{"id":3402,"date":"2009-02-09T11:21:04","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T16:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=3402"},"modified":"2009-02-09T11:21:04","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T16:21:04","slug":"monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-art-of-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-art-of-discussion","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the art of discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

With only six of the Essays remaining, I feel as though there should be some sort of growing imperative, a sense of completion in the final 200 pages. So I was a bit disappointed when I read (and re-read) Montaigne’s Of the art of discussion<\/em> (pp. 854-876), but I didn’t think the last season of The Wire held up to the rest of the series either.<\/p>\n

This essay is meant to cover M.’s guide to worthwhile conversation \/ argument. I was hoping for something that would serve as an explanation of What I Got Out of St. John’s College, but instead it treads over old territory of how the learned reveal themselves to be imbeciles, how princes have dignity through their offices and not their thoughts, how the way in which we approach problems is more important than the substance of what we say about them, and how silly his own speech can be.<\/p>\n

It all feels like a rehash, and I suppose there’s some meta-way in which the structure of the essay actually mirrors what he’s seeing about the forms of argument, but I didn’t see it in my readings.<\/p>\n

So I’m going to bail on this one, leave you with a single quote \u00e2\u20ac\u201d<\/p>\n

It is unfortunate that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and trust yourself, and always sends you away discontented and diffident, whereas opinionativeness and heedlessness fill their hosts with rejoicing and assurance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u201d and get started on the 55-page Of vanity<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With only six of the Essays remaining, I feel as though there should be some sort of growing imperative, a sense of completion in the final 200 pages. So I was a bit disappointed when I read (and re-read) Montaigne’s Of the art of discussion (pp. 854-876), but I didn’t think the last season of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the art of discussion”<\/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-3402","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-SS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3118,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-break","url_meta":{"origin":3402,"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":3402,"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":3402,"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":3402,"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":3402,"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":3402,"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\/3402","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=3402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3403,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3402\/revisions\/3403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}