Don’s Reviews > How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer > Status Update

pp 274ff: The section titled “Openness, Mercy, and Cruelty,” I find equally engaging. Bakewell notes that Montaigne returns to his reflections in case after case in which human confrontation and an imbalance of situational power result in either benevolent or disastrous outcomes for the victim - mercy or cruelty bestowed by the more powerful. Her discussion of M.’s consideration of “furor” - the rationality-overriding frenzy of soldiers in battle; a moment in which a merciful general demonstrates his mastery (emotionally & psychologically) of war itself - and Montaigne continual return to analyses of new concrete examples, new situations, and distinct outcomes, showing his ongoing gnawing at ‘how to live/how best to manage oneself’ when encountering a new instance of confrontation in one’s own life. …

And continuing into a discussion of M.’s empathetic kindness and projected understanding of animals (and Lawrence Woolf’s horror recalling the killing of day-old puppies as a child, contained in Woolf’s reflections on reading Montaigne. Bakewell’s summary of the chapter noting that ‘conviviality’ and ‘being convivial’ are, in essence, based in an empathetic ability to enter the perspective of an ‘other’ - upon which rests “the best hope for civilization” (p. 181).