Errors in Montaigne’s views on cultural identity

John Vespasian

Despite his erudition and hard work, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) never grasped the need for an objective morality. I find in his essays a relentless effort to obscure ethical truths in order to preach moral relativism and contorted ethical equality. Montaigne employed ethical fallacies as arguments once and again; he employed “universal emotions” to call for ethical indifference, and “diverse cultural identity” to call for empathy towards immorality. His essay “That men through various ways arrive at the same thing” provides salient examples of those fallacies. By arguing for the equality of paths, Montaigne is obscuring vast differences in goals. By focusing on irrelevant anecdotes and details, Montaigne is deviating the attention from key ethical questions. Instead of engaging discussions about good and evil, he is chasing rabbits in all directions, rabbits that lead readers towards a dead end. Montaigne’s argument is that individuals in all cultures are pursuing common goals, and that those goals reflect universal aspects of human nature. In this way, he is predicating cultural relativism. He is employing a long discussion on diverse paths to hide massive differences in goals. For instance, Montaigne is comparing the different paths in antiquity for attaining fame and success. In ancient Greece, the paths could involve achievements in war, philosophy, science, or in the arts; while in ancient Rome, people could attain fame and success only through politics and war. As ancient Greek examples (around 500 BC), Montaigne is mentioning Pericles, an elected Athenian leader who promoted arts and democracy, and Socrates, a philosopher who made key contributions to knowledge theory and ethics. As ancient Roman examples (50 BC to 15 AD), Montaigne is mentioning Julius Caesar, a military dictator, and Emperor Augustus, the final destroyer of the Roman Republic. Their achievements, Montaigne says, are recorded by many statues and monuments. Montaigne goes ahead unrelentingly with examples that are supposed to prove the equality of paths to fame and success, but implicitly, he is discussing the goals, not the paths. Surreptitiously, Montaigne is predicating the equality of all ethical values and cultural identities. He is driving home the idea that there is no fundamental difference between Socrates and Julius Caesar, or between Pericles and Emperor Augustus. Montaigne’s error is not innocent. It cannot be excused by insufficient research, lack of knowledge, excessive complexity, or terminological confusion. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/errors-in-michel-de-montaigne-and-cultural-identity/