Yes, Michel de Montaigne had things to say about the Olympics, by way of Pythagoras:
Our life, said Pythagoras, is like the vast throng assembled for the Olympic Games: some use their bodies there to win fame from the contests; others come to trade, to make a profit; still others – and they are by no means the worst – seek no other gain than to be spectators, seeing how everything is done and why; they watch how other men live so that they can judge and regulate their own lives. All the most profitable treatises of philosophy (which ought to be the touchstone and measure of men’s actions) can be properly reduced to examples.
This returns Montaigne to one of his favorite subject — exemplars, those who help demonstrate how to live the proper virtuous life through anecdotes of their triumphs. This passage comes from On Educating Children. Only a couple paragraphs removed from his bit about the Olympics, Montaigne gives what he believes to be the central purpose of education:
Teach him what knowing and not knowing means (which ought to be the aim of study); what valour is, and justice and temperance; what difference there is between ordinate and inordinate aspirations; slavery and due subordination; licence and liberty; what are the signs of true and solid happiness; how far we should fear death, pain and shame: Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem; How we can flee from hardships and how we can endure them; Virgil] what principles govern our emotions and the physiology of so many and diverse stirrings within us. For it seems to me that the first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die… and to live.
For many years I have interpreted Montaigne’s words this way: Teach philosophy and debate. Point people towards living virtuous, noble lives and then engage in intellectual inquiry to ferret out reason and wisdom, so that we can overcome the lazy aspects of culture and the irrational impulses of our emotions.
Recently, I have been exploring the writings of Montaigne’s friend Etienne de La Boetie, who wrote a treatise about liberty that reaches a very interesting conclusion—that we have a duty to follow the laws and customs of whatever country we live in, but we have no responsibility to serve those customs or laws. Montaigne, decades later, was still struggling with La Boetie’s conclusion, trying to square it with his innate moderation and his long political history. He spent a career serving power, alongside La Boetie much of that time.
In this context, the paragraph above takes on multiple additional shades. Montaigne felt his education was inadequate, that too much time was spent on ridiculous subjects like learning rhetoric (which he despised) and almost no time spent on preparing young minds for the difficult choices that lie ahead of them.
And it was those choices that he still wrestled with. When should you surrender your liberty and your idealism to serve others and therefore advance your political standing? What level of subordination is a necessary part of life, and when does it become slavery?
Montaigne intended to include one of La Boetie’s treatises in his first book of essays, but decided against it at the last minute because he thought it might be misinterpreted as supporting the protestants’ position during the religious wars in France. But he continued to grapple with La Boetie’s thoughts throughout his project.
All the way to the end, Montaigne struggled with the question of how to live and how to die. He was there when his dear friend La Boetie died. In one of his final acts, Etienne told him that while he converted to Catholicism and lived that way, he wished to die Jewish as he was born.
Montaigne was a spectator to that final act of valor from his friend. Given the way his final essay On Experience wrapped up, I wonder if Montaigne ultimately concluded that he wished La Boetie had the opportunity to not just die that way, but live it as well.
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