I am always puzzled when I see historians or philosophers put forward theories for which the evidence is rather thin. Even if they write a treatise about their theory, readers will ask to see the evidence, the facts, the clues.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) produced a compelling collection of essays, but historians have exaggerated his impact on early modern philosophy; their arguments are so far-fetched that I regard them as self-refuting.
Why do I contest Montaigne’s philosophical impact? I do so because Montaigne did not consider himself a philosopher. He never undertook a serious study of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. Nor did he never build a system of thought worthy of that name.
Take for instance Montaigne’s essay titled “On the custom of wearing clothes.” When Montaigne wrote this piece, he was in his early forties, living quietly in the countryside. Day after day, he retired to the tower of his manor to read and write, and kept churning out one essay after another.
Historians sustain that Montaigne wrote “On the Custom of Wearing Clothes” to present and endorse cultural relativism. In their eyes, Montaigne was asking us to refrain from judging our culture because, across history, people have been wearing different types of attire in different countries or occasions.
Montaigne’s essay “On the Custom of Wearing Clothes”
According to this theory, Montaigne’s cultural relativism is the originator or contributor to the relativism deployed in the eighteenth century by the likes of Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Voltaire (1694-1778).
Really? Montaigne points out that some indigenous tribes in Brazil do not wear clothing, but so what? They also don’t build ships, castles and cathedrals. Montaigne also says that infants do not demand to wear clothes, but so what? They also not ask to have toys, a soft bed, and visits to the paediatrician.
Philosophically, Montaigne’s arguments are so anaemic that they should not even count as philosophy. When he criticises sixteenth-century women for wearing impractical clothes, I am convinced that he would have said the same if he had attended a fashion show in our century.
There is a long stretch between a conversation about fashion and a philosophical argument. When Rene Descartes wrote his “Meditations on first philosophy” in 1641, he hadn’t drawn his inspiration from Montaigne’s disquisition “On the Custom of Wearing Clothes” nor from any other essay by Montaigne.
If we attribute to Montaigne a philosophical profundity that he never claimed to have, we will miss his best qualities. His essays convey a critical, alert sense of life. They prompt us to look at the whole picture and think for ourselves and gain.
Indeed, Montaigne’s essays can do all that, but they do not convey a philosophical system. I don’t contest that John Locke (1632-1704), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) or Rousseau (1712-1778) were familiar with Montaigne’s essays, but they couldn’t extract from them systematic ideas that Montaigne never had.
The strengths of Michel de Montaigne
When we look at history, it is easy to delude ourselves with thoughts of continuity. Since Montaigne had written his essays in the sixteenth century, it is tempting to assume that he had a wide influence on later philosophers, but when we examine the details, we cannot substantiate the assumption.
I find it highly interesting to read Montaigne’s comments on the fashions of French judges in the sixteenth century, but I do not see in those observations any attempt at systemic thought.
When Montaigne reminds us that, in the Bible, Adam and Eve walked around naked before eating the forbidden fruit, he isn’t strengthening his argument for cultural relativism. I might as well quote Andersen’s tale “The emperor’s new clothes” to prove that civilized people tend to abhor nakedness in public.
A plethora of historical anecdotes do not make a philosophy in the proper sense. When Montaigne quotes Herodotus (484-425 BC) to state that the ancient Scythians wore animal-skin garments, he is just proving that they lived in a cold climate. I cannot extrapolate those quotations into a grand philosophical statement.
Let us not turn Montaigne in something that he never was. I would instead encourage his readers to take from him all those elements where Montaigne excelled. I mean his sharpness, his erudition, and his balanced perspective.
“Our vanity multiplies our clothing needs beyond what we really need,” is a typical conclusion of Montaigne’s. It does not have anything to do with John Locke, Thomas Hobbes or Jean- Jacques Rousseau, but provides interesting food for thought.
Montaigne is correct in observing that clothes serve various functions. They can help identify our profession, for instance, or the fact that we are members of a certain sports teams. Let’s not find in those arguments more substance than they possess.
If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all sort of situations, I recommend you my book “Asymmetry: The shortcut to success when success seems impossible.”