When the mind is satisfied, that is a sign of diminished faculties or weariness. No powerful mind stops within itself: it is always stretching out and exceeding its capacities. It makes sorties which go beyond what it can achieve: it is only half-alive if it is not advancing, pressing forward, getting driven into a corner and coming to blows; its inquiries are shapeless and without limits; its nourishment consists in amazement, the hunt and uncertainty, as Apollo made clear enough to us by his speaking (as always) ambiguously, obscurely, not glutting us but keeping us wondering and occupied.
(Montaigne Book III: 13)
What does Michel de Montaigne know? If it were possible for Montaigne to assert that he, indeed, knew nothing, would this not be a kind of knowing? If we call Montaigne a skeptic, does this serve to somehow clarify his project? What, therefore, is knowledge for Michel de Montaigne? In the “Essays” we do not open upon a realm of assertions, nor judgments; rather, we enter a realm of experimentation, of attempts, or ‘tries,’ trials meant to uncover certain something. What is the nature of this something upon which the entirety of Montaigne’s oeuvre takes aim? Montaigne takes himself, or rather, his consciousness as both the subject and object of his trials. Self-consciousness is the primary mode of investigation, and the primary object of investigation. It is neither a pure consciousness, nor is it simply an opening unto the world of objects, but rather is an intertwining between both. Knowing, for Montaigne, seems to mark a certain absence, or end, of thought; and it is precisely this knowing that Montaigne will place in doubt. Montaigne’s doubt is infinite, based as it is upon itself and the infinite change and flux of the world of experience. Montaigne recognizes the groundlessness of the understanding, such that what it calls knowledge stands in the way of its going forth. Montaigne engages in his trials, in his dialogues with himself in an attempt to uncover (uncover seems to be the proper term here as it cannot be spoken of in any direct manner) a kind of thought in action, in life, which seemingly thinks itself in acting, which we are always trailing behind with our reasoned explanations and our knowledge claims. Perhaps, in the end Montaigne, is not a skeptic in the strong sense, but rather, he wishes to gesture toward a kind of reason we all speak of, as if we had some understanding of it, but which is in actuality ineffable.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try every means that may lead us to it When reason fails us we make use of experience, which is a feebler and less worthy means.
(Montaigne Book III: 13)
The statement expresses the core of Montaigne’s skepticism. If reason were, itself, certain and knowable, then our judgments and knowledge claims would benefit from a similar kind of certainty. While desire might lead us to believe that such is the condition of man, that his knowledge claims are grounded in the universal reason which is ours to understand and make use of, Montaigne’s doubt serves to undermine the solidity of this supposed ground. However, Montaigne makes recourse to experience as a result of the failure of reason; does this not refute the possibility that Montaigne is a skeptic? Montaigne’s skepticism resides in a particular view of reason, which gives unto man a perspective removed from life. This reason, which the doubt of Montaigne will serve to undermine, deals in abstractions, in words, which appear hollow when subjected to critical scrutiny.
Our disputes are about words. I ask what is Nature, Pleasure, a Circle, and Substitution. The question is couched in words, and is answered in the same coin. A stone is a body. But if you press the point: and what is a body?- A substance. – And what is a substance? And so on, you will end by driving the answerer to exhaust his dictionary. One substitutes one word for another that is often less well understood.
(Montaigne Book III: 13)
Reason, divorced from life, is not reason at all, but a kind of folly. “Assertion and dogmatism are positive signs of stupidity.” (Montaigne Book III: 13) Knowledge, therefore, appears to be a kind of popular opinion; it is, nonetheless, similarly vacuous and hollow. Montaigne, therefore, must proceed with experience, although a lesser means, to uncover the truth of the matter.
If Montaigne is to discover a kind of reason – a capacity which man no doubt makes use of, although not in the way he thinks he does – he must uncover it through recourse to experience. Although, the necessities of reason– that is the reason, which Montaigne seeks to uncover – pushes him toward experience: “I do not know how to explain it, but experience shows us that all these interpretations dissipates the truth and destroys it.” (Montaigne III: 13) The realm of experience is the realm of becoming, of appearances, as such; being is outside the purview of man who must content himself to the flux of the changeable. Every attempt to know the changeable seems to arrest the change, and this seeming is long enough to abstract from, but this abstraction cannot be the truth, for the truth has already been altered. Hence it is that I may contradict myself, but the truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.” (Montaigne Book III: 2)In order to believe in knowledge, one must remove oneself from the flux, from the alterations of the world; in short we can believe only by ceasing to think. Montaigne, therefore, must engage his consciousness, in dialogue in order to uncover that reason which guides his actions, without removing him from the life, from the flux, wherein he finds himself. “It is from experience of myself that I attack human ignorance…” (Montaigne Book III 13) We must take seriously the claim Montaigne makes in his chapter on experience: “I study myself more than any other subject. This is my metaphysics, this is my physics.” (Montaigne Book III: 13) Metaphysics, and physics do not serve to further our understanding of ourselves; rather we further explain them through recourse to ourselves.
The consciousness, which Montaigne interrogates is his own, but it is no more free from the flux of the world than is truth itself.
I cannot fix my subject. He is always restless, and reels with a natural intoxication. I catch him here, as he is at the moment when I turn my attention to him. I do not portray his being; I portray his passage; not a passage from one age to another or, as the common people say, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.
(Montaigne Book III: 2)
This change, this flux, is the becoming, the movement of life itself, is the realm of man. We are not in possession of our consciousness as we are in possession of an object, neither are we possessed solely by our consciousness, rather, we are an interaction between body, mind and the world.
Let the mind rouse and enliven the heaviness of the body, and the body check and steady the frivolity of the mind.
(Montaigne Book III: 13)
It is a kind of mutual affectivity in the world of flux, such that we are never truly in total possession of either side, but continuously reckoning with each at once and in turn. To “Know thyself” seems to be a kind of folly, for to know would mark a kind of impasse which would no longer require contemplation, or reflection; and to inquire into that of which we have no knowledge leads toward an infinite opening. Life, therefore, appears to live itself through me, through my self-consciousness which is mine to explore, although the task of exploration can never be complete.
What, therefore, does Montaigne uncover through the trials of his self-consciousness? He has uncovered a kind of ineffable thought in deed, one which escapes our grasp, although it colours every endeavor that we undertake. If life is the movement to which we are subject we must learn to live it well. If truth seems to contradict itself, throughout the movement of life, perhaps it is as Montaigne says:
In these universal matters I allow myself to be ignorantly and carelessly guided by the general law of the world. I shall know it well enough when I feel it. My learning cannot make it change its course; it will not modify itself for me.
(Montaigne Book III: 13)
The “Essays” have uncovered that life continues to move in spite of, or despite our desire for knowledge and certainty. This desire, which is wholly human, can push us to seek out answers; which will, like the head of the Hydra, merely open up new avenues to our questioning glances. Life continues while our consciousness, our imagination is elsewhere, moving in countless direction away from the place that we are, in the flux that we are subject to in the movement which we are all a part of.
As Nature has provided us with feet for walking, so she has given us wisdom to guide us through life; a wisdom less subtle, robust, and spectacular that that of the philosophers’ invention, but correspondingly easy and salutary, which actually performs very well what the other only promises, for anyone lucky enough to know how to use it plainly and properly, that is to say naturally.
(Montaigne III: 13)
If we turn to the quote which opened the current examination, we see why it is that Montaigne’s work has endured to this day. Knowledge, is a kind of satisfaction which the tired mind might rest upon. There can be no guarantee that our minds are capable of getting it right. The “Essays,” via the method of an endless doubt, uncovers a kind of silent, invisible, reason, which is present in the actions and deeds of men. This reason, which Montaigne’s oeuvre uncovers, is no the reason we commonsensically speak of. It is not a theoretical perspective which might remove us from the bounds, and limits, of the life we live, such that we might examine it from the perspective of God. No, it is a kind of reason which seems to function of its own accord. It is a kind of reason which would be impossible to overturn, or overcome. This reason is a kind of certainty, however, not one we have access to in any way we might articulate plainly. Rather, it is through the “Essay” that we might be able to gesture toward it, to simply point to its existence by probing and examining ourselves. Desire turns us away from ourselves, in an effort to satisfy its insatiable need to go beyond and surpass its limits.
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