Genre: Philosophy/Essays
Page Count: 53
This little book of essays from the French philosopher Montaigne (1533-1592) is from the Penguin publisher’s series of short-books called ‘Little Black Classics’. There are over hundred books in this series, and this particular one is No 29.
Michel de Montaigne was a French Renaissance philosopher known for his work ‘Essays’ which also popularized essays as a literary genre. Unfortunately, besides this web-search knowledge, I know very little about Montaigne.
Nevertheless, I am quite fond of him for he’s described to be ‘different’ from the other conventional philosophers. ‘Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our asses’, such are his sayings. Another famous one is, ‘Kings and philosophers shit; and so do women’. See, quite different, right? You can sense a sarcastic humor in his lines, and rebel against the nobility of scholars and philosophers.
This little book of essays collects and presents Montaigne’s thoughts on five topics. Starting with the topic in the title of this book, Montaigne explains how contradictory are man’s emotions at any given time and event. ‘No matter how much he may want to set out on a journey, he still feels his heart tremble when he says goodbye to family and friends’, writes he; something to which I deeply relate. We are complex creatures. We wish for things, and when we get them, we despise it. ‘Thus does the mind cloak every passion with its opposite, our faces showing now joy, now sorrow’.
The second topic is ‘Conscience’: man’s inborn ability to judge right from wrong, guilty from innocence. ‘Lashing us with invisible whips, our soul torments us’; we are never deaf to our ever-present monologue of morality. Yet, while it may bring us fear, it can also be a source of confidence in your righteous deeds. Montaigne writes, ‘And I can say that I have walked more firmly through some dangers by reflecting on the secret knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my designs’.
Next are his thoughts on the topics of ‘Fate’ in which Montaigne presents us with more historical stories to explain how fate plays with us like toys; and on ‘Cowardice’, he advices that is should be punished since it’s not natural for us to cowards, but is man’s own choice.
Then, we read Montaigne on the ‘Vanity of Words’, where he condemns rhetoric as the art of deceit and laziness. He argues that men have grown too fond of words and its play, and have lost their interest in the physical work. ‘For it is of no small importance to know how to carve a hare or a chicken’, says he; it reminds of the story of ‘the learned scholar and illiterate boatsman’.
Finally, comes the topic in which Montaigne is thought to be most learned and suggestive: ‘Death’. He argues how vulnerable each man is to the ever-present death, yet how ironic that he meets it with such surprising grief and fear. Montaigne suggests that, ‘To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness; let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death.’ To learn how to die is to be free, for then you don’t see it as foreign and evil. Living more doesn’t shorten the time you’ll stay dead. To be born is to die, he says, for death is invented at once with life. Live in today with death on your mind, and don’t overestimate the longevity of your life; ‘why, in so brief a span do we find strength to make so many projects?’ says Montaigne.
It’s almost comic to review such an awfully short book, yet it’s taken the full form of a review. Montaigne, in this short book, could be sometimes dry, sometimes too heavy with historical references, but nevertheless, his quick wisdom comes in handy to push our thoughts to the marooned lands of our mind of whose existence we weren't aware of, or which we intentionally choose not to visit.
Ratings: 3/5 *** (October
29, 2020)