Very often Montaigne’s titles tell us nothing about what we should expect in the essay, but in this case, the title is important. The essay isn’t about discourse, it’s about conversation or more precisely, agonistic conversation.
The conversation Montaigne has in mind is lively and interactive. He hints at this in his Sebond essay, where he describes supporters of Pyrrhonism enjoying the give and take of argumentation, not particularly concerned who comes out on top.
This is a thornier matter to discuss than it may appear on the surface. We like to think of debate as a discreet activity that takes place in the form of direct competition, whether it’s an event staged for high school or college, or an encounter that is part of an election season. But the importance of debate goes beyond this. Having a debate mentality is critical to Pyrrhonism and any belief system that requires a rigorous examination of ideas and expressions.
My belief, one that I apply to all phases of my life, is that we owe people respect and kindness, but we should give no such deference to ideas and expressions. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you should embrace everything they say or do—you love the person, not the output of that person.
This is something I was aware of at an early age. My grandmother had an artistic bent that gained full expression in her retirement. The older I get, the more I find her late life hobbies charming and in some ways inspiring. But I also found her paintings to be grotesque and I refused to hang any of them in my homes, even though most others in my family did so at least out of deference. I never voiced my opinions, I felt I owed her that kindness, but I also didn’t feel obliged to pretend that I admired them.
I will admit, however, to finding one of her poems intriguing. My grandfather, who passed away about 10 years earlier than her, also had many hands on retirement hobbies. One of them was buying broken clocks in yard sales and flea markets, fixing and then reselling them. Except he didn’t always resell the clocks, some he kept for himself, to the point that close to his death there were at least 25 working clocks in their house. Most were anniversary clocks, where the weighted fulcrum would circle silently. However, enough of the clocks had various ticks and chimes and, yes, one cuckoo, that being in their house was an endless reminder of time’s oppressive movement.
My grandmother’s poem was about time and drew a conclusion that time was God, which as a direct analogy I didn’t find particularly interesting. But in context of where she lived, and all of these slowly deteriorating, many now out of sequence clocks, with all of their visual and aural reminders of time around her, I could see how a certain definition of a watchful, expecting, rule enforcing God might align with her experience of the devices that literally would not give a moment’s peace. My reinterpretation of her work is far darker than she expressed it, but what can I say, I enjoy iteration.
I recently had a moment of fear when my youngest son returned home from high school, a school of the arts that includes a lengthy conservatory after school. He’s in the creative writing branch of the school and he offered to share with me his book of poetry. Frankly, I don’t like reading other people’s writing because I know myself well and also understand that nearly every time someone shows me a piece of work, all that person wants to hear is that it’s great. My first instinct upon reading everything, especially something I don’t like at all, is to offer up ways to make it better, and that almost never goes well.
But to my great relief, Quinn’s poetry was quite good, far better than anything I could produce at 14. I even pointed out a couple pieces that I especially liked and had a somewhat philosophical angle to them. He seemed to take the compliment in stride, which disappointed me a little, but perhaps that’s part of the artistic mindset as well.
I recently received an odd note during a performance review at work, delivered to me third hand, that I should work on being “more diplomatic” when giving feedback, because my viewpoints might give the impression that my work department is hard to work with. This feedback annoyed me on a few levels, the first being its vagueness, I had no idea what was being referenced. Next, I disliked that it was passed down several levels, which felt more like a power move than honest feedback for me. And finally, because any insinuation that colleagues consider me hard to work with is ludicrous and I could gather a dozen testimonials to that effect immediately if anyone wanted proof.
As for what I could make of the note, who knows? I am very comfortable with the person I am and the way I conduct myself. Throughout my career, people who work with me have gone on to win elections, get major promotions and land publishing deals, even as I lose elections, don’t get promoted and get rejected by publishers. I accept my role as a supporting player in life, grudgingly, but I will not accept the idea that I am anything other than someone who cares about the success of my teammates and organization and helps others succeed in their goals.
Moving back to Montaigne, why does he believe we need debate? In this essay, gives us a rich catalog of reasons, starting with the simple truth that we never stop learning in life and one of the best ways to test both our ideas and style of discourse is to keep testing it:
Every day I am warned and counseled by the stupid deportment of someone. What hits you affects you and wakes you up more than what pleases you. We can only improve ourselves in times such as these by walking backwards, by discord not by harmony, by being different not by being like. Having myself learned little from good examples I use the bad ones, the text of which is routine. I strove to be as agreeable as others were seen to be boring; as firm as others were flabby; as gentle as others were sharp. But I was setting myself unattainable standards.
Can’t we continue to grow intellectually by reading? Yes, but it’s not sufficient — only in lively conversation do we get to test the ideas we’ve read and to integrate them into our other thoughts. Intellectual competition for Montaigne is akin to sports:
Studying books has a languid feeble motion, whereas conversation provides teaching and exercise all at once. If I am sparring with a strong and solid opponent he will attack me on the flanks, stick his lance in me right and left; his ideas send mine soaring. Rivalry, competitiveness and glory will drive me and raise me above my own level. In conversation the most painful quality is perfect harmony.
Montaigne is clear that he doesn’t enjoy debating just anyone — and debating the stupid can be an exhausting experience. There’s a level of respect we accord to anyone who we agree to debate, which is why heavily favored candidates rarely allow their opponents the honor. Attaining this kind of agreement, Montaigne would reject the contemporary custom of highly structured rules and would prefer a lively event:
Among gentlemen I like people to express themselves heartily, their words following wherever their thoughts lead. We ought to toughen and fortify our ears against being seduced by the sound of polite words. I like a strong, intimate, manly fellowship, the kind of friendship which rejoices in sharp vigorous exchanges just as love rejoices in bites and scratches which draw blood.
A previous essay called Plato the father of debate and Montaigne helps spell out why here — a proper debate is akin to one of Socrates’ dialectics and contestants should see them as both competitions and learning opportunities. If anyone ever creates the Las Vegas of debate that Montaigne suggests here, I will promptly move there:
When I am contradicted it arouses my attention not my wrath. I move towards the man who contradicts me: he is instructing me. The cause of truth ought to be common to us both. – What will his answer be? The passion of anger has already wounded his judgement. Turbulence has seized it before reason can. – It would be a useful idea if we had to wager on the deciding of our quarrels, useful if there were a material sign of our defeats so that we could keep tally on them and my manservant say: ‘Last year your ignorance and stubbornness cost you one hundred crowns on twenty occasions.’
Returning to the subject of his 101st essay, Montaigne reiterates his dislike for intellectual deference. This raises the point that internal debate is just as important as public contests:
It is a bland and harmful pleasure to have to deal with people who admire us and defer to us. Antisthenes commanded his sons never to give thanks or show gratitude to anyone who praised them. I feel far prouder of the victory I win over myself when I make myself give way beneath my adversary’s powers of reason in the heat of battle than I ever feel gratified by the victory I win over him through his weakness.
Next, Montaigne discusses an important feature of all debate: rules of order. The difference between genuine debate rules of order and the strict constraints of contemporary debates (and frequently interrupting TV hosts) is that the former facilitates genuine clash while the latter squelches it:
I admit and acknowledge any attacks, no matter how feeble, if they are made directly, but I am all too impatient of attacks which are not made in due form. I care little about what we are discussing; all opinions are the same to me and it is all but indifferent to me which proposition emerges victorious. I can go on peacefully arguing all day if the debate is conducted with due order.
Next, Montaigne takes on logicians. With the risk of sounding like one myself, Montaigne’s argument here isn’t entirely clear. He seems to argue against Socrates’ style of dialectics, but given everything else he’s written, that’s unlikely. Perhaps his arguments should critique the French legal profession of his day. Regardless of the target, it reads today like an accurate critique of analytic philosophy:
There is the man who cannot see reason but holds you under siege within a hedge of dialectical conclusions and logical formulae. Who can avoid beginning to distrust our professional skills and doubt whether we can extract from them any solid profit of practical use in life when he reflects on the use we put them to? Such erudition as has no power to heal. Has anyone ever acquired intelligence through logic? Where are her beautiful promises? She teaches neither how to live a better life nor how to argue properly. Is there more of a hotchpotch in the cackle of fishwives than in the public disputations of men who profess logic? I would prefer a son of mine to learn to talk in the tavern rather than in our university yap-shops.
The “no power to heal” line is powerful — it’s misunderstanding between intellectuals and the polity that’s creating greater distance between experts and democratic citizens when greater understanding is necessary. Montaigne held such intellectuals with a special brand of contempt:
I like and honor erudition as much as those who have it. When used properly it is the most noble and powerful acquisition of Man. But in the kind of men (and their number is infinite) who make it the base and foundation of their worth and achievement, who quit their understanding for their memory, hiding behind other men’s shadows, and can do nothing except by book, I loathe (dare I say it?) little more than I loathe stupidity.
We end up debating — if ever — with tight communities of like-minded people. Montaigne senses an element of tyranny in this:
There is always an element of tyrannical bad temper in being unable to tolerate characters different from your own. Secondly, there is in truth no greater silliness, none more enduring, than to be provoked and enraged by the silliness of this world – and there is none more bizarre. For it makes you principally irritated with yourself: that philosopher of old would never have lacked occasion for his tears if he had concentrated on himself.
Returning to intellectual clashes themselves, Montaigne next analyzes the question of authority — how can we judge facts without first validating the truth of the claims? And how can we consider a fact to be true unless we trust and esteem the source of the fact? The important point here — one lost in contemporary journalism — is that all facts and opinions are not equal. People must make judgment calls and need enough information to do so with accuracy:
It is not enough to relate our experiences: we must weigh them and group them; we must also have digested them and distilled them so as to draw out the reasons and conclusions they comport. There never were so many writing history! It is always good and profitable to listen to them, for they furnish us with ample instruction, fine and praiseworthy, from the storehouse of their memory: that is certainly of great value in helping us to live. But we are not looking for that at the moment: we are trying to find out whether the chroniclers and compilers are themselves worthy of praise …. Anyone who could discover the means by which men could be justly judged and reasonably chosen would, at a stroke, establish a perfect form of commonwealth.
One reason we cannot always make those kinds of rational calls is because luck intervenes — destroying best laid plans and bailing out the foolish:
In this world’s activities we often notice that Fortune rivals Virtue: she shows us what power she has over everything and delights in striking down our presumption by making the incompetent lucky since she cannot make them wise. She loves to interfere, favoring those performances whose course has been entirely her own. That is why we can see, every day, the simplest among us bringing the greatest public and private tasks to successful conclusions …. Our very wisdom and mature reflections are for the most part led by chance. My will and my reasoning are stirred this way and that. And many of their movements govern themselves without me. My reason is daily subject to incitements and agitations which are due to chance.
As mentioned previously, I’m far less concerned than Montaigne about the dangers of rhetorical style. With so many other forms of entertainment competing today, I find it a minor miracle that anyone would choose to listen to a speech anymore. But I agree with Montaigne that we make far too much of what is now called the “sound bite:”
In debates and discussions we should not immediately be impressed by what we take to be a man’s own bons mots. Most men are rich with other men’s abilities. It may well be that such-and-such a man makes a fine remark, a good reply or a pithy saying, advancing it without realizing its power. That we do not grasp everything we borrow can doubtless be proved from my own case. We should not always give way, no matter what beauty or truth it may have. We should either seriously attack it or else, under pretense of not understanding it, retreat a little so as to probe it thoroughly and to discover how it is lodged in its author.
In conclusion, Montaigne raises an important point of humility: debate is always about understanding and the primary subject is always yourself — what you know, feel and believe:
A man of straight and elevated mind who judges surely and soundly employs in all circumstances examples taken from himself as well as from others, and frankly cites himself as witness as well as third parties. We should jump over those plebeian rules of etiquette in favor of truth and freedom. I not only dare to talk about myself but to talk of nothing but myself. I am wandering off the point when I write of anything else, cheating my subject of me.
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