reason why there is a family to speak of, we are still married because these boys (they are both male) need care, one of us stays with them for some ten hours, every single day….
Right now, I am at the computer, Balzac is 40 centimeters away, chewing on something, while Puccini is high up, preening, although the latter has this habit of exaggerating, he plucks feathers out, and he has a quite bare belly, nervous creature, plus he likes it very much on the floor, which is marble, and thus quite cold…
Michel de Montaigne highlights the intelligence of animals (often, I beg to differ, especially when my babies scream, they make my brains blow up and the patience vanishes) and we have the example of the…dogs for the blind, that was some discovery, that they had them in the sixteenth century, so long ago…
Which proves yet again that we tend to look back and consider ancestors as really backward, when we only need to look at Orange Jesus, who is the leader of the free world again (!) and the product of what used to be the greatest democracy in the world and ask: are we really so much smarter than the humans who lived before?
‘These dogs for the blind know so much, where to stop, if the road is wide enough, to avoid carriages’ – this is not a quote, but I hope these were words to that effect, then we have the stories with the elephants, one had a man giving him food, but the human stole from what the master ordered and took for himself…
One day the owner of the elephant went to give his animal food, and the intelligent creature separated in two, showing how he had been treated – stories like these are countless, evidently, and you could watch Alex The African Grey on YouTube, to see how clever a parrot can be, if only mine displayed the same acumen
They do though – Balzac has this habit of coming to me, when I drink from my glass, to ask that he shares, and the way to do it, is he takes from…my mouth, do not worry, it is not alcohol, which is one of the few things one has to keep away from them, they are pretty much omnivores – well, not hamburgers – but avocado and a few other items are anathema
"The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible." ~ Michel de Montaigne, who was a great psychologist, before the term was invented and knew about happiness what studies demonstrate and The Talmud had also said ‘thoughts become words, those get to be acts, which become habits, that form character and this one is you’, there is more on this subject
Positivity https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a classic by Barbara Fredrikson and you find there the ten elements of Positivity – awe, serenity, inspiration, amusement, joy, interest, pride, hope, gratitude, and above them all, love, which ‘conquers all…’
"In my opinion, every rich man is a miser." ~ Michel de Montaigne, here is another gem, for if we need some money to live well, research ahs looked at the happiest humans, and what they have in common is strong bonds with family and friends, not wealth, indeed, when they studied the winners of the one million or more dollars prize at the lottery, it was shown that there is a phenomena called Hedonic Adaptartion, which means that we adapt to almost anything https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
10 out of 10
Michel de Montaigne had some very nice things to say about animals, some quotes from past luminaries, stories told by others – “There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it…”
We can also look at the animals we have and learn so much, he observed, and I agree, for I have had scores of dogs – at one point, five borzoi and a mixed breed, all at the same time, for these were my spouse’s wishes, we clash perpetually, have been doing so for what, maybe two decades now, or more, just like in:
- Games People Play https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a classic of psychology by Eric Berne
The most played game would be IIWFY aka If It Weren’s For You, which is played by partners, blaming on the other whatever failure, unfulfilled aspiration they can fathom, notwithstanding the fact that studies show we tend to select another half for this reason (and others) so that we do not do what we cannot, or do not really wish anyway
A Warning should have been inserted up there – it could be done, it is so easy nowadays – but I did not really know where this is taking me, and it looks as if it will be about My Family and Other Animals https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... like in the Gerald Durrell book
We have two Macaws, one blue and gold, Balzac, who is fifteen (or thereabouts) and a green and red one, Puccini, and they are the main reason why there is a family to speak of, we are still married because these boys (they are both male) need care, one of us stays with them for some ten hours, every single day….
Right now, I am at the computer, Balzac is 40 centimeters away, chewing on something, while Puccini is high up, preening, although the latter has this habit of exaggerating, he plucks feathers out, and he has a quite bare belly, nervous creature, plus he likes it very much on the floor, which is marble, and thus quite cold…
Michel de Montaigne highlights the intelligence of animals (often, I beg to differ, especially when my babies scream, they make my brains blow up and the patience vanishes) and we have the example of the…dogs for the blind, that was some discovery, that they had them in the sixteenth century, so long ago…
Which proves yet again that we tend to look back and consider ancestors as really backward, when we only need to look at Orange Jesus, who is the leader of the free world again (!) and the product of what used to be the greatest democracy in the world and ask: are we really so much smarter than the humans who lived before?
‘These dogs for the blind know so much, where to stop, if the road is wide enough, to avoid carriages’ – this is not a quote, but I hope these were words to that effect, then we have the stories with the elephants, one had a man giving him food, but the human stole from what the master ordered and took for himself…
One day the owner of the elephant went to give his animal food, and the intelligent creature separated in two, showing how he had been treated – stories like these are countless, evidently, and you could watch Alex The African Grey on YouTube, to see how clever a parrot can be, if only mine displayed the same acumen
They do though – Balzac has this habit of coming to me, when I drink from my glass, to ask that he shares, and the way to do it, is he takes from…my mouth, do not worry, it is not alcohol, which is one of the few things one has to keep away from them, they are pretty much omnivores – well, not hamburgers – but avocado and a few other items are anathema
"The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible." ~ Michel de Montaigne, who was a great psychologist, before the term was invented and knew about happiness what studies demonstrate and The Talmud had also said ‘thoughts become words, those get to be acts, which become habits, that form character and this one is you’, there is more on this subject
Positivity https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a classic by Barbara Fredrikson and you find there the ten elements of Positivity – awe, serenity, inspiration, amusement, joy, interest, pride, hope, gratitude, and above them all, love, which ‘conquers all…’
"In my opinion, every rich man is a miser." ~ Michel de Montaigne, here is another gem, for if we need some money to live well, research ahs looked at the happiest humans, and what they have in common is strong bonds with family and friends, not wealth, indeed, when they studied the winners of the one million or more dollars prize at the lottery, it was shown that there is a phenomena called Hedonic Adaptartion, which means that we adapt to almost anything https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
July 8, 2018
There were a lot of parts of this "essay" by Montaigne that are mediocre at best and plainly stupid and wrong at worse.
There were some parts there were enjoyable at best and OK at worst.
The more I read Montaigne the harder it is for me to enjoy his thoughts, essays and ideas.
It feels simply... wrong.
Outdated, stiff, stuck in time, simple-minded, naive, racist, elitist, contradictory! All these thoughts constantly bombard my mind as I read (listen) through Montaigne Essays.
In one page he's saying that humans are too stupid to try to understand God, or Nature, or Ourselves (but he says so in 3000 words rather than 15), just to casually mention that-and I'm paraphrasing- "This is why we can only trust God's will and understand him through his holy writings".
Absolute disappointment. You just said we can't trust our own perceptions of the world, our ideas are flawed by our biases, all amazing, all true, but then you _have_ to save your Catholic and naive ass by saying that we can only trust the Bible to be absolutely right, enlightened and holy, above and beyond human wisdom. Come on.
There are other good parts in his Essays, and this apology, to make up for it, but ugh, I don't know if I've learned *anything* from Montaigne, other than French in the 16th century were funny silly people.
Oh, and there's always his reliance on unconfirmed, anecdotal, silly stories to represent the world. As if "Prince X from Y country doing Z thing" was really a good example to depict the world.
There were some parts there were enjoyable at best and OK at worst.
The more I read Montaigne the harder it is for me to enjoy his thoughts, essays and ideas.
It feels simply... wrong.
Outdated, stiff, stuck in time, simple-minded, naive, racist, elitist, contradictory! All these thoughts constantly bombard my mind as I read (listen) through Montaigne Essays.
In one page he's saying that humans are too stupid to try to understand God, or Nature, or Ourselves (but he says so in 3000 words rather than 15), just to casually mention that-and I'm paraphrasing- "This is why we can only trust God's will and understand him through his holy writings".
Absolute disappointment. You just said we can't trust our own perceptions of the world, our ideas are flawed by our biases, all amazing, all true, but then you _have_ to save your Catholic and naive ass by saying that we can only trust the Bible to be absolutely right, enlightened and holy, above and beyond human wisdom. Come on.
There are other good parts in his Essays, and this apology, to make up for it, but ugh, I don't know if I've learned *anything* from Montaigne, other than French in the 16th century were funny silly people.
Oh, and there's always his reliance on unconfirmed, anecdotal, silly stories to represent the world. As if "Prince X from Y country doing Z thing" was really a good example to depict the world.
September 2, 2026
I picked up a copy of the complete essays in a charity shop a few years ago, and have been working my way through slowly. This essay I decided to list as a separate book due to both its length and its complexity. It is an interesting, though occasionally taxing, read; and shows the best and the worst of Montaigne as a writer.
On the one hand, the complexity of the ideas and the clarity with which they are expressed is admirable. On the other, Montaigne has a tendency to both wander and drone on at times. But anyway, what's it all about?
Essentially, Montaigne is praising Sebond for his learning and his attempt to provide logical proofs of Christianity, but at the same time arguing that any such attempt is doomed to fail because human senses and human reason are inherently flawed - only by divine grace and an act of faith can we come closer to God. This is kind of a cart before the horse argument - because human reason is flawed, relies on imperfect senses, and cannot prove anything, God must exist or the world makes no sense. Essentially, the existence of God can't be proved and so God must exist. This kind of circular logic is common in philosophy. It's better to focus on the by ways of Montaigne's writing sometimes than the main thrust.
In particular, I tend to agree with his views on learning. He argues that learning is one of the chief consolations available to us in this life, but also argues that it would be far better to be ignorant, happy and good. It's a contradiction of human nature I have struggled with a bit over the years.
On the one hand, the complexity of the ideas and the clarity with which they are expressed is admirable. On the other, Montaigne has a tendency to both wander and drone on at times. But anyway, what's it all about?
Essentially, Montaigne is praising Sebond for his learning and his attempt to provide logical proofs of Christianity, but at the same time arguing that any such attempt is doomed to fail because human senses and human reason are inherently flawed - only by divine grace and an act of faith can we come closer to God. This is kind of a cart before the horse argument - because human reason is flawed, relies on imperfect senses, and cannot prove anything, God must exist or the world makes no sense. Essentially, the existence of God can't be proved and so God must exist. This kind of circular logic is common in philosophy. It's better to focus on the by ways of Montaigne's writing sometimes than the main thrust.
In particular, I tend to agree with his views on learning. He argues that learning is one of the chief consolations available to us in this life, but also argues that it would be far better to be ignorant, happy and good. It's a contradiction of human nature I have struggled with a bit over the years.
August 22, 2020
Montaigne style is a breath of fresh air! He is a philosopher from the renaissance but I don't think he sees himself as a thinker - rather, he discusses several styles of philosophy and several thinkers and his knowledgeable peers and concludes that man who don't have much knowledge about philosophy and care only about what is practical for them are probably happier. "If Man were wise he would gauge the true worth of anything by its usefulness and appropriateness to his life."
The he goes on to conclude that all knowledge and Truth is in question because the only way to become knowledgeable it through the information we receive from our senses. However, our senses are not always right and we perceive things differently when we're healthy vs sick "Reason always hobbles, limps and walks askew, in falsehood as in truth, so that it is hard to detect when she is mistaken or unhinged", "Our mental faculty of perception is never directly in touch with outside objects"
Even when we read books written by wise people, our views are being distorted by the argument that the write is trying to support "...the one I am reading always seems the most firm."
"Our minds are dangerous tools, rash and prone to go astray: it is hard to reconcile them with order and moderation."
The he goes on to conclude that all knowledge and Truth is in question because the only way to become knowledgeable it through the information we receive from our senses. However, our senses are not always right and we perceive things differently when we're healthy vs sick "Reason always hobbles, limps and walks askew, in falsehood as in truth, so that it is hard to detect when she is mistaken or unhinged", "Our mental faculty of perception is never directly in touch with outside objects"
Even when we read books written by wise people, our views are being distorted by the argument that the write is trying to support "...the one I am reading always seems the most firm."
"Our minds are dangerous tools, rash and prone to go astray: it is hard to reconcile them with order and moderation."
July 11, 2025
Montaigne provides a Catholic apologetics via some rather curious argumentative moves, countering Protestant/Lutheran rationalism first with a deflationary decentering of the human in relation to the animal, especially as regards mental faculty, before engaging in a form of Pyrrhonian skepticism towards a similar end. While not meant as a critique of anthropocentrism for its own sake, Montaigne's ruminations on this count have proved illuminating to more contemporary debates on the matter. It's a fascinating discussion, but I feel it ultimately falls short: Montaigne simply projects human faculties onto non-human animals on the basis of observations of their behavior, which is its own version of "anthropocentrism." As for Pyrrho, I find the discussion a bit tepid, for it ultimately ends with simply raising one's hands into a shrug and declaring solutions unknown given the limits of rationalism, which is unsatisfactory at best. This work will be rather influential on later figures, from Pascal to Descartes, as a 16th-century text, but this obviously means it comes with its own limits, especially as regards Orientalism (Christian supremacy embodied in anti-paganism and Islamophobia), the noble savage myth, and misogyny.
June 23, 2023
A scathing indictment of the ego of man, the vanity and futility of philosophy, and the Pharisees who manifest divinity out of the image of mankind. Drawing upon an impressive compendium of works from antiquity with an effortless and sardonic witticism, Montaigne parses out insurmountable limitations on human intelligence in the tradition of ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism as a means of defending Raymond Sebond, who claimed that the secrets of divinity could be ascertained through unaided, natural human reasoning, from criticisms that the author failed to prove his claim adequately. Montaigne’s indirect defense of Sebond does not evaluate the merit of Sebond’s argument, but asserts that no better attempt could be made, on the basis of man’s limitations in the pursuit of knowledge and attempt to define divinity; according to Montaigne, his argument was inadequate, but he was as fated to failure as the rest of human kind. Montaigne is piercing and at times purely hilarious in his treatment of religion and epistemology, making for the easiest and most enjoyable philosophical work I have ever read.
July 10, 2023
Perhaps the best reinforcement of Catholicism one can find, 'An Apology for Raymond Sebond' is a truly amazing essay ostensibly about how Natural Law, the idea of certain definite laws existing in nature, can be coherent with traditional theology. But this hardly scratches the surface of Montaigne's subject. There's a Charlie Rose interview you can find on Youtube with the Shakespeare critic Stephen Greenblatt -Greenblatt claims that Montaigne was where Shakespeare got his depth from; Montaigne, according to him, is not only the better writer but is on a similar literary mission to the Symboliste Arthur Rimbaud. Rimbaud wanted to escape reality by opening a doorway inside his work into another world. Montaigne, meanwhile, wants to write himself into cryogenesis, so that something of him might survive death/transportation to the next life.
Certainly, 'Raymond Sebond' attests to this fact. It is perhaps the greatest recording of a fully developed self I have ever come across, with all its circumlocutions, false starts, irruptions, denouements and surf.
Over a course of days, drift through this little book as a bird on a wave; it will do you a lot of good.
Certainly, 'Raymond Sebond' attests to this fact. It is perhaps the greatest recording of a fully developed self I have ever come across, with all its circumlocutions, false starts, irruptions, denouements and surf.
Over a course of days, drift through this little book as a bird on a wave; it will do you a lot of good.
October 21, 2025
The first reading for my Shakespeare and Early Modern Philosophy course. I appreciated the stylistic effect of the diffusive writing style that so wonderfully gives birth to the Essay. the deeply humanist roots, the surprising rejection of anthropocentrism, the beautiful skepticism (however irksome). Dr. Adamson phrased it thusly: it's as if we are in the mind of Montaigne, in his secluded tower, with ancient Greek and Latin works spread haphazardly throughout the library. The wisdom of the ancients pulled from all corners of page in the service of making us question the nature of our reality.
it's a shame we didn't focus much on the rejection of anthropocentrism, though perhaps it is not so relevant a topic in the context of Shakespeare. I do wonder if Montainge would've included animals in the moral community. I would enjoy doing my masters thesis on the subject of how to include animals in the moral community.
it's a shame we didn't focus much on the rejection of anthropocentrism, though perhaps it is not so relevant a topic in the context of Shakespeare. I do wonder if Montainge would've included animals in the moral community. I would enjoy doing my masters thesis on the subject of how to include animals in the moral community.
December 30, 2024
Quite long, but a good critique of Western Philosophy. Montaigne is not as clear eyed as one would hope, but I think he was honest enough to see through many of the charades that take place in philosophy. He at points seems to take a step towards a Wittgensteinian diagnosis-response to philosophical confusions, but his writing does not quite seem to connect in my view. I think the biggest strength of this work is as an intensive and comprehensive analysis of Western Philosophy that can produce many insights and give a nice overview.
June 20, 2025
I'm sure many would find this waffling and defeatist in some sense, but I really enjoyed his writing style. He has a fun way of regularly throwing in excerpts from various Greek writers which summarize his larger ideas, and it makes for good reading.
I had a dream several months ago which told me to read Montaigne, and I'm really glad I did. He feels a lot like a latter-day Camus in many ways, and that's really my speed when it comes to philosophy. I'll be seeking out more from this guy.
I had a dream several months ago which told me to read Montaigne, and I'm really glad I did. He feels a lot like a latter-day Camus in many ways, and that's really my speed when it comes to philosophy. I'll be seeking out more from this guy.
October 29, 2020
Apology + On Cannibals. Es este último que más me fascinó.
“They never stop braving and defying their enemies by word and look. Truly here are real savages by our standards; for either they must be thoroughly so, or we must be; there is an amazing distance between their character and ours” (pg. 7)
“They never stop braving and defying their enemies by word and look. Truly here are real savages by our standards; for either they must be thoroughly so, or we must be; there is an amazing distance between their character and ours” (pg. 7)
November 10, 2025
What a wonderful introduction to Montaigne and his enormous intelligence and wit. This includes just about any thought worth being thunk, along with all the ancient philosophers' best musings. It’s delightfully dirty and as fun as the subject (which rarely gets in the way or is mentioned) could be.
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December 25, 2025An examination of human overconfidence. Questioning the powers of reason, showing how fragile judgment becomes when it assumes mastery over nature, knowledge, or faith. A provocative essay that urges humility, patience with uncertainty, and caution toward any belief that claims absolute certainty.
October 31, 2017
An interesting take on Renaissance science.
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September 5, 2020not, another 'essay!" Montaigne has a wry sense of humour, a must read.
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