Michel de Montaigne was a Renaissance philosopher who, in his single greatest work, Essais, reflected on a broad range of issues. Among them was death. Here are a few words from one of his essays on the subject.
The most immediate stimulus for this service was my recent acquaintance with Michel de Montaigne, the philosopher who gave us the reading this morning. Peter is indirectly responsible for directing me to Montaigne. He loaned me a book by Stephen Toulmin on the end of modernism, a book, that struck me as somewhat delusional. I was however, intrigued by Toulmin's mention of Montaigne as a great skeptic, a relativist, and a keen observer of everyday life. So, I started reading Montaigne, and found him considerably more realistic than Toulmin. Montaigne was born in 1533. He led the typical life of a French nobleman, and by 1571 was all grown up. At that time, he retired to his family home and devoted himself to the Essais. Why he undertook this project is best explained by Montaigne himself.
Montaigne finished the Essais almost ten years later, in 1580, quite a project whose aim is nothing more than to provide a self-portrait for one's surviving friends and family. But Montaigne was not content with this first edition. He went on to complete a second edition in 1588 and was working on a third when he died in 1592. (The third edition was published posthumously in 1595.) So, I asked myself, "Why would someone spend 30 years, half a lifetime, on a project whose sole aim was to make oneself better known to friends and family after one dies." One part of the answer lies in Montaigne's views of life and death, partly revealed in the reading. He was a man who wanted to be prepared for death, and this was part of his preparation.
But more impressive than Montaigne's sheer devotion to the Essais is his approach. What he decided to put into them. What would you put in a book that your "friends and kinsmen" could use to find "some traits of [your] character and of [your] humours." We in the Me Generation would likely approach this task by describing our hang-ups; "All my life I have struggled with free-floating anxiety and manic-depressive tendencies which I now control with drugs and psychotherapy." Or perhaps we might describe ourselves in terms of our oppressions, "My identity has been shaped by the fact that I'm an Hispanic, Jewish woman of color." Do we get this sort of "Here's me" from Montaigne?
By no means! While Montaigne occasionally mentions his hang-ups and his station in life, most of the Essais are his thoughts and observations. If we take seriously (and I do) his claim that the subject of the Essais is Michel de Montaigne, himself, then we have to conclude that what Montaigne thought he was was what he thought.
Some of his ideas are progressive, even now. He recommends an education that eschews punishment and rote memorization and promotes putting principles (philosophical principles) into practice early in life.
Some of his ideas are strange, as if he were applying today's ways of thinking to his own times. For example, he argues that all common practices are rooted not in their own merits but in custom and habit, an opinion that could easily be found in contemporary writers such as Foucault and Derrida.
I reckon that there is no notion, however mad, which can occur to the imagination of men of which we do not meet an example in some public practice or other and which, as the consequence, is not propped up on its foundations by our discursive reason.
Wow! Pre-modern post-modernism. But then he out-relativizes the relativists by suggesting that we all conform to cultural norms, since that makes it easier on everyone and there's really no reason to think that any other way would be better.
Nevertheless, such considerations do not deter a man of intelligence from following the common custom; it seems to me on the contrary that all idiosyncratic and outlandish modes derive less from reason that from madness and ambitious affectation; it is his soul that the wise man should withdraw from the crowd, maintaining its power and freedom freely to make judgments, whilst externally accepting all received forms and fashions.
And perhaps most interesting was Montaigne's practice of bringing his immense intellect to bear on his own problems. It is said that he suffered from deep melancholia. Since neither Prozac nor psychotherapy was available in that age, he turned to the pen, and essays like the one from which I drew today's reading. Even in that essay he mentions his melancholy but once, and then only to dismiss it; "I myself am not so much melancholic as an idle dreamer: ...."
As a footnote, I find it sad that Phil Ochs, the brilliant songwriter and author of the musical meditation today, suffered also from "melancholia," and hanged himself at the age of 35. Would that he had heeded the words of his own song or had taken Montaigne's remedy of drawing the soul somewhat outside of itself, rather than taking the course that he did.
That Montaigne took his thoughts and observations to be him is something that I find refreshing, in an age in which thoughts count for very little and certainly don't count at all as part of a person's identity.
So, I thought that there might be some other refreshing approaches to issues of life, death, and remembrance. I asked if there were any volunteers who wanted, in five minutes or so, to do what Montaigne did in 1200 pages. Strangely enough, I got some takers.
I leave you with a blessing, one that comes to us from the mind of a 500-year old scholar, Michel de Montaigne, who pointed out that life is neither good nor evil, but a vessel to be filled with either as we choose, and that death is part of life, and that we should not fear death, but rather the life unprepared for it.
May you fill your life, whatever its extent, with good, leaving no room for evil. May your life be complete at every instant, so that death, whenever it comes, cannot cheat you. And after you die, may your friends and kinsmen remember fondly some traits of your character and your humours.