{"id":2266,"date":"2008-08-18T05:05:29","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T09:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2266"},"modified":"2008-08-18T11:48:45","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T15:48:45","slug":"monday-morning-montaigne-an-apology-for-raymond-sebond-take-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-an-apology-for-raymond-sebond-take-1","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Montaigne: An Apology for Raymond Sebond, Take 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for the long-unawaited return of Monday Morning Montaigne<\/a>!<\/p>\n

You ask, “What is MMM?”<\/em> It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s me, working my way through the Everyman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Library edition of Montaigne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Complete Works<\/a>\"\" (only the essays, which comprise 1,045 pages; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m on page 450 right now). Every Monday, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll post about some aspect of one of the essays that I read in the previous week.<\/p>\n

You ask, “Why Montaigne?”<\/em> Because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a sucker for the personal essay and M. is the inventor of the form<\/a>. Also, I never got around to reading him when I was a grad student at St. John\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s College<\/a>, and I feel bad about that.<\/p>\n

You ask, “Why do I have to suffer?”<\/em> If I had a readership of appreciable size, this would feel like the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Andy Kaufman reads F. Scott Fitzgerald\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> segment. Fortunately, no one reads this site, and you can always skip to the next post.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

This week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post begins my rambles about Montaigne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Apology for Raymond Sebond<\/em>. In 1484, Sebond published Natural Theology<\/em>. M. translated the book for his father, and wrote the Apology around 1575-1580 (his father died in 1568). I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read Sebond, but Donald M. Frame, the translator of my edition of M., wrote that he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153argued that man could learn all about God and religion by reading in the book of God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d M. disagreed with this idea, so rather than an apology\/defense of Sebond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s views, he spends his time exploring the limits and faults of human reason. In particular he criticizes the primacy of knowledge<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As with the rest of his essays, M. does this with great erudition, as well as with citations from myriad sources throughout history. Employing a massive library of poetry doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly undercut his argument against the limits of reason, but I think it creates a tension when his explanation that man is no better than an animal relies on passages from Plato, Lucretius, Tasso, Juvenal, Virgil, Dante, Homer, Tibullus, Martial, Horace and, of course, Ovid.<\/p>\n

Just because it’s contradictory doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not entertaining. M. takes on innumerable differences between man and beast and turns them on their heads, leaving man the poorer. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he asks, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re off and running. Honeybees, swallows, spiders, elephants, crabs, crocodiles, lions: over 30+ pages they all get to demonstrate aspects of human character that M.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s philosophical opponents would reserve for men alone. Even my greyhound gets in on the action:<\/p>\n

That hare that a greyhound imagines in a dream, after which we seem him pant in his sleep, stretch out his tail, wriggle his legs, and reproduce perfectly the motions of running, is a hare without fur or bones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

M. even turns the idea of human beauty upside-down, contending that our need for clothes, makeup and the like show that humans are naturally uglier than animals. Ultimately, he shows that the wisdom that is supposed to separate us from animals is transient, that the great philosophers in history would gladly have traded it for health.<\/p>\n

It all reminds me of a session on Aristotle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Politics<\/em> I attended during grad school. One of the students asked why we should take Aristotle seriously, since he was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anthrocentric.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The tutor (read: prof.) was puzzled by the student\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s term. The student explained that A. was only exploring HUMAN relationships and society, but his view was incomplete because he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t taking into account the societies of other animals. He added that we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t learn too much from A. because he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t also write about dolphins and other primates. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What makes us so different from them?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he asked.<\/p>\n

I held up my copy of the book and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Uh, THIS<\/em>? Those animals may be pretty advanced, but as far as I know, they haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figured out how to write stuff down and pass it on to future generations. When they do, let me know; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d love to read it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I have to admit that M.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scorched-earth approach to man vs. beast \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[I]t is not by a true judgment, but by foolish pride and stubbornness, that we set ourselves before the other animals and sequester ourselves from their condition and society\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d turned me off.<\/p>\n

M. does seem to recognize that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a difference between man and animals, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not our brains, our social structures, our dreams, or our use of clothes or artifice. Rather, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our belief \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not faith, which is more involved and likely to lead us astray, from what I can make out of his argument \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that sets us off, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m (presently) finding that a difficult pill to swallow.<\/p>\n

Still, there are another 120 pages in the Apology<\/em>, so let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see where it leads. (The next segment is titled Man’s Knowledge Cannot Make Him Happy,<\/em> so I don’t exactly have high hopes.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for the long-unawaited return of Monday Morning Montaigne! You ask, “What is MMM?” It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s me, working my way through the Everyman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Library edition of Montaigne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Complete Works (only the essays, which comprise 1,045 pages; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m on page 450 right now). Every Monday, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll post about some aspect of one of the essays that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Monday Morning Montaigne: An Apology for Raymond Sebond, Take 1”<\/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":[118],"class_list":["post-2266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-montaigne","tag-montaigne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-Ay","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2239,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-the-reloadening","url_meta":{"origin":2266,"position":0},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: The Reloadening!","author":"Gil","date":"August 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I gave up on my Monday Morning Montaigne project a year ago for two reasons. The first one was that I reached Apology for Raymond Sebond, the central essay of the second book. This essay -- the introduction to (and kindasorta defense of) Sebond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Natural Theology, which Montaigne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dad asked\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":2411,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-back-next-week","url_meta":{"origin":2266,"position":1},"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":[]},{"id":1588,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-books","url_meta":{"origin":2266,"position":2},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of books","author":"Gil","date":"July 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm back! As with other forms of exercise, it was difficult for me to return to Montaigne's essays after putting them off for a while. As Bizarro Aristotle says, \"You make the excuses, and the excuses make you.\" What better essay to mark my return to this project than one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"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":2266,"position":3},"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":2661,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-four-in-one-specials","url_meta":{"origin":2266,"position":4},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of four-in-one specials","author":"Gil","date":"October 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm going to cover four shorter essays this week, because it's my party. * * * Our first essay, Of giving the lie (pp. 611-615), actually continues the conversation from Of presumption, to my gratification (see last week's post to get an idea of how overwhelming that essay is). Montaigne\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":2704,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/montaigne-update","url_meta":{"origin":2266,"position":5},"title":"Montaigne update","author":"Gil","date":"October 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Hmm. Maybe I should have pushed my Montaigne-as-blogger idea, floated a few weeks ago when I wrote up Of presumption in my Monday Morning Montaigne series. Here's a piece from Andrew Sullivan's article \"Why I Blog\" in the new ish of The Atlantic: But perhaps the quintessential blogger avant la\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\/2266","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=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2271,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions\/2271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}