I have noted in some recent essays and revisions the value of Terrence Cave’s book “How to Read Montaigne,” and I want to draw special attention to one unique way Cave analyzes the essays:
Perhaps the best way is to read it as a work that seeks above all to devise cognitive strategies: strategies of reflection capable of handling not only the abstract business of thinking but also the frictions that arise from living in the real world, whether from religious or ethical constraints, illness, sexuality, or relations with other people.
This has been the way I have approached Montaigne from the beginning, not paying so much attention to the specifics of his beliefs, but rather the approach he takes to assessing issues. We get from Montaigne his unique, idiosyncratic view of the world, and that’s a joy to behold. But even more important, we get from him a way of approaching the world and taking it apart.
The word cognitive can be a bit elusive these days, it is applied in so many fields and in so many ways. Cave takes a stab at explaining the best way to apply it to Montaigne:
Montaigne is persistently interested in how he thinks, how thoughts flow through his mind, and the flow is rendered by the shape of his sentences, his metaphorical habits, his way with adverbs and other features of his writing. As he puts it himself, he gropes his way forward, always uncertain of the terrain ahead. That is why his book is called ‘Trials’ or ‘Soundings’ (‘Essays’ is strictly speaking a mistranslation). His reflections are thought-experiments rather than propositions or statements of position, and collectively they make up what is probably the richest and most productive thought-experiment ever committed to paper.
I think such an explanation is equally valid in reading my ever shifting reflections on Montaigne. My day to day re-evaluations, whether prompted or unprompted, constitute my trials of ideas. I want to try on a thought and an evaluation based on the context of the essay at hand and the way I’m evaluating something in that moment. It’s rare that 100 percent of what I toss out on a daily basis ends up sticking. It’s typical for me to go back over the material shortly afterwards to reshape it. Sometimes I neglect to do so and am stunned at what I read, surprised that I let raw reflections remain on the page.
Not only do I try out ideas and feelings, I try out evaluations of people as well. This is an especially hazardous course, because it is always based on far less reliable information than any evaluation of the self. Montaigne never took this route and was probably wise to avoid it. But I’m not going to self attack over this habit of mine—Montaigne had his personal life, and I have mine, and I grew up with good reason to question and doubt the people around me. It’s a habit I’ve held onto throughout my life.
Even though Montaigne never tried to tackle other minds in his project, I believe, as Cave posits here, that the end goals of his approach are in alignment with what I’m trying to do in my examinations:
This way of handling ethical and psychological questions could best be described as cognitive. It conceives human behaviour as a dynamic intentional nexus which cannot simply be ‘reformed’ but, with proper understanding, may be helpfully adjusted and redirected.
And so, I constantly remind myself (and pick up external prompts, both from Montaigne and the Reader) that complete, total judgments about people and their intentions are almost always wrong to some extent. We are all “bits and pieces” as Montaigne likes to remind us, and our bits and pieces mix with others bits and pieces in the dynamic, chaotic universe we inhabit, creating all kinds of chemical reactions.
I try to capture some of those reactions, whether they are alignments or explosions. Please judge me not by what comes out in the moment, but rather by my ability to pull back from the most extreme conclusions and attempt to find an empathetic middle path between others and me.
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