Montaigne: Selected Essays

It’s good to do good, but better to be virtuous. Virtue involves a struggle against selfish desires, and the willingness, when called upon, to sacrifice one’s interests to those of a greater good. For Montaigne, the finest heroes of virtue live in past ages; he cites Socrates, Cato the Younger, and Seneca as archetypes.

One of the ironies of virtue, for Montaigne, is that its greatest practitioners become so adept at virtue that they no longer struggle to achieve it, and this ease of action may cause their virtue to devolve back into mere goodness. Montaigne prefers the wisdom of Nature and his own conscience to any external demands from humanity—in modern parlance, it’s hard to “guilt-trip” him—which opens up the charge that he sidesteps the demands of virtue in his own life. His answer is that he is not an exemplar but merely a student of the virtuous arts.

Aside from virtue, the chief purpose of life is to enjoy it, and for this Montaigne advises that we simply listen to our instincts and act accordingly.

For Montaigne, most humans are fools, satisfied to waste their lives on trivialities and superstitions and to live without virtue. He cites Democritus, Heraclitus, and others among the Ancients who feel the same way.

Though a Catholic, Montaigne is troubled by the religious wars that rage around him, and he hopes that there can be more tolerance among people. He is also concerned about the rising tide of political rebelliousness, especially that engendered by his friend La Boétie’s essay, “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,” which argues that tyrants derive their power from the consent of the people, and which has been taken not as a theme for discussion but as a call to arms.

Much of the folly Montaigne observes comes from the advice of the learned, opinions Montaigne believes fall far short of the simple common sense of the lower classes. Most of the rest comes from people’s propensity to boast, lie, and behave cruelly, as well as from the inability to treat with civility and open-mindedness the mores and habits of strangers.

His unique and intense relationship with Étienne de la Boétie, asserts Montaigne, is the result of great good fortune, and can only occur perhaps once every few centuries among humans. Friendship in general, though, he believes is available to us all, but it is hard to find and hard to cultivate. Friendship demands loyalty and focus, and at its very best it is “but one soul in two bodies” (81).

Friendship demands equality, else we cannot bare our souls in true intimacy. Where one member of a relationship has power over the other, friendship cannot spring up, as between father and son, teacher and student, king and courtier. Even partners in marriage are beset by too many concerns and considerations to enter freely into the intimacy of friendship. Thus most of the relationships that we call friendships are not that but something less.

Montaigne mourns the early death of his greatest friend, La Boétie, but late in life he receives the gift of a second such friendship, with the young Marie de Gournay, who becomes the editor and publisher of his essays.