February 17, 2025
one quality of montaigne which deserves further discussion is his tendency to remove himself from the world; i see this philosophic tendency in many who enjoy pursuits of the mind and this is my largest disagreement with the essays.
mastery of the self is a lofty and noble goal given that this is all we can control for fortune indeed has her share in everything else). this self-knowledge has personal and material ends. presuming that we cannot trust our senses, the desire for mastery follows from montaigne’s maxims.
that being said, the larger project of passing-through the world rather than becoming embroiled in it does one a disservice – we are meant to be active agents in history even if our actions are either ultimately futile or subject to a game of chance. this is the struggle we are tasked with. furthermore, some of the detachment preached by montaigne is dispositional. being able to sit by and watch the world does not come naturally to all; given the times he lived through there were many attachment points to history he could have hitched himself to. to sit idly is not necessarily a virtue; given his class and insulation from the world it was also a privilege.
there is a golden mean in ones relation to worldly affairs the essays fail to achieve. a Charybdis threatens to consume one entirely in the tides of history becoming an entirely earthly agent, vulnerable to the annoyances and worries which are unavoidable. however Scylla sits above to remove others from action entirely. to judge nothing is a dangerous game – there are times when one must act and cease living a life of the mind.