…the house I live in…

“He will calm you…You will love him, you will see.” – Flaubert on Montaigne

“I have little control over myself and my moods. Chance has more power here than I.”

(Book I, Chapter 10)

With these two little sentences Montaigne sets a course that is unique, both to him and the world in which he lived. It is a course through the mine field of chance, reason, control, and self-knowledge.

As we’ve seen, Montaigne drew much of his information from ancient sources. But that does not mean he accepts their conclusions. Aristotle set a given course when declaring that the human is a “rational animal.” And while this is true, Montaigne does not accept that our capacity for reason sets us apart in any way superior to animals. To the contrary. After several pages of establishing the fact of animal intelligence, he concludes, “We have strangely overpaid for this fine reason that we glory in…” (II, 12) He takes the ancient concept of reason as the supreme human attribute, examines it, and finds it comes up short.

As someone who has lived with dogs all my life, I applaud Montaigne’s wisdom on this matter. The Christian fathers and scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages, while debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, also deemed that animals had no soul and consequently no place in heaven. This is a personal–as well as philosophical–problem for me. I have not-so-jokingly referred to my dogs as my teachers for years. They have no ego, are unwavering in their loyalty, and appear to always live in the present moment; this without, presumably, the capacity for reason, or at least not the degree of reasoning their self-important, so-called superior species claims. “When I play with my cat,” Montaigne asks, “how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?” (II, 12) And it is not just cats (or dogs) that draw his attention. He suggests that spiders, swallows, and even pigs might have something to teach humanity. Consider the story he shares of Pyrrho’s pig.

“Pyrrho the philosopher, being one day in a boat in a great tempest showed the most frightened among his companions a pig that was there, not at all concerned at this storm, and encouraged them by its example. Shall we then dare to say that this advantage, reason, that we make such a fuss about, and on account of which we think ourselves masters and emperors of the rest of creation, has been put in us for our torment? What good is the knowledge of things if by it we lost the repose and tranquility we should enjoy with it, and if it puts us into a worse condition than Pyrrho’s pig?”

(I. 14)

As is suggested with the opening quote, setting reason aside opens the door of human experience to intuition, chance and circumstance, as well as releasing our grip on what we deem to be within our control. I find this refreshingly enlightened. We cannot entirely reason our way through life. There are surprises, good and bad, which we cannot anticipate or experience fully if dissected through the prism of reason alone. Reason also diminishes our intuition, the value of which we underestimate, as recent research indicates.¹ “Reason has so many shapes that we know not which to lay hold of…” (III.13).

With an increasing self-awareness came a higher and more manifest degree of doubt–which Montaigne embraced with gusto. “Que sçais-je?” (What do I know?) This doubt demanded openness, which he cultivated aggressively. “The reason why we doubt hardly anything is that we never test our common impressions. We do not probe the base, where the fault and weakness lies; we dispute only about the branches.” (II, 12) He knew his awakening self-knowledge was tilling new philosophic soil:

“What rule my life belonged to, I did not learn until after it was completed and spent. A new figure: an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher!”

(II.12)

In the closing pages of his book, The Socrates Express, Eric Weiner sums up Montaigne’s outlook:

“Montaigne’s philosophy boils down to this: Trust yourself. Trust your experiences. Trust your doubts too. Let them guide you through life, and to the threshold of death. Cultivate the capacity to be surprised by others and by yourself. Tickle yourself. Remain open to the possibility of possibility.”

As an individual who has spent much time—perhaps too much?—in his own head, I wonder how does one cultivate the openness Montaigne realized? To set aside certainty and the thirsty ego that desires it is no small task.² I get twisted up over this sometimes. But sitting here in the woods, I turn to see Cooper in a sun spot, looking out and into the forest. He knows no such question. And again I am reminded, there are teachers– including the great oaks spread overhead–all around me. I have to be open to them.

Thanks for reading, and remember,
“The end and the beginning of knowledge are equal in stupidity.”

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¹ For a recent consideration of intuition consider Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Blink: The Power of thinking Without Thinking“. “We really only trust conscious decision making. But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.”

2 Though beyond the scope of this post, 30 years after Montaigne, Descartes secluded himself in his stove-heated room to wrestle with what he deemed the essential philosophical question, What can we know with certainty? His conclusion eclipsed Montaigne and set the course of Western philosophy: I think, therefore I am. (Cognito ergo sum.) Though his suspiciously tautological conclusion was challenged through the ages, it was not until the Existentialists of the 20th century that Decartes’s Cogito, ultimately lost its traction.