In his essays, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), addresses frequently the subject of cultural identity. I can summarize his conclusions in two sentences. First, he acknowledges that each culture has its own rituals, likes and dislikes. Second, he rates those differences as minor if compared with the traits shared by humans in all cultures.
Montaigne underlines the second aspect in his essay titled “That we all love and cry for the same thing.” He is conveying the idea that human emotions (joy, sorrow, compassion, hatred) are the same in all cultures.
Nevertheless, from those cultural comparisons, Montaigne is drawing a totally false conclusion. Granted, human emotions such as joy or sorrow are the same in all cultures, but the particular object of joy or sorrow makes a world of difference.
All humans can feel joy, but sane individuals are going to experience joy in different circumstances than those that make a psychopath joyful. The same principle applies to cultures. A sane culture promotes vastly different moral values than those promoted by evil cultures.
Montaigne never grasped the difference between similarity of emotions and similarity of moral values. To the extent that psychopaths can experience joy and sorrow, those remain very different from the emotions of sane people.
Montaigne’s essay “That we all love and cry for the same thing”
I find it unconscionable that Montaigne declared all cultures equal just because all people can experience joy and sorrow. It makes a live-or-death difference whether one lives in a culture promoting constructive or destructive moral values.
Montaigne’s essay “That we all love and cry for the same thing” compares rituals, traditions and social norms in various cultures. For instance, in ancient Athens (around 600 BC), a funeral included a procession displaying the body, but later, in the Roman Republic (around 50 BC), the body was no longer displayed during the procession.
Going further back in time, Montaigne mentions the funeral Scythian practices (around 700 BC) described by Herodotus in his “Histories.” The Scythians had buried their kings together with their horses, weapons, servants, and household utensils.
Fair enough, but funeral details don’t prove that all cultures are equal, nor that people were mourning worthy individuals. I feel that, by describing funeral rituals in detail, Montaigne is throwing sand in the readers’ eyes.
Montaigne’s arguments for equality of all cultural identities grow bizarre in his essay “On Cannibals,” where he comments on the man-eating practices of indigenous tribes in Brazil. His assessment of cannibalism is not overly negative.
Tolerance in Montaigne’s views on cultural identity
Why does Montaigne fail to condemn cannibalism as totally unacceptable and horrific? Because he remains lax on ethics. His focus on “universal emotions” is obscuring the enormous differences amongst cultures when it comes to ethical values.
Montaigne calls for “empathy” regarding cultural identity, arguing that all humans experience the same emotions. I have no problem with the funeral processions in ancient Greece and Rome, but I regard it as horrific that the Scythians would kill the king’s servants to bury them together with the king.
When speaking of hideous, intolerable practices such as the killing of servants in Scythian funerals, we should not call for empathy. Instead of predicating the equality of all cultural identities, we should condemn what’s ethically unacceptable.
Montaigne’s reflections about emotional understanding are to a great extent nonsensical. The truth is that shared emotions are meaningless in the absence of shared ethical values.
When someone’s ethics are evil, we should call them so, not “complex” or “particular.” The killing of servants is profoundly evil, not “a different way of expressing emotions.” One should not disguise immorality as “cultural identity.”
Montaigne was deeply wrong in stating that “the souls of all men are identical” and that “there is no great diversity among them.” The fact is that ethical convictions shape one’s soul for better or for worse.
Morality in Montaigne’s views on cultural identity
There are vast differences between good and bad people. It’s dangerous to deny those differences by predicating the equality of all cultural identities and the universality of emotions. I am appalled that Montaigne never grasped this crucial truth.
In contrast to Montaigne’s statements, it is certain that we do not laugh and cry for the same thing. It’s certain that some individuals endorse good values and others don’t. Thus, as a general principle, it’s wise to befriend good people and steer away from the rest.
Cultural relativism pervades Montaigne’s essay “That we all love and cry for the same thing.” His call for the equality of all cultural identities and moral values should be strongly rejected.
When Montaigne proclaims that “our judgments are nothing else than our customs,” he is obscuring the difference between good and evil. His essays are worth reading because they make us think, but we should decisively reject ethical indifference or blindness.
If you are interested in applying rational philosophy to any situation here and now, I recommend you my book titled “The 10 principles of rational living.”