Another essay question! This time about Montaigne. [Archive]

mal4mac

08-02-2010, 06:49 AM

Hey guys. You helped out so much on my last question about Dante. I appreciate it a lot :)
I have one more question that I am stuck on. Heres the question --->

Montaigne asks, "What do I know?" Why is he a skeptic in all matters of claims to knowledge, but especially on assertions of religious doctrinal truths?

I feel like I have a hard time thinking critically and this class is just killing me. I just don't know how to answer this. I know he's a skeptic but I can't get myself to explain why without confusing the hell out of me.

To answer this you should *really* read all his essays (Screech translation) and see the development of his thought as it was affected by Ancient Philosophy & Christian theology - but then you need to note that sometimes he was more influenced by stoics and Epicureans, rather than skeptics. His essays are not a systematic treatise! Montaigne is wonderful and his complete essays a treat, but you may not have time, does your teacher recommend a subset of them?

Short answer: He was enthralled by Sextus Empiricus.

Additional question: Given his extreme skepticism, why was he still a good catholic?

Long answer, try reading:

The History of SCEPTICISM From Savonarola to Bayle Richard H. Popkin OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2003

For Montaigne, doubt clears dubious views, “and then if God so wills, we may have knowledge by faith alone. We become blank tablets waiting for God to write on them.”

His most philosophical essay, “Apologie de Raimond Sebond, ” was a product of his crise pyrrhonienne. It was written in 1575–76, when Montaigne, through studying Sextus Empiricus saw his entire intellectual world dissolve into complete doubt. Slogans and phrases from Sextus were carved into the rafter beams of his study.

He advocates a new fideism—Catholic Pyrrhonism. Raimond Sebond was a fifteenth-century theologian who believed that that all the articles of the Christian religion can be proven by natural reason. The objections were that Christian religion ought to be based on faith, not reason, and that Sebond's reasons were not sound. The first point allows Montaigne to develop his fideistic theme, and the second his scepticism. Since , à la Pyrrho, all reasoning is unsound, Sebond is excused his errors.

Montaigne’s view is that religion is based solely on faith given to us by the grace of God. It is not on us that faith depends, our efforts and arguments cannot attain a knowledge so supernatural and divine. Any human foundation for religion is too weak to support divine knowledge.

Man thinks that he, unaided by Divine Light, can comprehend the cosmos. But he is a vain, puny creature, whose ego makes him believe that he understands the world and that it was made for his benefit. His rationality is just animal behavior. To illustrate this, Montaigne chooses an example from Sextus Empiricus, involving a logical dog who, supposedly, worked out a disjunctive syllogism.

Nature's noblemen, the residents of Brazil, “spent their life in admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without religion of any kind. ” The Christian message is, according to Montaigne, to cultivate a similar ignorance in order to believe by faith alone.
Knowledge of truth, whatever it may be, has not been acquired by our own powers. God has taught us that through witnesses he has chosen from the common people. In support of this complete fideism, Montaigne used the favorite Scriptural text of the nouveaux pyrrhoniens, St. Paul's declamation in 1 Corinthians 1:19–21: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

“The Pyrrhonists doubt and suspend judgment on all propositions, even that all is doubt. They oppose any assertion whatsoever, and their opposition, if successful, shows the opponent's ignorance; if unsuccessful, their own ignorance. In this state of complete doubt, the Pyrrhonists live according to nature and custom.” This attitude Montaigne found to the finest and most useful human achievement, and the most compatible with religion.

It leaves man naked and empty, acknowledges his natural weakness, strips him of human knowledge, makes him more likely to admit divine knowledge, annihilates his judgment to make room for faith; neither disbelieves nor sets up any doctrine against the common observances. It makes man humble, obedient, teachable, and an enemy of heresy. He is a blank tablet waiting for God to engrave what forms he pleases.

Ancient Pyrrhonists had supplied the best defense against the Reformation. Without positive views, he could have no wrong views. Accepting the laws and customs of his community, he would accept Catholicism. Finally, the complete sceptic was in the ideal state for receiving the Revelation, if God so willed.

Montaigne contrasted Pyrrhonism with the endless quarrels of the dogmatic philosophers of antiquity. In every field of intellectual inquiry, philosophers have finally confessed their ignorance, or inability to come to any definite conclusion. Even in logic, paradoxes like “The Liar” undermine confidence. Even the Pyrrhonists become lost if they assert that they doubt.
All that philosophers present are human inventions. Nobody ever discovers what actually happens in nature. Instead, some traditional opinions are accepted as principles. Montaigne insists, “now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest—beginning, middle, and end—is nothing but dreams and smoke. ”

At best, Montaigne was probably mildly religious. His attitude was indifference or unexcited acceptance, without serious religious experience or involvement.