{"id":1409,"date":"2007-03-26T05:51:17","date_gmt":"2007-03-26T10:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-cannibalism\/"},"modified":"2007-03-26T05:51:17","modified_gmt":"2007-03-26T10:51:17","slug":"monday-morning-montaigne-of-cannibalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-cannibalism","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of Cannibalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week’s essay was Of Cannibals<\/em>, which raised all sorts of expectations. Unfortunately, Montaigne’s depictions of man-eating tribes in Brazil (or ‘Antarctic France’) were pretty much in the “noble savage” mode. On the plus side, he never went into a rant about how Europe needs to bring them religion. If anything, he seemed pretty envious of the stories he heard about life among the Indians.<\/p>\n

In fact, even their cannibalism was just part of their warrior culture. As soon as they found that the Portuguese had a more sadistic way of killing their enemies, he tells us, the natives started abandoning their cannibalism:<\/p>\n

They saw the Portuguese, who had joined forces with their adversaries, inflict a different kind of death on them when they took them prisoner, which was to bury them up to the waist, shoot the rest of their body full of arrows, and afterward hang them. They thought that these people from the other world, being men who had sown the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors and were much greater masters than themselves in every sort of wickedness, did not adopt this sort of vengeance without some reason, and that it must be more painful than their own; so they began to give up their old method and to follow this one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He immediately follows with this caveat:<\/p>\n

I am not sorry that we notice the barbarous horror of such acts [the cannibalism], but I am heartily sorry that, judging their faults rightly, we should be so blind to our own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is to say, he doesn’t consider the Indian form of cannibalism — treating prisoners hospitably for a few months before killing them, roasting them, eating them and “send[ing] some pieces to their absent friends” — as bad as European practices of torturing people to death.<\/p>\n

This actually heads ’round to the point that Montaigne makes at the beginning of this essay, and throughout a number of essays: that we’re really not in a position to judge anything:<\/p>\n

I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation, from what I have been told, except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not in his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. There<\/em> is always the perfect religion, the perfect government, the perfect and accomplished manners in all things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Instead, he figures, the “natural way” of life is better, less corrupted by our laws. Unfortunately, I had enough of this during my undergrad years at Hampshire to take it very seriously. Or, as M. puts it:<\/p>\n

All this is not too bad — but what’s the use? They don’t wear breeches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s essay was Of Cannibals, which raised all sorts of expectations. Unfortunately, Montaigne’s depictions of man-eating tribes in Brazil (or ‘Antarctic France’) were pretty much in the “noble savage” mode. On the plus side, he never went into a rant about how Europe needs to bring them religion. If anything, he seemed pretty envious … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Monday Morning Montaigne: Of Cannibalism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-montaigne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-mJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3118,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-break","url_meta":{"origin":1409,"position":0},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: BREAK!","author":"Gil","date":"December 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Due to travel schedules, and my unwillingness to lug a 1,300-page hardcover around with me, Monday Morning Montaigne is off until January! Enjoy!","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3034,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-brain-cloud","url_meta":{"origin":1409,"position":1},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of brain-cloud","author":"Gil","date":"December 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I know the news will break your heart, but there's no Montaigne post this week. My headcold rendered me even less comprehensible this weekend. I'll try to write about the first few essays of Book Three next week.","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3549,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-cripples","url_meta":{"origin":1409,"position":2},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of cripples","author":"Gil","date":"March 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Don't invent reasons to explain every fact. For example, just because you had really good sex with a crippled woman, it does not validate a proverb that says cripples are better in bed. Seriously. That's the example he chose. On to Of physiognomy!","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1307,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne","url_meta":{"origin":1409,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne","author":"Gil","date":"January 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Montaigne, on prognostications: True, there remain among us some means of divination by the stars, by spirits, bodily dreams, and the like -- a notable example of the frenzied curiosity of our nature, which wastes its time anticipating future things, as if it did not have enough to do digesting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3226,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-on-okay-i-didnt-finish-this-one","url_meta":{"origin":1409,"position":4},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: On okay I didn’t finish this one","author":"Gil","date":"January 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's Montaigne essay, On some verses of Virgil (pp. 774-831), turned out to be really good. However, I didn't have time to write about it, so I'm going to reread it this week and try to put something together for you by next Monday. Suffice to say, my worries\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2411,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-back-next-week","url_meta":{"origin":1409,"position":5},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Back Next Week","author":"Gil","date":"September 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was too busy\/addled this weekend to write my Monday Morning Montaigne post, dear readers. But I did finish the Apology for Raymond Sebond, and have (what I think) are some neat observations about it. I was gratified to see that M. loosened up a bit more in this last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}