Montaigne on Illusion: The Denunciation of Untruth Author(s): Jean Starobinski and John Muresianu Source: Daedalus, Vol.

108, No. 3, Hypocrisy, Illusion, and Evasion (Summer, 1979), pp. 85-101 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024621 Accessed: 05/03/2010 13:54
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JEAN STAROBINSKI

Montaigne

on Illusion: The Denunciation

of Untruth

I
The of the notablest is one falsehood and treachery. "Dissimulation of this age."1 "Deceit supporteth, yea, and nourisheth qualities a cloak of noble pretexts we the greatest part of mens vacations."2 Beneath scheme, and we kill. world around us ismere

Exalted by the Stoics, taken up again during the Middle Ages from the of Salisbury and Otto von Freising, Christian perspective then, later, by John a host of others, the if theme of the world as stage is persistently, by hoary "All the world is a stage-playing" unsystematically, developed by Montaigne. as did many of his contemporaries, stressed the illu (Petronius).3 Montaigne, effect of this drama: this game in which men play out their appointed roles, sory and declaiming like actors, is but shadow and vanity. gesticulating, posturing, The grandeur of princes is pure sham: artful imitation suffices to convey the idea of majesty and to inspire the respect of the people. "Yea the very maske of or habit of Majesty, in Tragedies, doth in some sort greatnesse, represented touch and beguile us."4 The wisdom of the prudent and the doctrines of schol
ars are no less sham. All is lure, decoy, mummery, humbug. All is borrowed,

all ispour lemasque et la montre, vain ostentation, mottled inanity, cruel and futile show. Scanning the stage, the eye meets only triumphant deceivers and satisfied it selfe could not in these times nor negotiate without dis dupes. "Innocencie nor trafficke without Should we laugh or cry before this simulation, lying."5 spectacle? "Most of our vacations are like playes."6 But it is a farce inwhich men "Cast ravage, torture, and kill. The fires of stakes and flesh smoke everywhere. we our eyes about us, and in a consider all the world; all is general survay tottring, all is out of frame."7 The average man, without malice aforethought, lends himself to imposture: of his own fancy, forgetful of himself, he is caught up in the game. He prisoner knows neither the true nature of things nor his own true nature, for the evil spell of appearance enthralls him. The martial ardor of princes and the stale propa for they have need of credu ganda of religions make the most of this blindness, even at the cost of their lives lous men who submit to domination by opinion, to take hold of aman in respect of life."8 opinion is of sufficient power ?"Every How did Montaigne discover this duplicity? Can a precise moment be dis or like the cerned when disillusion like a bitter Grace him, enlightened 85

86 d?sabusement?the to certain heroes

JEAN

STAROBINSKI

the desenga?o?that disenchantment, suddenly restores sight in baroque theater? Religious tradition and secular morality are but traps, that have always taught that the world and its pageantry they true riches lie elsewhere. dazzle us with their false glitter while Indeed, one wonders whether pretense ever took Montaigne by surprise. The recognition of one becomes is, like language, a skill learned early and effortlessly: pretense aware of the universal when one first looks at the world. Duplicity and cheating are not discoveries made late in life; are the biases which cunning they through the world presents itself to the neophyte. Hypocrisy is not even a secret: all the world extols "this new found vertue of faining and dissimulation, which now is so much in credit."9 The of public officials and high society exposes itself fakery by its very excess. Anyone who gets involved in public affairs is warned of it from the beginning, and in order not to stray from the generally observed rule, must resolve to be on guard and to protect himself. "Nowadaies, straightaway to others."10 On that is not the truth which is true, but that which is perswaded that point, education is quickly acquired. Politics reveals itself from the start as defenses the ambushes of ruse, guile?quite craftiness, legitimate against so little concealed enemies and the inconstancy of fortune. Thus deception is that it appears to be universally is no need for a sudden vision accepted. There are the common to disclose the presence of the mask and the duplicity. They
"form," general the rule. "manner" everyone adopts?tacit understanding erected into a

At the same time, in the futile chatter of garrulous humanity, it is not rare to hear deceptive appearances denounced. The protestation of sincerity, the refus al to flatter, the scorn of counsels of prudence?all for have their consecrated mulae
Bold

duly
words

recorded
are one

in relevant
weapon of

treatises.
persuasion

All

are part of the oratorical

many. The rhetoric

arsenal.
that op

among

poses being and seeming is still one of the games inwhich everyone takes pleas ure. Whoever wishes can, with the ample support of citations, bring to trial the universal comedy?but, for all that, he does not himself give up the stage. He takes on a final role, that of the sage, of the disillusioned elder, who sees with the vices of his time and denounces them with vehemence. The perspicacity remain imperfect if it did not foresee among its code of dissimulation would is often only a supple The enemy of masks gestures the refusal to dissimulate. character in the masked comedy: the spectacle becomes credible by the mentary refuses to believe in the appearances he presence of a character who ostensibly encounters. The actor who defends himself against illusion takes on the role of a real being, according to the game of relative position. (The same is true of cur rent ideology, one of whose best protective maneuvers is to attack "ideology.")11 of playing that game? He is the first to suspect Can we suspect Montaigne this of himself, and he rejects it with as much force as is possible for a man to reject the world
to do so.

inwhose

bosom

he has lived and acted, and where

he continues

must have of truth,"12 Montaigne To discern so acutely "the banishment formulated for himself a rule of candor and veracity that the world never failed to disappoint. Would if he he speak so often of inconstancy and humbuggery even if he knew that did not have a standard of forthrightness and steadfastness, standard through a confused hope? Any accusation of the falsity of the world

MONTAIGNE

ON

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87

a truth that would exist else supposes the belief in the contrary possibility: where (in this world or outside of it) and that would authorize us, in its name, to the glamour of seeming, of falsehood. By denouncing become the prosecutors sides with the fullness of true being, which he knows unequivocally Montaigne to be only by the force of the refusal that makes him hold the lies and the masks cannot yet But Montaigne (at the instant he opposes the world) unacceptable. claim to possess truth: he proclaims only his hatred of "feint." The "true" is the as yet unknown positive "x," implied by the negation of the festering evil; it does not have a fixed shape, for it is the unappeased energy that quickens and
arms the act of refusal.

can at first only manifest itself in space; negation expresses itself Opposition the act of moving feels the need to reserve apart. Montaigne metaphorically by from which he can view the for himself aplace removed from the world?a point If the world life of men and where he can feel delivered from all compromisings. is a theater of illusion, one's duty is to exit, to find a way of being elsewhere. To is not really to exile one's self from a world from which truth has been banished
expatriate.

the site thus becomes the first act of a new drama: it determines Secession an es the deceitful game, sets a frontier, consecrates where Montaigne stops takes This site will not be an abstract point: with Montaigne, cape. everything concrete shape. The will be the "librairie"?a separate place sovereign, pro will not make it his permanent residence: tected place. We know that Montaigne he will still give much of his time to public affairs and even to court life. But what is truly important for him is to have conquered the possibility of feeling at home in another sphere, of removing himself totally at any moment from the distance its symbolic reserved localization, game. He has given contemplative a to live there always. Here, for it an ever-welcoming hearth, without having rift separates him, the spectator, from human affairs: as he builds his haven of the crowd as it voluntarily throws freedom, his eye bridges the gap. He watches itself into slavery, sees the chains that bind others, and feels his own loosen and is consciousness. fall. The first stake is not knowledge?it This taking possession of aplace, the arrangement of a preserve, also mark a caesura in time. One has only to note the wording of the inscription Montaigne had painted on the wall of his library in 1571,13 a year that marks a radical break inMontaigne's existence. A new era in his personal life begins. This moment should be linked to a fixed point of both collective time (Anno Christi 1571 . . . time (aet. 38 . . .die suo natali). The birth pridie cal. mart.) and of biographical day reinforces the idea of a voluntary birth. Time begins again and takes a new it is now the time that remains to live (quantillum in tandem superabit direction: decursi multa jam plus parte spatii), the few days that will be added to the already life. A new law and a new rule come into effect. Order is no longer completed sets an expression of founded on servitium but on libertas. A strict opposition a will to break (servitii aulici et munerum disgust, publicorum pertaesus) against the votive act that consecrates the place of retreat (libertati suae, tranquillitatique, et otio consecravit). This place will be the "bosom of the learned Muses" (doctarum and virginum sinus), in obvious reference to the works of poetry, philosophy, history drawal, that will surround him. For the image of the hidden place reader, the notion (dukes latebras), and the feminine the modern of with figure of

88

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tells us that he is not sure whether he wouldn't the Muses (later Montaigne of the Muses, than by the copula the acquaintance rather produce a child?"by its tion of my wife")14 evoke the psychoanalytic concept of regression, with invokes serenity (quietus, then tran of related notions. When Montaigne cortege is seem quilinas), security (securus), and rest (otium), this facile interpretation for the sake of the psychoanalytic confirmed. Nevertheless, argument, one ingly the house is the ancestral home (avitas sedes) of the should note that, whereas in the list of masculine line, sedes is feminine, as are most of the nouns contained terms consecrated by the inscription (only otium is neuter!). Notwithstanding, a as one should recognize, Hugo Friedrich has well shown, that this is simply restatement of the traditional formulae of otium cum litteris, that is, the con ideal, the mode urged when civic humanism templative variant of the humanist had shown itself impracticable and strewn with perils.15 (Montaigne, who knew two perfectly well how to acquit himself of his political tasks, proves that the can alternate.) The inaugural inscription must not be read as primarily a modes to an impersonal for it conforms (or transpersonal) document, psychological as source and one can argue that by exalting antiquity paradigm. However, nutritive sap, by justifying solitary life and retreat into one's self (sibi vivere), the forms into which could flow anguish, tradition put the expressive of individual desire. The and the need for security at the disposition nostalgia, libidinal uses of this impersonal language can be surmised. dedicates his "librairie" to freedom and The inscription in which Montaigne a second inscription (the text of which is less easily is matched by tranquility which dedicated it to the memory of a lost friend, La Bo?tie. The decipherable), to the self-consecration: the library consecration is appended funerary intends to enjoy includes the books of the vanished companion. The Montaigne the tranquility he longs to savor during the second half of his life perpetuates with his favorite friend. The stay in the "librairie" is thus twice bound dialogue himself awaits and that of which he is the ed by death: that which Montaigne survivor. For both, the notion of identity plays a principal role. With respect to feels himself responsible for an image, a likeness. For this La Bo?tie, Montaigne reason he took charge of editing his works (1570-71), thereby solemnly under humanist
taking to conserve and transmit, entire and intact, the countenance of the admir

alter nothing, nothing, death toward dissipation and oblivion. resolves to deliver and security, Montaigne it rest, liberty, leisure, tranquility, to which public life from the ceremony from dependence, it from "mutation," condemns those who belong to it. For him, the time to live in communion with to one's nature, ever faithful to one's self without losing one's self, ever faithful
Nature, is now.

able companion, one must lose

such as he had been

in life. The rule of identity dictates that resist the pull of that one must doggedly With respect to his own life, by assuring

II

the retreat of 1571 gives a decisive response is The choice (crisis) to which in its relation to the elects a life stabilized thus a choice of identity. Montaigne self and opposed to the world and its theater of illusion.

MONTAIGNE

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89

to think of the first chapters (written between It is customary 1572 and 1574) texts, while the later texts mark the entrance on stage of the "me" impersonal One should recognize, however, and the concern for self-description. that the is but the further elaboration of a thought that was from self-portraiture the outset oriented life. The question of the self is posed toward personal from the very beginning: Montaigne tried at first to answer it by tradi tional methods, and it is because these methods did not satisfy his expec tations that he had recourse to another approach, another strategy. to The texts of the first period leave ample traces of Montaigne's sensitivity that teach the return to, and repossession of, the self. He arguments philosophic to himself, he paraphrases them, he reiterates them repeats these arguments with variations, until the end of his life, he will remain and, elsewhere, up attached to them. If one reads, among others, the chapter "De la Solitude''' (I, 39), one finds that what Montaigne is searching for is a position in this world that is really his. In to this he differs from other men who, succumbing imagination, presumption, or and vanity, try to occupy anticipate ranks and stations that are not theirs. as
Their thoughts always wander elsewhere?"Other men goe ever else-where."16

"Who doth not willingly his health, his ease, yea, and chop and counter-change his life for glorie, and for reputation? The most unprofitable, vaine, and coun terfet coine, that is in use with us."17?To do so is to live outside the self. This appetite for leaving one's true place, this need to assert one's self, result in the eternal masquerade of human tragicomedy. Man confers on the fears or desires of his own imaging a supereminent for him becomes reality: the elsewhere closer, more real, more important than the here. Thus he assumes the look and the garb that seem to bring him closest to the chimera. Such is the inevitable that transforms man from a being fooled by his into a progression imagination masked being. Having bestowed false faces upon all things, he can in turn false, only confront them with a grimace or a mask. Making his own life depend on what others think of him, he is less hypocritical than estranged. Rousseau will not frame his first indictment more compellingly. error that is the universal Here like Seneca before him, de Montaigne, to avoid: "My and which he is determined which nounces, is, profession,
wholly that to always settle and containe us to me think in my ailleurs?"We selfe. . . ."18 He ever think vows on to resist somewhat the lure tempts else."19

And
effects,

again,
are

"It is here, with

to be considered."20

us, and no where

And, "We

else,

that the so?les powers

reserve a store-house for

and
our

should

selves, what need soever chance; altogether ours, and wholly free, wherein we hoard up and establish our true liberty, and principal retreit and solitari may
nesse, wherein we must go alone to our selves, take our ordinarie entertain

ment."21 To
actual

think here will mean

to resist

to do one's best not to trespass

threat to one's identity, and

the conscience's
to concentrate

self-awareness,

every

on the powers that one to one's self. regains in this conversion Good teaching and sound ethical choice respond to a series of unequivocally all of which pit focusing the self between alternatives, against its dispersion: being and seeming, here and there, me and others, mine and not-mine, the natural and the artificial, the spontaneous and the learned, the interior and the exterior, the

90

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no real choice. Each of these antitheses con profound and the superficial, there is are both tains or echoes all the others. They and super interchangeable neither suspense nor hesitation: the decision ismade in imposable. They permit
advance. tion of designate and autonomy All one course of action?the return to the self, the resump autarchy.

does the ancient lesson of philosophic diatribe tell us? That man, by to outside forces, himself to no purpose; that he is blind submitting squanders that he pursues only illusory pleasures; that, as a result, passion and passivity; his substance dissipates and his will wears thin and becomes servile. But to the extent that he reenters the self, that he withdraws into his own inner fortress, and becomes precious. Health returns, and he finds him everything crystallizes of all that is self lively and alert. His native vigor is, at last, revived. Relieved not himself, man can enjoy and possess his true force. He coincides with him self. He forbids his energies to launch themselves toward chimerical futures or any external object. No seepage of the substance "me" is allowed. His actions are such that as close to himself as possible. they find their point of application the perfect action will consist of pure self-reflection, of nothing Ultimately, more than the reinforcement of an identity. Feeding back upon itself, the action
does not leave the here and the now, but rather completes them, reinforces them,

What

in of intensity and plenitude. Now, here?this confers upon them a maximum stant and this place are henceforth contained and preserved in the decision to be one's self and belong only to one's self. Time and space, instead of being suf fered as destructive forces, will be products of the interior will power that af initial instant. Thus can conscience hope firms the here and now, in a perpetual never more to be distracted from the self. Conscience has become an energy that itself from instant to instant, aiming always at itself, seeking to perpetuates invest itself only within the borders of the self, spurning the flattering appeals of for the external world. One must be eternally vigilant, perpetually suspicious,
ever inaccessible to the seductions that distract or subtract from the forces nec

essary
himself.

for self-mastery
Solitude does

and self-defense.
not deliver him of

Suspicion
vices,

will

not

spare the subject

"concupiscences":

weaknesses,

"It is not enough, for a man to have sequestred himselfe from the concourse of a man must also sever himselfe from the people: it is not sufficient to shift place,
popular conditions, that are in us. A man must sequester and recover himselfe

from himselfe."22 have generally perceived how this return to the the wisdom of antiquity, differs from what Christian piety and, self, inspired by return to the self in order to listen to above all, Augustinian teaching enjoin. To the voice of God and submit to his judgment is a rigorous demand; it differs an from the inward glance that seeks in the self merely interlocutory radically mirror and that aims to give to the mortal individual the full exercise of his own Interpreters of Montaigne judgment. If both the humanist and the religious injunctions preach reappropria tion , it is from the perspective of the believer only the first step toward sub to transcendent mission authority and the hope of salvation. For the humanist, once successful, is a satisfactory goal in itself. reappropriation, not that of spiritual vocation. Yet he Montaigne well knows that his choice is the charge of "sinful self-complacency" that will be leveled in the anticipates next century by the men of Port Royal and, later, Malebranche. Indeed, some

MONTAIGNE

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times he goes so far as to accuse himself of weakness and to pay homage to those who are capable of true devotion. "They propose God as an object infinit in . . .And he that in power, unto themselves. and incomprehensible goodnesse, a can enlighten his soule with the flame of lively faith and hope, really and and deli doth build unto himselfe a voluptuous in his solitarinesse, constantly, de all other lives."23 At the same time Montaigne cious life, far surmounting clares the denial of the body and the categorical break with the realities of the to be beyond his reach: "The wiser sort of men, having a strong and world an spirituall life. But vigorous mind, may frame unto themselves altogether I must help to uphold my selfe by corporall com mine being common, modities."24 He will sometimes be quite severe with those who push their scorn cut themselves off from their bodies (se for the world so far as to completely It is from them and escape man. d?sassocier du corps): "They will be exempted meere into Angels, insteade of transforming themselves they transchange folly, into beastes: in lieu of advancing, themselves Such tran they abase themselves. me as much, as steepy, and inaccessible humours scending affright high to submit again existence, places."25 This is to betray the unity of reconstituted saves to the maleficence of exteriority by putting one's self hors de soi. Montaigne for those who, having severed themselves from the his sharpest disapprobation more to to turn back world, utterly to subjugate it against it in order change it, to be extremely well informed. To the will of God?of which they pretend the first victims of the they are themselves but witless Thespians, Montaigne,
new canon they would impose.

IfMontaigne chooses inner identity, the equal and stable relation of the self to the self, he does so without taking his eyes off the world, and by preserving to one's self. He is to remain in the ties that do not impede belonging willing close touch with the world, as long as enjoying the material world is compatible to with the refusal of servitude to it. According the fullest personal Montaigne, existence includes the life of the body, and the body is a "piece" of the world, a
part of nature. to a few arguments of the themes great in the name of of ancient the moral truth, science, favor Montaigne com both Reverting resuscitates

that,

fullest

mitment to, and withdrawal from, the world. tween the solidity of actions and the futility lesson of traditional morality, that is, he opts at work. A liaire (Friedrich)26 is unmistakably
reluctant to give precedence to language,

it comes to choosing be When of words, Montaigne accepts the for action. Here his pr?jug? nobi well-born is perforce gentleman
and the seductions of artful

eloquence,

it is a question of contrasting the outside and the inside, speech.27 antithesis suggested by the same traditional system of eth according ics, he claims to be diffident of action, because action projects us into the treach erous region beyond the limits of the self. We have just quoted his opinion of those who claim to reform dogmas and civil laws in the name of a truth they think they possess. The only activity that is not deceitful is that in which the individual acts without forsaking himself, that by which he enters the role of the judge, casting his eyes on the world, or on himself?ultimately, that in which the ego is simul and supreme purpose. Such activity is expressed in taneously genetic principle But when to another
the reflexive verbs s'essayer (to examine one's self), s'examiner (to test one's self), se

92 peindre

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STAROBINSKI

in the end, reclaim their and actions will, (to depict one's self). Words but solely in the context of self-consciousness and reflective action. validity, as itwill be to us in this such Identity, however, presented portrait, is not of same nature as the the had initially pursued in the form of a identity Montaigne constant equality of the self to the self. Let us now retrace the calm and path taken by Montaigne from one definition of identity to the other. on a from afar at the world, quiet and Looking settling for that purpose consecrated place, Montaigne the attitude that the ancients called theoria, adopts or theoretical existence. Indeed (though in an addition dated after 1588), he presents one of the classic arguments justifying the practice of theoria:
Our the life (said Pithagoras) neare unto the great and of assemblies populous to the the of the and to win some, get glorie, goale with bodies all industrie; for of gaine, others, greedinesse to sell: others there are (and those be not the worst) marchandise that draws wherein good, but to marke and to be how, or observers direct their and to what wherefore, of other mens lives and owne.28 end, all things actions that so

games, Olympike exercise their games, thither bring seek after no other are done: they may and

spectators judge

the better

the spectator tries to go back to Puzzled by the variety of human activities, causes: he applies himself to understanding, in a comprehensive view, the how and the why of the whole. This external truth must almost immediately find its both in the intellectual act of judgment (which is also a internal application, form of vision, though directed inward) and in the voluntary action by which life. The inquiry, actively pursued through the laby rinth of the real, attempts to arrive at uniform laws. The latter, having not only in equal measure the quality of the value of causal laws, but also possessing or negative), find their practical extension in the personal examples (positive unification. life, to the extent that they make possible its harmonious everyday Thus a truth perceived outside of the self should have the power to be imitated and relived identically inside. Its efficacy is translated into identity with the self, that is to say, into the constancy and the virtuous uniformity of our style of life. can only be reiterated, identi Clearly, once the truth is grasped by the theoria, it ever the identity and stability of the subject that cal with itself and demanding to be it. The spectator relates to exemplary existences by endeavoring possesses to insure perpetual fidelity to these models of con like them. In this effort, the stancy, he strives to be at one with himself. To satisfy this requirement, the individual rules his will nor suffices: the impersonal literature of the Le?ons recall of the example, admittedly, that the reader renounce neither judgment be effective only on condition that urges us to offers to our sight the evidence effort. Memory personal it: "Until such time as you have framed your selfe such, that you dare not repeat halt before your selfe, and that you shall be ashamed of, and beare a kind of
respect unto your selfe . . . present Cato, Phocion, and Aristides unto your

presence even fooles would hide their faults, and estab imagination, indi lish them controulers of all your intentions."29 We must look to exemplary the control of viduals in order to imagine their eyes directed toward us. Under these beings, with whom for the moment we identify ourselves, we are thrown our that constitutes back on our own truth and to the act of self-affirmation in whose personal identity.

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and internal regularity will soon This closed circuit of external exemplarity to Montaigne. He will soon have discovered that the ex appear unrealizable contradict each other; that the law of human action is not univocal (since amples
identical effects can have diverse causes, or, according to the circumstances, the

same behavior can produce diametrically that, in the opposite consequences); of an unexpected conferred on virtuous event, the paradigmatic light quality into question. heroes can be brought "Every example limpeth,"30 Montaigne us not to will finally say?after having enjoined limp (clocher) before exemplary men. More the require and decisively, Montaigne, by generalizing profoundly ment for an undisturbed was to the discovery that gaze, contemplative brought it was incompatible with the demand for unity, rest, and equality with the self, that is, with the notion of identity in its original sense. In effect, the individual has not only to take a distant look at the life of the world, but has to split himself in order to become a theater in his own right. to an injunction formulated According by Seneca (but stressed by Montaigne): "You and another are a sufficient theater one for another; or to your selfe alone."31 Although initiated in the hope of obtaining the unity to be realized when the spectator-me will be able to give his full approval to the spectacle-me, an irretrievable the schism implicit in the act of self-observation introduces
duality. In Montaigne's own experience, the auto-contemplative schism, instead

of being self-regulating, initiates a process of rapid pluralization. The decompo an infinite sition sets in motion and limitless changes regression. Multiple swarm in the space that extends itself before the observer's gaze. The stage that the "me" is to itself is invaded by a horde of unstable and mutable figures. confesses that he has no power, except to witness the change going Montaigne on in himself. The task of it is hopeless. Repose, so sincerely desired, mastering can no be attained, and being once again slips away. longer

Ill
As has already been indicated, the failure of the self-regulatory enterprise leads to the reinforcement of the role of observer. If tranquil converse with one's self appears unrealizable, of contemplating there is yet the possibility l'ineptie et en rolle of the monsters that is to say, captured by writ l'estranget? (registered), observed-me?henceforth ing. Faced with an internal other?the permanently an strains to assure the only possible installed, eye ever-vigilant continuity, since the complete equality of the self to the self is no longer attainable by virtue of the will. This eye is not without its effect on the "spectacle-me." It is not of power. We are, however, far from the organizational ef altogether stripped fectiveness at first hoped for. The rift is irreparable. There will never be coinci dence or tranquil identity of the observer-me and the observed-me. The sole recourse for those who yet value unity is to translate the latter?the observed-me?into the discourse of change: discourse that no longer has for its moral stability, but rather the quest for the causes of failure, for the objective reasons that make repose for the inventory of obstacles that, by impossible,
degrees, caused the mirage of transparent, univocal, simple wisdom to recede.

The

is the unitary place where the gathering of the many is compatible with the changeableness of moods, plished. Writing

book

can be accom the multiplie

94

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ity of contradictory thoughts, with growth, the benefit of an ulterior synthesis brought as this one: his reader. Hence, phrases such at a short distance by the declaration, "My
indeed two."32

travel. This works to movement, or about by reading, by Montaigne book is alwaies one," followed "My selfe now, and my selfe anon, are

to of the transference of the unity-quest as we have already seen, had been to perform the ethical task of constancy and virtuous reaffirmation of the self, in or set of conformity with a putative rule examples held to be definitive. Books were a crucial part of this were the books of others, the master pursuit: but they to be followed, the historical paragons and arche books containing the precepts to internal truth, had it been possible, would types begging imitation. Access have been gained through intimate converse and the experience of reading. As as virtue excludes the pursuit of glory and concern for posterity, Montaigne's sent to his own truth and virtuous identity would have been mute before the transforms the internal, private effulgence. The recourse to writing perfectly it initial experience of a reader into the experience of an author. Simultaneously, into critical reading, by of na?ve, credulous entails the transformation reading which texts are no longer exploited with a view to reiterative identification but to new ends determined by the book qua craft.
The Identity book, ceases now to be the a seat of permanent identity, essence confers extracted a new from meaning the realm on that of concept. appearance

We must now assay the significance the book. The first hope of Montaigne,

and illusion, cultivated as the only value worthy of trust. Instead, it is a relation that attests to the closeness of the image to the model, as the agent is himself the includes and reab author of the image. In other words, identity thus conceived twofold: first, because the "me," is In effect, the difference sorbs the difference. never stops dissembling; sec despite the judicative glance it casts upon itself, because the book and life, as close and similar as one desires them to be, ond, levels of existence. The abyss can constitute distinct, ineluctably discordant It is through him be spanned by the eyes of the now indispensable witness. only of life to the book can be guaranteed. and for him that the resemblance to show itself, is also double: it The "me," to the degree that it undertakes the eye of the observer, always synchronized with the act of writing, comprises of unstable feelings and shifting moods that the text records and the multiplicity to catch an unwonted or relates. The reader is not glimpse of simply beckoned states of a subtly reworked self-portrait. The painter presents him the diverse self by the repeated act of painting himself, and the viewer must pass judgment on several levels of imitation and expression. the art into play. Although Such a likeness brings an aesthetic exigency it used by Montaigne?peindre, vocabulary portrait, couleurs?is metaphorical, has a profound and revealing value. Identity is entrusted to the written work, to
the book, to literature. Montaigne's venture, embarked on as a personal resolu

losing sight of this first purpose, purely moral purpose, will, without then to the self-portrait, become a literary masterpiece. The resort to writing, of self. The latter of a progressive should not be considered stages discovery tion with
was, as we have seen, the object of attention and dominant interest from the

very beginning. ty of fixing that identity

What

occurs

transference of the responsibili is the progressive to the book, to the painted image. What was to writing,

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an artistic one. This not the theme of only introduces also salvages alienation, dissimilarity, failure of the moral quest for stability?it and mutability for a synthesis from which the image of a unique individual will out of the multitude materialize of its conditions et humeurs. By requiring communication with, and the consent of, a witness (the reader, the observer of the portrait), the new aesthetic exigency tends toward the foundation of a new ethics: an ethics of veracity in representation, based on submitting the copy to the view of others. The conclusion to be drawn would seem to be that whenever the demand for identity is strong enough, it inevitably results in the renewal of ethical rules. This duty of fidelity to one's self entails the mediation of others. Previously, to the compulsion that probity and integrity required an extrinsic intervention: of example and precept, endowed with that the individual sovereign authority, was supposed to internalize to the letter. Now the landscape is by obeying new: the aesthetic concept of likeness takes the left empty by the utterly place task becomes as well as that of the (that is, of Christianity authority the sole surviving criterion is the success, stroke for stroke, Stoics). Henceforth, of the "portraict" in the eyes of the witness and, above all, in the eyes of the writer himself, the first witness of his own mutable existence. Relations with others no longer involve a peril, a loss of self. Nor are they superfluous: they are the inescapable passageways it through which identity reveals and manifests self. Little matter if the book does not find actual readers; that it was conceived now receives his pour autruy is enough. Montaigne identity directly from the
book.

a moral

decline

of traditional

Thus, paradoxically, order, stability, and integrity can be the products of self-directed that has at first no intention other than to record an exis activity tence in accordance with the aesthetic postulate of likeness. What Montaigne was unable to attain to it to by seeking regulate his life, by strictly subjecting normative he will achieve, without to do more than example, having sought faithfully represent himself in the manner of the sculptor or painter:
And so if it no man to have entertained read me, I lost my have selfe time, happen my so idle houres, about and profitable In this pleasing thoughts? framing so often been I have faine to frizle and trimme me, that so I selfe, by my extract my formed.

many

poutraite might some sort

that the patterne is and in selfe, confirmed, thereby I have drawn my selfe for others, selfe with my purer Drawing and better than were my first. I have no more made then my colours, booke, my me. A booke booke hath made to his Author: consubstantiall Of a and fit peculiar A member of my of an life. Not and end, and occupation. strange occupation as all other to have I bookes. Have taken an account forraine, time, my mis-spent of my selfe so and so continually curiously?33

the better

IV

The lesson to be drawn from such an analysis ismanifold. We see an enemy of appearance (masquerade) resort to fiction (to "form" himself) and to represen tation (to portray himself "for others"). The adventure that began with the dis missal of seeming ends with the triumph of seeming. There is no inconsistency. A simple explanation is easy to find and applies equally well to thinkers closer to us than The initial attack against deceptive appearance is at first Montaigne.

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reality. But if reality eludes sparked by the hope of apprehending underlying the grasp, if the doctrine of the skeptics prevails, then our only riches must lie in but as there is no this world of appearances. Their value remains questionable; as we all know, leads are not quite counterfeit. Skepticism, legal currency, they straight to phenomenalism. thus resurrected, has a new qualification. We have seen that, in Appearance, the place of an ontological appearance received an aesthetic justifi legitimation, for the true essence that evades it, it can, if we lend a cation: as a substitute itself is and gratifying relations. Happiness hand, offer a system of harmonious more one must not one in advance that possible, provided hope for recognizes to our senses. than the spectacle exposed imperfect For Montaigne, the same is true of the political order. In the eyes of an on custom no institution is based on absolute justice?only "unmasking" critic, is no best choice, no absolute norm. We are forced to and convention. There
revert to custom and convention recognized as such. Montaigne's conservatism

(like Pascal's later on) accepts the established order not because it ismore just in it is generally more capable of assuring public peace?the itself, but because most precious of all worldly goods. Here again, the convention that serves as a to the convention that had ini bears no resemblance rallying point ultimately been the object of defiant protest. What had been rejected was the dogmatic tially is finally accepted (usually theological) basis of the appeal of convention. What that does not pretend to be the expression is an entirely pragmatic arrangement
of more mon than interest. the most If there agreement general are no more occult on what essences, seems then best there to serve is no the longer com an

occult power behind them. As soon as nothing stronger than itself can oppose it, the standard of the political appearance ceases to evoke suspicion. Henceforth, to some hidden norm but the open is no longer conformity and moral world success of the apparent relations individuals establish among each other. V and certain currents in the The distance between Montaigne's skepticism of the absurd, of d?mystification, literature of our own time?the philosophy seem considerable. Nevertheless, it seems the criticism of "ideologies"?may to me that the trajectory traced so clearly inMontaigne?from protest against, at to acceptance of, being followed again in surprising ways, appearance?is interested in the practice of total within a particular class of intellectuals least in very general terms the experiment proposed by works of quite divergent perspectives. Each merits a separate analysis, but the search can prove fruitful?if a common denominator it does not degenerate into a for try to define
reductive maneuver.

criticism. I will

as illu institutions are denounced accepted values and traditional sory. They are the products of a "linguistic contract" that conceals its arbitrary character. Common discourse is accused of being falsely rational, falsely univer desire and the tyrannical pre sal: it merely veils the presence of unconscious of individual interests. ponderance At first,

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is reproached for being without a referent in psychic or "Official" discourse social reality. It is interpreted as a symptom of the disease of disguising trouble some reality: the universe of desire, the "class struggle," or, for others, the of existence. The accusation goes further. Since the age radical meaninglessness of the Romantics, many modern literary works have, so to speak, practiced so and in what they preached, intention by doing, revealed their denunciatory the abuse denounced. The tactic of irony was a favorite of the overplaying Romantics. They followed the code accepted by the commonality, only to drive to the point where excess. They it destroys its stipulations itself by revealed that rendered it suddenly perceptible ubiquitous by an exaggeration imposture to and unacceptable. illusion while feigning to be its ac They destroy sought Deliberate is the weapon that shatters the illusion un illusionism complice. aware of itself. Already, inMeasure for Measure, the Duke puts on a mask, in order to discover the malevolent of Angelo (called to replace him as hypocrisy is the tactic adopted head of state). Such by certain "indirect methods" the mask, or the pseudonym assumed, men (Kierkegaard). Through ostensibly are told have themselves deserted their veritable identity. In order to com they to (in Haw pel his parishioners recognize their hidden sin, Reverend Hooper thorne's The Minister's Black Veil) covers his face with a black crape that he will never again lay aside. (Hawthorne strongly hints that his hero, the masked un to coerce his into the confession of their masker, by attempting fellow-villagers secret flaw, condemns himself to solitude and fails to recognize the true redemp tive power?love.) In many cases, unmasking irony confines itself to negation. a late occurrence of romantic the case with Dadaism, This is particularly irony. The embittered conscience affirms itself free from the beliefs and conventions now ridicules. But is this freedom whose illusory character it has disclosed and itself free from attack? What can it respond to the criticism?for example, Hegel's a vapor that ?that rebukes romantic irony for being an illusory freedom, into the void? By confining itself to an indefinite refusal, this dissipates liberty will never attain a concrete content. It will be freedom for nothing?unfreedom.
Often, in order to provide content for his freedom, the enemy of masks and

"alienations" falls back on a code as arbitrary as that which he had at first at tacked. The new code differs from the first only in that it admits to being the of a choice and a construction. It does not claim transcendent product origins and does not attempt to pass for the language of truth. It itself arti proclaims turns apologist of makeup fice. Thus the enemy of hypocrisy (Baudelaire), of labored style (Flaubert), of the arbitrary constraint consciously accepted (Val act (Gide). As to those who rebel ?ry), of the gratuitous against the apparent of death-ridden Nature, what more can they do than benevolence passionately love that same mortal nature and its surface joys? There is no alternative, no substitute that surpasses them, simply because there is nothing deeper than the surface of the world (Camus). For lack of a higher truth with which to replace the fragile code of custom, one must revert to this same code, or at least, with an to some coherent system that will be no more than one enhanced consciousness,
code among others. This movement of return to appearances can be accom

plished modestly by the pragmatic

and undramatically of relativity and by the acknowledgment in the interest of all concerned, of that which, acceptance,

98 without more prestige

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or deceit, can contribute to their pleasure. It can also be done come to The works of Nietzsche and his recent disciples pathetically. mind. This course consists of conferring, by an act of my will, a higher value on that system of values of which / am the source, and to which no transcendent absolute can be opposed. Against a background of nothingness, power and force thus compel recognition as the sole appearance that is not illusion. The aesthetic a sort of activism: it chooses action for the sake of action, option veers into instead of abiding by the choice of convention for the sake of convention. VI perhaps have in troduced earlier. Montaigne reconciled himself with both the world of phenom ena and with "custom." But these are far from being the same thing. Let us then consider each of these two points in their specific character and consequences. essential should reconciles himself with the phenomenal world. He had declared it Montaigne con fallacious and unstable; but as true and stable being is unattainable, sciousness finally agrees to surrender itself, with full lucidity, to the incessant awaits us there. Montaigne's flux offered us by the life of the senses. Happiness successors, however, will not be satisfied by this solution, which brings the mind for its audacity but recompensed back to its point of departure?punished the more acute attention that it henceforth pays to its natural condition. by with the same initial doubt, they will remove the "idols," review the Starting suc whole body of science starting from the tabulae rasae, and with astonishing cess, set down, in mathematical terms, the laws that govern the physical world. from then on, be science will, The development of the language of modern an incessant polemic against the illusions of sensory perception accompanied by It is now to draw a distinction that we

and immediate imagination. in the episte The world of phenomena, challenged by science, is demoted order to the level of illusion; but it cannot be expelled from human mological it is the first "given." It is then taken over, in the most of which experience, in the middle of fashion, by a new discipline, aesthetics, that, beginning explicit the eighteenth century, clearly defines its status and its goals. The sensory ap to the world receives a new justification, and becomes the object of an proach to be, different from scientific that knows itself to be, and wants experience to the coexistence of It is thus that the world has grown accustomed knowledge. two that do not aspire to rival each other: that of science, which languages calculates and advances by contesting "illusions"; and that of art, which gives the the most diverse, and sometimes itself the task of collecting and organizing most aberrant products of the ingenuous exercise of our sensibility (Joachim Ritter). reconciles himself to custom. He executes the same reversionary Montaigne movement domain. in the ethical as in the ontological Indeed, he had almost to penetrate the secrets of the confounded the indictment of our pretension toward the fakery of the natural world and the indictment of our complacency of moral world. The malice of men and their refusal to bow before the mystery nature are two aspects of the same limitation, of the same infirmity. Because are limited creatures, nature is veiled, and we must hide our vices behind we the

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mask

same ethical condemnation the ambitions of encompasses lust to gratify our desires and to dominate others. knowledge For Montaigne, the aesthetic domain (the expression of self, the portrait) will be the point where, after their common failure, the site of a double reconciliation, the ontological and moral quests converge. The philosophers and the scholars of the seventeenth century developed in the space that opened itself to mathematics scientific discourse beyond the world. From then on a new ambition dawned: to discover the vices phenomenal of virtue. The and the unbridled hidden under the mask of virtue with the same method and the same rigor that permit the formulation of numerical laws governing matter, beneath the appear ances of the senses; to same reasoning apply to "mind" the logically conclusive that seems to have victoriously proved its efficacity with respect to "body" (Des tend to meet in the and ethical d?mystification cartes). Henceforth, ontological domain of knowledge rather than aesthetics. This time, however, the encounter not occur in a retreat and renunciation but in one of does setting of triumphant abandoned. conquest. The aim of justifying custom has been definitively to unveil the dawn of modern in the "moral science, the temptation laws as rigorous as those that the science of mechanics could experimen tally verify for the physical world was, in the exaltation of the first successes, as that of force or very great. A principle as neutral, general, and predictable attraction inmechanics had to be found and established for the behavior of men At

world"

and societies. Specifically, moral terms such as "corruption," "sin," and "hypoc risy" had to be recognized as illusory concepts, as vestiges of the theological age, a kind of second mask. Behind this mask a or agent had to be primal substance on the doctrine, uncovered. Depending this agent was called "interest," "de sire," "need," "psychic energy." We know this was the ambition of Enlighten ment philosophers who strained their wits to the breaking point in the effort to construct a mechanics of the feelings and passions on the approximate model of the mechanics of solids and fluids. The nineteenth century saw the extension of this endeavor to history and society. These were made explicable by a game of
"real forces"?unconscious for the historical actors themselves and unknown to

to rival the natural historians. A "physiology" of societies strove not merely sciences but to effect union with them by grafting doctrines of social progress onto biological theories of evolution. to those who believed Here, illusion, unbeknownst it, they had overcome made its most triumphant the law of mathematical While is reentry. physics to experimental and technical application, the same is not true of subject testing moral or historical "reality" that the enemy of masks claimed to read beneath the appearances that he had declared false. Let us be as brief as possible without unwarranted In the simplification. domain of moral and historical reality, the interpretation of phenomena has to save its own power of scarcely any proof persuasion?its allege ability to transform society by means of the credit individuals accord it and the belief it has aroused barred?the in them. In the pursuit of this efficacity?in which no holds are cast of masked men and beliefs, of which the "unmasker" had on stage. What had been its reappearance thought himself the enemy, makes denied (or repressed) thus returns not in a parallel sphere (aesthetics), but ac tually within the very discourse that claims to have access to the real forces, to

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to them. One example out of a install the moral or social order that corresponds hundred: the fate of "ideology" between the moment when Marx denounced it as mask?the of honor of bourgeois the moment society"?and "spiritual point when Lenin affirmed that the yet to be born proletarian consciousness had to be an mediated for which the party was responsible. There is no by "ideology" with of an open reconciliation here, as there was with Montaigne, question return of the act of faith? appearance and custom, but rather of an unsuspected of alienation and the belief that certainty had been the denunciation despite The supreme illusion, then, was to reached in the realm of social knowledge. believe that one had escaped illusion. is ineffective, but its success This does not mean that illusion (or hypocrisy) it does prove is in history does not accord it the status of scientific truth. What the rallying power among men of the illusory conviction of having escaped illu sion. Montaigne knew it already: "Every opinion is of sufficient power to take a man in respect of life." We have almost returned to our hold of point of
departure.

Translated

by John Muresianu

References in a forthcoming volume An expanded version of the first part of this essay will appear (in French) in Germany of the Poetik und Hermeneulik series published (Fink Verlag). are taken from All quotations Introduction from Montaigne Essays by Michel Lord ofMontaigne, by 3 vols., Everyman's A. R. Waller, translated (No. 440). M.A., Library by John Florio, xviii, t. II, p. 393. 6 fgas the meaning i, t., Ill, p. 14. Vacations here and in Reference occupation. The is not mentioned source, Petronius, 3III, x, t, III, p. 262. Petronius. by Montaigne introduced by Florio. t. Ill, p. 173. 4III, viii, 5III, i, t. Ill, p. 13. 6HI, x, t. Ill, p. 262. 7III, ix, t. Ill, p. 202. ed. I, xiv), t. I, p. 272. 8I, xi (in the French HI, 2HI, 9II, xvii, t. II, p. 373. 10II, xvii, t. II, p. 393. nHenri recalls: "It is always within Gouhier opportunely et les in D?mythisation credited." See "L'id?ologie id?ologies," E. Castelli, 1973), p. 89. 12II, xviii, t. II, p. 393. An.

but

an et

are dis that ideologies ideology id?ologies (Aubier, Paris: Edited by

13From Montaigne, Les Essais, Edited by Pierre Villey 1965), p. 34. (Guilde du Livre, Lausanne: servitii aulici et munerum Chr[isti 1571] aet. 38, pridie cal. mart., die suo natali, Mich. Montanas, et omnium se integer in doctarum virginum r?cessif sinus, ubi quietus publicorum jamdudum pertaesus, dum securus modo fata duint exigat istas [quan] tillum in tandem superabit decursi multa jam plus parte spatii; si et otio consecravit. sedes et dulces latebras, avitasque, libertan sua, tranquillitatique, 14II, viii, pp. 87-88. (Bern: 1949), p. 22. 15Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne 16H, xvii, t. II, p. 385. t. I, p. 255. ed. I, xxxix), 17I, xxxviii (in French 18III, ii, t. III, p. 34. 19III, iv, t. III, p. 55. 20II, xii, t. II, p. 259. t. I, p. 254. 21I, xxxviii, 22I, xxxviii, 23I, xxxviii, 24I, xxxviii, 25III, xiii, t. I, p. 253. t. I, pp. 259-260. t. I, p. 261. t. III, p. 385.

MONTAIGNE 26Friedrich, 27See Book

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op. cit., p. 20. 1, Chapter 51, De la Vanit? des paroles "Die Lehre 28I, xxv, t. I, p. 166. On theoretical life, see Joachim Ritter, bei Aristotles," Theorie inMetaphysik und Politik 1977), pp. 9-33. (Suhrkamp, t. I, p. 263. 29I, xxxviii, 30IH, xiii, t. III, p. 328. t. I, p. 262. 31I, xxxviii, 32III, ix, t. Ill, pp. 205-206. 33II, xviii, t. II, p. 392.

vom

Ursprung

der