The theoretical life and the function of the example

 

The relation to the world that Montaigne initiated from his refuge of reading and repose was what the ancients called theoria, or the theoretical life, i.e., comprehension of the world as it offers itself to the contemplative gaze. In a passage added to the manuscript by Montaigne’s own hand (subsequent to 1588) we find one of many classical topoi justifying theoria: ‘Our life, Pythagoras used to say, is like the great and populous assembly at the Olympic games. Some exercise their bodies to win glory in the games, others bring merchandise to sell for gain. There are some, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to see how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the life of other men in order to judge and regulate their own.’’48 This is not merely a “chrie,” or rehearsal of an authorized opinion, an opinion worthy of approval, but even more a statement of the attitude that Montaigne himself intends to adopt in the face of contemporary reality: ‘’As I seldom read in histories of such commotions in other states without regretting that I could not be present to consider them better, so my curiosity makes me feel some satisfaction at seeing with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its symptoms and its form. And since I cannot retard it, I am glad to be destined to watch it and learn from it. Thus do we eagerly seek to recognize, even in shadow and in the fiction of the theaters, the representation of the tragic play of human fortune.’”49

Gazing upon the agitation of men absorbed by battles and interests of their own, the stationary spectator looks to the causes of things: his concern is to discover the how and the why, in order to satisfy his curiosity. This does not mean that he is disinterested, however; he can, if he wishes (and Montaigne seems to have so wished, at least when he began his work), strive to ensure that the truth revealed in the spectacle of the world is applied in his inner life. To succeed in this he must enlist the aid of his judgment (i.e., the intellectual act in which an individual looks at himself and compares himself with others) and his will (i.e., the formative or transformative act by which an individual governs his life).

The aim of the investigation, acutely pursued through the varied spectacle of human action, is to discover regular sequences, which will possess, in addition to explanatory value, direct or indirect regulative value. The fortune or misfortune of illustrious men may serve as models or warnings: even the errors of great men disclose principles of conduct and in so doing help to unify our moral lives. A moral truth perceived externally in its universal validity should be capable of being reexperienced internally in the same way; its efficacy should be apparent in the identity of its inner and outer forms, i.e., in the consistency and cohesiveness of the soul. The hope that animates this view is that mimetic fidelity will guarantee inner fidelity. Once the truth has been grasped by the contemplative gaze (i.e., theoria), it cannot be changed in any essential way, only repeated; hence the subject who has taken possession of the truth is himself assured of maintaining a stable identity. Internal continuity comes about as a result of fidelity to the external model. In particular, this is the function that the spectator ascribes to exemplary lives: an exemplum, or figure that stands apart (ex-emplum) and yet stimulates imitation and generalization, can help strengthen the individual through its unique virtue. An individual who constantly strives to resemble an ex-emplum that is in itself a marvel of constancy is actually striving to achieve an identity of his own. To live up to such a standard, or at least to begin to do so, it ought to be enough merely to recall the exemplum or its emblem, an effigy on a medal. The impersonal literature of adages and lessons will be effective to the extent that the reader puts all his personal energy into his response. But histories will be even more effective. We have only to fix our gaze upon examples so admirable that we cannot help rehearsing them within ourselves:

Until you have made yourself such that you dare not trip up in your own presence, and until you feel both shame and respect for yourself, (C) let true ideals be kept before your mind [Cicero], (A) keep ever in your mind Cato, Phocion, and Aristides, in whose presence even fools would hide their faults; make them controllers of all your intentions; if these intentions get off the track, your reverence for those men will set them right again. They will keep you in a fair way to be content with yourself, to borrow nothing except from yourself, to arrest your mind and fix it on definite and limited thoughts in which it may take pleasure; and, after understanding the true blessings, which we enjoy in so far as we understand them, to rest content with them, without any desire to prolong life and reputation. That is the counsel of true and natural philosophy, not of an ostentatious and talky philosophy like that of Pliny and Cicero.50

We must turn our eyes toward exemplary individuals so that we can in turn imagine their eyes fixed on us: under the scrutiny of those who are set over us much as teachers and parents are, we are assigned our private truth, we learn the act of reaffirmation that constitutes our personal identity, and we do so purely in confrontation with ourselves (dans la pure présence à soi).

The efficacy of the example depends in large part on its being a completed event; the image of moral perfection that it holds out is conjugated in the past perfect tense. The sharpness of its outline is associated with its remoteness in time. But the past of the example is for those devoted to it secretly inhabited by the future of the must-be. What the exemplary man was we must be in our turn, we shall be if we apply ourselves with all the energy at our disposal. For the ex-emplum, as I hardly need point out, is a preexisting cultural form that offers itself for us to emulate: the goal is to construct our own egos, to shape ourselves by surmounting all that is amorphous and vague in everyday life. It is to surround all that is soft and fluid in our “conditions and humors” with a firm outline copied from life in order to gather our substance together and cause it to solidify. A stamp is thus always impressed upon us. (La Boétie, Montaigne says, is a ‘soul of the old stamp.’’51)

The imitation of the exemplum is a simulacrum, but a simulacrum that aims at identification. It is a role, but a role into which we must pour ourselves by allowing its law to inhabit us. We give ourselves over wholly to the formative power of the example. The latter, by giving us contour and firmness, at first seems either to rob us of our spontaneity or to oblige us to repress it. But before long the example has invaded us fully, pervaded our life. And our second spontaneity will then effortlessly carry out the acts required by the embodied model. To assimilate the exemplary lesson: such is the classical program of a pedagogy whose aim is to inculcate norms through imitation of great lives in which those norms have seen actualized. (This is a good point at which to measure the distance that separates the world of humanism from the contemporary cultural situation. In the humanist world, the example stands out against a horizon of achieved perfection—the ancient world; or else it offers itself in the form of a figure that is at once familiar and transcendent—Christ. By contrast, contemporary ideals—heroes, stars, charismatic figures, many of them ephemeral and interchangeable—are usually taken from the contemporary world itself; they are frequently subject to “manipulation,” which, since exemplary figures are a powerful means of directing our desires, allows them to be exploited for economic and political ends.) 

The ancient exemplum is a figure in a theater that has nothing to do with the theater of the world (un théâtre absolu); it is separated from our world as the “Italian stage” is separated from the hall: the ex-emplum speaks, it carries the force of an admirable maxim, it is simultaneously maxim and act. Even more: it judges us, for it determines the scale of values, the measuring rod against which our merits and demerits are gauged. Exemplary words and images are too powerful ever to vanish from memory. Their imprint is indelible: for the example, as we shall see more than once, is usually deployed in a memorable scene, in which we are offered the hero’s words inextricably intertwined with his life and death. We shall be looking more closely in what follows at two important illustrations of this point: the death of La Boétie and the suicide of Cato.

Quote from the book Montaigne in Motion (Jean Starobinski)