BERRY, J. the Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and Nietzsche

8/12/2019 BERRY, J. the Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and Nietzsche.

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/berry-j-the-pyrrhonian-revival-in-montaigne-and-nietzsche 1/19

The Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and Nietzsche

Berry, Jessica N.

Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 65, Number 3, July 2004, pp.

497-514 (Article)

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press

DOI: 10.1353/jhi.2005.0001

For additional information about this article

Access provided by PUC/RJ-PontifÃcia Universidade CatÃ³lica do Rio de Janeiro (15 May 2013 16:54 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jhi/summary/v065/65.3berry.html





497

Copyright 2005 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.

The Pyrrhonian Revival inMontaigne and Nietzsche

Jessica N. Berry

Michel de Montaigne occupies a unique place in Nietzsche’s history of

ideas. He is one of a very few figures for whom Nietzsche expresses deep

admiration and about whom he has virtually nothing critical to say. This is a

rare enough mark of distinction; but contrary to what it might lead us to expect,

the relationship between Montaigne and Nietzsche has seldom been carefully

examined. There has yet to be a book-length study devoted solely to Montaigne

and Nietzsche,1 and article-length treatments of the relationship between their

works and thought have been surprisingly scarce. What discussions there have

been tend to locate the connections between Nietzsche and Montaigne mainlyin matters of either literary or personal style,2 but studies that examine

Montaigne’s influence on Nietzsche with an eye toward philosophical rather

than literary or stylistic issues have been almost non-existent.3 This dearth of

treatments can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that, while Montaigne

is rightly recognized for the literary merits of his work and for its subsequent

influence on later prose stylists (and not only in French), his work on the whole

has seldom been appreciated as having any philosophical value in its own right.

Small wonder, then, that the connection between Montaigne and Nietzsche has

1 On Nietzsche and the French tradition more generally, however, see W. D. Williams,

Nietzsche and the French (Oxford, 1952), Brendan Donnellan, Nietzsche and the French Moral-

ists (Bonn, 1982), B. Bludau, Frankreich im Werke Nietzsches: Geschichte und Kritik der

Einflussthese (Bonn, 1979), and E. Martinez-Estrada, Heraldos de la verdad: Montaigne, Balzac,

Nietzsche (Buenos Aires, 1958). D. M. Marchi devotes a chapter to Montaigne’s influence on

both Emerson and Nietzsche in his Montaigne Among the Moderns (Providence, 1994).2 Brendan Donnellan (ibid .), argues at length that Nietzsche’s “aphoristic” writing style is

due primarily to his reading of French writers.3 Exceptions include David Molner, “The Influence of Montaigne on Nietzsche,” Nietzsche-

Studien, 22 (1993), 80-93, and Vivetta Vivarelli, “Montaigne und der ‘Freie Geist,’ ” Nietzsche-

Studien, 23 (1994), 79-101; see also the discussion in Petr Lom, The Limits of Doubt: The Moral and Political Implications of Skepticism (Albany, 2001).



498 Jessica N. Berry

appeared more significant to commentators on Montaigne who are interested

in tracing his influence on later thinkers than to scholars of Nietzsche—even

those Nietzsche scholars who take an acute interest in his intellectual heritage.

What I will argue here is that Montaigne makes a more concrete and philo-

sophically more substantive contribution to Nietzsche’s thought than has gen-erally been appreciated; specifically, by giving impetus to the naturalism that

develops in Human, All Too Human as an antidote to Schopenhauer’s pessimis-

tic metaphysics of will.

In this essay, I present a two-fold thesis about Montaigne’s influence on

Nietzsche’s early work. First, I will argue that the “naturalistic turn” in Human,

All Too Human reflects Nietzsche’s engagement with Montaigne during a cru-

cial moment in the development of his thought. Second, I will demonstrate that

the naturalism Nietzsche adopts from Montaigne has roots in the tradition of

Pyrrhonian skepticism that Montaigne carries forward into the Renaissance. Inthe end, a better understanding of the skeptical ancestry of Nietzsche’s natural-

ism should help us make better sense of Human, All Too Human and its imme-

diate successors in Nietzsche’s oeuvre, which cultivate what otherwise seems

to be an uneasy partnership between naturalism and skepticism.

I. It is by now widely accepted that Nietzsche’s estimation of the value of

the techniques and methods of the natural sciences undergoes radical revision

in the period culminating in the first volume of Human, All Too Human ( HAH ),4

a book sometimes described as inaugurating a “positivist” phase in Nietzsche’swork. From the first of its nine major sections, “Of First and Last Things,”

HAH narrates a struggle between science on the one hand and philosophy on

the other. It is important to note the breadth of the extension of the term “sci-

ence” (Wissenschaft ), which includes not only what we think of as the “hard”

or physical sciences (physics, chemistry, and the like) but also areas of inquiry

we now consider “behavioral sciences” such as psychology and sociology—

and, Nietzsche would say, philology as well. “Philosophy,” by contrast is speci-

fied more narrowly. As Nietzsche uses the term throughout HAH , “philoso-

phy” is usually shorthand for “metaphysical philosophy” and singles out for criticism the discourse of metaphysics that has dominated the philosophical

landscape at least since Plato.

In the sense in which Nietzsche worries about it “metaphysical philoso-

phy” promotes speculation about such supra-sensible entities as Platonic forms,

Descartes’s “immaterial substances,” and Kantian things-in-themselves. That

its contributions include, for instance, theories about the existence and immor-

tality of the soul accounts for Nietzsche’s grouping “metaphysical philosophy”

4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, tr. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, 1983);cited below by volume number and aphorism.



499 Montaigne and Nietzsche

together with religion and art as “arts of narcosis.”5 Consciously or not they

endeavor to comfort us by assuaging our fear of death, our existential anxieties

about the purposelessness of suffering, and so on. According to Nietzsche, the

task and future of science as he sees it is to “[cast] suspicion on the consola-

tions of metaphysics, religion and art”

6

in two ways: by showing them up asincommensurable with respectable standards of justification and explanation,

and by raising practical objections to these ersatz consolations.

The first of these practical objections, which we might call collectively

Nietzsche’s “pragmatic argument” against metaphysical philosophy, is that its

claims and concerns are utterly idle epistemically. “Even if the existence of

such a world [the metaphysical world] were never so well demonstrated,”

Nietzsche charges, “it is certain that knowledge of it would be the most useless

of all knowledge, more useless even than knowledge of the chemical composi-

tion of water must be to the sailor in danger of shipwreck.”

7

Even if we could produce evidence to support our hypotheses, the “truths” proposed by meta-

physics would still be empty of significance since knowledge of them would

do nothing to change our experience of the world. Once the scientific spirit has

taken firm hold, Nietzsche hopes, “Perhaps we shall then recognize that the

thing in itself is worthy of Homeric laughter: that it appeared to be so much,

indeed everything, and is actually empty, that is to say empty of significance.”8

In addition Nietzsche views metaphysical explanations as psychologically

suspect on account of their origin in the need to secure a transcendent guaran-

tee of life’s value.

9

As such, they are symptomatic of psychological weaknessand ill-health. Like Freud’s explanation of the belief in God as an infantile

projection, Nietzsche’s account of the origin of faith in various metaphysical

theories is intended not so much to demonstrate their falsehood in any conclu-

sive way as to undermine confidence in them. What is more, the belief in meta-

physical theories and religion will on Nietzsche’s account turn out to be incom-

patible with the achievement of the best sort of state either for an individual or

for a society. So one of his central tasks in HAH is to champion the spirit of

scientific inquiry as one that belongs to “higher cultures,” at the same time

exposing the psychological drives behind metaphysical philosophy in such away as to discourage its practice altogether. “It is the mark of a higher culture

to value the little unpretentious truths which have been discovered by means of

rigorous method more highly than the errors handed down by metaphysical and

artistic ages and men, which blind us and make us happy.”10 The hoped-for

5 HAH , I, 108.6 HAH , I, 251.7 HAH , I, 9.8 HAH , I, 16.9 HAH , I, 6.10 HAH , I, 3; see also I, 9; I, 264; I, 609.




result is to save philosophy by purging it of metaphysical pretense, divorcing it

from religious, artistic, and other “narcotic” endeavors, and claiming for it a

place alongside other “naturalistic” disciplines—a view that directly reverses

the position Nietzsche advocates in the earlier Birth of Tragedy.

In HAH Nietzsche first embarks on the project of “translating man back into nature”—a project he later describes with characteristic urgency.11 As this

“translation” begins in HAH , the central planks in Nietzsche’s naturalist plat-

form are laid down. Centrally, he maintains that human beings should be un-

derstood as continuous with the rest of nature, asserting that for too long “the

animal has, especially in the interest of ecclesiastical teaching, been placed too

far below man.”12 And not only that, for as Charles Taylor has described it,

“naturalism” is “not just the view that man can be seen as a part of nature—in

one sense or other this would surely be accepted by everyone—but that the

nature of which he is a part is to be understood according to the canons whichemerged in the seventeenth-century revolution in natural science.”13 Indeed,

we have already seen something of Nietzsche’s appreciation of scientific meth-

ods of explanation: when he remarks that metaphysical assumptions, unlike

empirical claims, are supported by “the worst of all methods of acquiring knowl-

edge [i.e., a priori speculation], not the best of all [i.e., empirical observation]…,”

he goes so far as to conclude that “When one has disclosed these methods as

the foundation of all extant religions and metaphysical systems, one has re-

futed them!”14 Nietzsche’s recommendation will be that, for the reasons his

pragmatic argument suggests (i.e., that metaphysical and religious beliefs are psychologically suspect and do no positive good) and for the reason that they

fail to be methodologically well-grounded, we ought not to engage in discourses

that would place facts or statements about the structure of reality beyond our

capacity to verify them. If we take this recommendation seriously, we will keep

to scientific methods of explanation, which will prevent our straying into murky

areas of a priori philosophical speculation and committing ourselves to beliefs

that are incommensurate with the picture of psychological well-being Nietzsche

wants to draw. He observes that “one cannot believe [the] dogmas of religion

and metaphysics if one has in one’s heart and head the rigorous methods of

11 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil , tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1989),

§230.12 HAH , I, 101; this view is consistent throughout HAH and in later works. See for example

The Gay Science, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1974), §115 (“[man] placed himself in a false

order of rank in relation to animals and nature ...”) and §77.13 Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge, 1985),

I, 2.14 HAH , I, 9; see also I, 256: “Science furthers ability, not knowledge...,” and I, 635: “the

scientific spirit rests upon an insight into the procedures, and if these were lost all the other products of science together would not suffice to prevent a restoration of superstition and folly.”




acquiring truth....”15 The abandonment of such dogmas means the banishment

of myths that had served to substantiate a hierarchy that ranks human beings

substantially above the rest of nature. The belief in that hierarchy becomes

unsustainable, further reinforcing the continuity Nietzsche emphasizes between

human beings and the natural world.At this point it is important to see that the naturalism that finds its voice in

HAH does not commit Nietzsche to the positive ontological thesis, which comes

packaged together with some articulations of naturalism, that there are only

natural entities.16 In fact in HAH Nietzsche explicitly avoids the dogmatic de-

nial of supra-sensible entities and instead adopts a skeptical attitude about the

existence of purely metaphysical posits: “It is true, there could be a metaphysi-

cal world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all

things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question

nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut itoff.”17 In short we cannot settle the question whether non-natural stuff exists

because there is nothing available to us that could count as evidence either for

or against it, and we cannot settle questions about what it might be like, since

there are no agreed-upon standards for adjudicating such disputes. True, the

question “what remains of the world” remains, but we ought to suspend our

judgment about such idle and speculative matters.

II. Nietzsche’s rejection of metaphysical speculation in HAH accompanies

his critical reappraisal of Schopenhauer’s philosophy after The Birth of Trag-edy. He observes of Schopenhauer in HAH that “Much science resounds in his

teaching, but what dominates it is not science but the old familiar ‘metaphysi-

cal need’ ”18 —the condition that makes metaphysical philosophy psychologi-

cally suspect. The “naturalistic turn” in Nietzsche’s work and the overcoming

of his attachment to Schopenhauer go hand in hand once Nietzsche fully real-

izes the impossibility of mapping his own views successfully onto the frame-

work of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. The re-evaluation and ultimate rejection

of metaphysical philosophy in HAH is in fact the culmination of a lengthy

struggle to overcome Schopenhauer’s extravagant and pessimistic doctrines.In the winter of 1876, at the same time at which he began work on HAH ,

Nietzsche announced his intention finally to step out of the shadow of

15 HAH , I, 109.16 As in Philip Pettit’s “Naturalism,” A Companion to Epistemology, eds. J. Dancy and E.

Sosa (Oxford, 1992), 297, and Bernard Linsky and Edward Zalta, “Naturalized Platonism ver-

sus Platonized Naturalism,” Journal of Philosophy, 92 (1995), 525. Both are quoted in Brian

Leiter, “Naturalism and Naturalized Jurisprudence,” Analyzing Law: New Essays in Legal Theory,

ed. Brian Bix (Oxford, 1998), 79-104.

17 HAH , I, 9.18 HAH , I, 26.




Schopenhauer’s thought, and in a letter to Cosima Wagner he even gestured in

the direction his work would soon take:

[W]ould you be surprised, if I confess to you a difference with

Schopenhauer’s teaching that has been gradually emerging, but whichappeared suddenly to me? I have been in disagreement with him on

almost all general theses. Even as I wrote about Schopenhauer, I no-

ticed that I found myself beyond everything dogmatic in his work; with

me, everything rested with the human.19

In order to make sense of this last claim we have to understand how the terms

“dogmatic” and “human” can be taken as contraries. It is not immediately ap-

parent perhaps, but if I am right about the relevant senses of “philosophy” and

“science” in HAH , then Nietzsche in his letter is juxtaposing Schopenhauer’smetaphysical philosophy (which, like religion, is characteristically dogmatic)

with his own burgeoning interest in moral psychology and the question of the

origin of moral sentiments and values (scientific interests, on Nietzsche’s view).

The contrast Nietzsche expresses here prefigures the distinction between “phi-

losophy” and “science” that will be fully articulated in HAH . The publication

of HAH only marks the point at which Nietzsche was ready to commit in print

to a critical re-evaluation of Schopenhauer that (as he indicates here) had al-

ready been going on for some time. Of course, Nietzsche never fully repudi-

ated Schopenhauer or his thought—indeed, he positions himself explicitly inlater works as an “inheritor” of Schopenhauer’s teaching.20 Clearly, though, the

early 1870s marked a period of serious critical reevaluation of and disillusion-

ment with Schopenhauer’s thought.21

Prior to and throughout the writing of HAH , however, Michel de Montaigne

remains an important behind-the-scenes interlocutor and ally in the struggle to

liberate himself from Schopenhauerian metaphysics.22 In “Schopenhauer as

Educator,” the 1874 essay celebrating Schopenhauer as his greatest teacher,

19

Letter to Cosima Wagner, 19 December 1876.20 See, e.g., The Gay Science, §99.21 See the Preface to the second volume of HAH .22 Contra Maudemarie Clark, “On Knowledge, Truth, and Value: Nietzsche’s Debt to

Schopenhauer and the Development of his Empiricism,” Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer

as Nietzsche’s Educator , ed. Christopher Janaway (Oxford, 1998), 37-78, surely the clearest and

most forcefully argued investigation of this issue to date, I look to Montaigne (rather than

Schopenhauer himself!) to help explain Nietzsche’s “naturalistic turn” and his rejection of

Schopenhauer’s metaphysical philosophy. I fully agree with Clark’s general account of Nietzsche’s

naturalism and with her characterization of the major project of HAH as an attempt “to induce

skepticism concerning the metaphysical world by showing it to be cognitively superfluous” (49).

But my task here is to push this interpretation even further by using “skepticism” in a technical

(i.e., Pyrrhonian) sense Clark does not recognize and by connecting it to this long tradition of

radical Greek skepticism, for whose transmission Montaigne becomes partly responsible.




Nietzsche carefully refrains from discussing Schopenhauer’s doctrines, already

raising the question whether he is attempting to distance himself from their

content. Instead, he focuses on Schopenhauer’s style as a writer and his virtues

as a person; but even in these arenas, Schopenhauer’s imperfections have be-

gun to come to light. In a revealing passage Nietzsche makes a direct compari-son between Schopenhauer and Montaigne in respect of two virtues he prizes

most highly—namely, honesty and cheerfulness—suggesting strongly that

Schopenhauer comes up short both times. “I know of only one writer whom I

would compare with Schopenhauer, indeed set above him, in respect of hon-

esty: Montaigne. That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living

on this earth. … Schopenhauer has a second quality in common with Montaigne,

as well as honesty: a cheerfulness that really cheers.”23 Now, our interest is in

Montaigne’s philosophical influence on Nietzsche’s reassessment of Scho-

penhauer, and strictly speaking this remark draws no more attention toMontaigne’s “doctrines” than to Schopenhauer’s. But it does tell us that in the

years preceding HAH Nietzsche is not only reading both figures but reading

them comparatively. Their juxtaposition in the context of “Schopenhauer as

Educator,” a meditation on the intellectual backdrop of his own work, suggests

that both men are candidates for playing an important influential role in

Nietzsche’s thought.24 Montaigne surpasses Schopenhauer in some of the very

respects in which Schopenhauer has been a role model for the young Nietzsche.

Moreover, this remark is one of only three explicit references to Montaigne

in the Untimely Meditations —so the sudden, high praise of him may seem outof place. In all three volumes of HAH , in fact, Montaigne is singled out by

name only four times.25 (Though “the great Arthur Schopenhauer” is mentioned

more frequently, we should note that virtually all of these references temper

their praise with some qualification or other.) But Nietzsche’s infrequent men-

tion of Montaigne is in no way incompatible with his holding him in quite high

esteem; Nietzsche does not always acknowledge his intellectual debts. Fur-

thermore, it is important to take account of the tone and content of those scenes

in which these two characters play a role: in two of the four aphorisms of HAH

in which Nietzsche discusses Montaigne, Schopenhauer is mentioned also andranked either on a par with or else slightly below Montaigne in some respect.26

Moreover, we must take into account what we might call Montaigne’s appear-

ances “incognito” in Nietzsche’s texts and not assume that Montaigne is present

only when named. (The same anecdote about superstition, for instance, that

23 Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, tr. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, 1983), III, 2

(emphasis added).24 I thank Christopher Janaway for pressing me to clarify this point.25 HAH , I, 176; I, 408; III, 86; III, 214.26 HAH , II, 408; III, 214. Note that the second passage draws attention to Montaigne as a

skeptic.




Nietzsche relates in Part V of HAH , “Tokens of Higher and Lower Culture,” is

colorfully narrated by Montaigne in his essay “On Prognostications.”27) Fi-

nally, many of Nietzsche’s remarks about “free” and “fettered” spirits in HAH

are echoes or even paraphrases of Montaigne’s various condemnations of the

uncritical acceptance of tradition—especially religious tradition.

28

The imageof the “free spirit” was particularly significant for Nietzsche at the time of his

writing HAH , which he subtitled “A Book for Free Spirits” and which itself

replaced a fifth Untimely Meditation on the topic, planned but never written.29

This motif makes for perhaps the most obvious comparison between Nietzsche

and Montaigne, one of the chief parallels noted by commentators so far.30

In the first section of the Preface to the second volume of HAH Nietzsche

reflects on his previous publications, characterizing himself as having been

“deep in the midst of moral skepticism and destructive analysis,” which led

him to distance himself from Schopenhauer’s beliefs—and from much else.

31

His retrospective assessment makes good sense in light of his heavy engage-

ment in the early- to mid-1870s with the skeptical tradition of French moral

psychology. Although as a young scholar Nietzsche had no more than a passing

familiarity with French thought as part of the regular curriculum at boarding

school at Pforta (1858-64), in Leipzig (1864-69) he encountered two major

sources of his interest in the French, the first Lange’s History of Materialism

and the second the work of Schopenhauer, both of which refer frequently and

favorably to the French moralists. It was not until Nietzsche took up his teach-

ing appointment in Basel in 1869, however, that his sporadic contact with theFrench tradition began to bear more substantial fruit, prompting him to begin a

serious and systematic study of their work. One commentator speculates that

once that study got underway, from 1870 through the publication of HAH eight

years later, “it is predominantly the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century [French]

moralists whom he reads.”32

During this time, Nietzsche’s friendships with the native French-speaking

Franz Overbeck and Ida Rothpletz-Overbeck were of critical importance.33 Since

Nietzsche’s facility with French lagged behind his skills in the classical lan-

guages, he began to read and discuss works with friends from whom he urgedtranslations. Ida Overbeck was an especially helpful tutor and guide for

27 HAH , I, 255; Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne, tr.

M.A. Screech (London, 1985), I, 11, hereafter cited as “ Essais,” volume number and number of

the essay, followed, where applicable, by page number.28 Cf., HAH , I, 226 and Essais, II, 12, 497.29 Karl Schlecta, Nietzsche Chronik: Daten zu Leben und Werke (Munich, 1975), 55.30 See esp. Vivetta Vivarelli, ibid .; also Donnellan (ibid ., 23) and Williams (ibid ., Ch. 6).31 HAH , II, P1.32 See W. D. Williams, ibid ., 8.33 See the biographical sketches in Donnellan, ibid ., and Williams, ibid .




Nietzsche; she had published some of her own translations of French authors,

and she held regular “French evenings” where friends met to read and discuss

works in French, especially those of the moral psychologists. Also, Nietzsche’s

intimate acquaintance with the Wagners, Cosima in particular, played a central

role in his growing interest in French thought. After accepting his appointmentat Basel, Nietzsche spent his first few holidays with the Wagners at Tribschen,

and at Christmas 1870 when Nietzsche gave Cosima Wagner a new essay “On

the Dionysian World-view,” she presented him with a complete edition of

Montaigne’s Essais in the original French, some of which they had been trans-

lating together.34 The gift at least suggests that Nietzsche’s short acquaintance

with Montaigne had led to an immediate interest that continued to grow over

the next several years.

III. As for the naturalism Montaigne advocated and the skepticism whichso impressed him, we can get a vivid sense of both by considering his longest

sustained philosophical enterprise, “An Apology for Raymond Sebond,” which

essentially brings together a battery of skeptical arguments against what

Montaigne sees as the pretensions of human reason. The ostensible purpose of

this work was to defend a tract called Natural Theology ( NT ), written by an

obscure fifteenth-century Spanish physician and theologian, Raymond Sebond.

For whatever reason NT came to be seen by the French aristocracy of the time

as one of the last best hopes for holding at bay the pernicious influence of

Lutheranism. Sebond defends the thesis that, “Without [divine] ‘illumination’[human] reason can understand nothing fundamental about the universe.”35

There is a definite irony in Montaigne’s taking up the task of defending

Sebond—and, by extension, apparently Catholicism. At the same time as his

work on NT was gaining popularity, he was gaining a reputation as a kind of

intellectual libertine and a challenger of both religious and moral conventions.

Montaigne’s skeptical and iconoclastic tendencies earned him something of a

“renegade” status within the Church—an important facet of Nietzsche’s por-

trait of Montaigne. As he notes in one Nachlaß passage: “One is amazed at all

the hesitation and halting in Montaigne’s argumentation. But having been puton the Index [of Forbidden Books] in the Vatican, and having long been an

object of suspicion for all parties, it is perhaps on purpose that he expresses his

dangerous tolerance and his scandalous impartiality in the sardonic form of a

kind of question.”36 The irony is perpetuated even through the text of the “Apol-

34 Nietzsche lists the gifts he received in a letter to his mother and sister (30 December

1870).35 Essais, Editor’s Introduction, xxiv.36 Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and

Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, 1980), XIII, 32. References to this edition of Nietzsche’s work ( KSA)

will be cited by volume number and page.




ogy”: not only is Montaigne an unlikely defender of “the faith,” but his “de-

fense” also proceeds in a fairly unorthodox way. For one thing, after the first

fifteen or twenty pages of the “Apology” (an essay that runs to just over two

hundred), Montaigne hardly mentions the author, never appeals to his text, and

draws little attention to Sebond’s actual thesis. The “Apology” is compatible,in a loose sense, with Sebond’s original aim, but Montaigne’s forays into ques-

tions about human reason often take him far afield of Sebond’s work. This

neglect of the ostensible subject of the “Apology,” in combination with the

essay’s length relative to Montaigne’s other essays and the force, number, and

variety of arguments Montaigne employs, conspire to suggest Montaigne was

more interested in settling for himself certain pressing questions, about the

scope of human reason, for example, than in defending Sebond per se. Yet

these are just the features that make the “Apology” one of Montaigne’s most

philosophically interesting and important works.Mobilizing his best rhetorical resources, Montaigne begins by claiming

that he does not really think it is possible to do better than Sebond has with this

topic.37 He suggests modestly that his goal is merely to help others appreciate

the work more by clarifying its ideas and heading off two objections that have

kept NT from being better received. The first objection is that Christians ought

not to defend articles of their faith by means of reason, and the second is that

Sebond’s arguments are simply bad and not worth taking seriously.

The first charge originates internally, that is, from within the church. It is

advanced by “believers” and underwritten by a “pious zeal” that Montaigneinsists must be treated with respect. Nevertheless, rather than arguing against

what may seem to be the more philosophically and theologically significant of

the two charges, Montaigne brushes it aside, tossing off a quasi-Aristotelian

argument that we have certain rational faculties by nature; and since nature

does nothing in vain surely there can be no higher aim for a Christian than to

use reason in the service of coming to better understand God and His world.38

Montaigne then moves expeditiously to the second charge against Sebond,

that the arguments of NT are incurably bad ones. This charge, which he indi-

cates is advanced primarily by non-believers, warrants the more lengthy treat-ment he will devote to it: “Some say that his arguments are weak and unsuited

to what he wants to demonstrate; they set out to batter them down with ease.

People like those need to be shaken rather more roughly, since they are more

dangerous than the first and more malicious.”39 But Montaigne does not at-

tempt to defend the strength or efficacy of Sebond’s arguments at all. Instead,

he aims to “trample down human pride” in its own rational abilities and spends

37 Essais, II, 12, 491.38 Essais, II, 12, 492.39 Essais, II, 12, 500.




the next 180 pages demonstrating that if Sebond’s arguments are not any good,

he should not be blamed—no one could have done any better. “Let us see,”

says Montaigne, “whether a man has in his power any reasons stronger than

those of Sebond—whether, indeed, it is in man to arrive at any certainty by

argument and reflection.”

40

The arguments Montaigne brings to bear in this demonstration exhibit two

especially important features. First and foremost is that all the arguments of the

“Apology” must be understood within the framework of the naturalistic posi-

tion Montaigne outlines in the first half of the essay. Recognizing that this

approach characterizes much of Montaigne’s work, Nietzsche observes in a

Nachlaß passage, “Montaigne, too, in relation to the ancients, is an ethical

naturalist, but a boundlessly more rich and thoughtful one. We are thoughtless

naturalists, and that despite all our knowledge.”41 The second crucial feature is

that the argumentative style and tone of the “Apology” is completely indebtedto the skeptical philosophy of Sextus Empiricus.42 In general Montaigne’s work

is distinguished by its erudition and its frequent and illustrative use of classical

texts, and indeed, this is one of the features to which Nietzsche explicitly calls

our attention as especially admirable about him.43 Like Nietzsche, Montaigne

was fascinated by the figure of Socrates, and more often than not he character-

izes Socrates as a kind of skeptical figure.44 Montaigne is also heavily indebted

to Plutarch, Cicero, and Diogenes Laertius, and he read broadly in (and made

copious use of) all the major Hellenistic traditions, including Seneca, Lucretius,

and Sextus Empiricus; but the Pyrrhonian tradition seems to have had the mostsubstantial impact on Montaigne personally. He draws heavily on a wealth of

ancient sources in the “Apology” but borrows almost all of his best examples

and arguments directly from Sextus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism. This ancient

skepticism, for Montaigne, motivates the naturalism in his views on human

knowledge; that is to say, this position falls naturally out of an understanding

of Pyrrhonian skepticism as Montaigne understands and presents it.

IV. The “Apology” is in large part oriented toward establishing the view

that human beings overestimate the value of the rational faculty, especially insupposing that it is unique to human beings. This overestimation, Montaigne

40 Essais, II, 12, 501.41 KSA, VII, 741.42 See Dorothy Coleman, Montaigne’s Essais (London, 1987) and Jean Starobinski,

Montaigne in Motion, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1985), 251; both purport to investigate

the sources and background of the “Apology,” but both neglect or surprisingly underestimate the

importance of Sextus for understanding the “Apology.”43 HAH , III, 86; III, 214; see also Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne, tr. Dawn Eng and ed. Philippe

Desan (Berkeley, 1991).44 See Hugo Friedrich, ibid ., 53; and Paul Woodruff, “Aporetic Pyrrhonism,” Oxford Stud-

ies in Ancient Philosophy, 6 (1988), and Julia Annas, “Plato the Sceptic,” Oxford Studies in

Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume, ed. J. Klagge and Nicholas Smith (1992).




thinks, is pure vanity on our part; and as a corrective he attempts to “natural-

ize” human beings by restoring them to their proper place and undermining

whatever ground we think we have for accepting a distinction between human

and animal capabilities. Harmonizing with the general spirit of HAH as well as

Nietzsche’s remark in Part II that “the animal has, especially in the interest of ecclesiastical teaching, been placed too far below man,” Montaigne says that

one of his goals is “to emphasize similarities with things human, so bringing

Man into conformity with the majority of creatures. We are neither above nor

below them.”45 To this end Montaigne makes use of a number of skeptical

strategies; here I discuss only the most prominent two.

First, Montaigne adopts a skeptical posture in the “Apology” by refusing

either to give his assent to or deny hypotheses that take us beyond the level of

straightforward empirical observation. According to the Pyrrhonists, when we

draw conclusions and make assertions that take us beyond simple reports of theway things appear to us, we are entertaining speculations that cannot be justi-

fied, at least not without running afoul of one of the Modes of Skepticism. 46 It

is in this spirit that Montaigne takes up the issue about whether reason is the

possession of human beings alone and asks, “How can [Man], from the power

of his own understanding, know the hidden, inward motivations of animate

creatures? What comparison between us and them leads him to conclude that

they have the attributes of senseless brutes?”47 Montaigne does not intend to

advance a positive argument in favor of the rational powers of animals. As a

Sextan Skeptic he is above all concerned that his attack on dogmatic convic-tions about human reason not itself become dogmatic. Since Nietzsche is moti-

vated by a similar concern in HAH , namely, that his attacks on dogmatic meta-

physics not simply install new dogmas, this point is important. For it is this

concern that sets Pyrrhonism apart from other varieties of skepticism. Pyrrhonists

are well-known for their radical contention that they hold no beliefs at all—

with the qualification, of course, that this “holding back from belief” does not

preclude their making reports about the way things appear to them.48 Sextus

makes this qualification explicitly: “When we say that Skeptics do not hold

beliefs, we do not take ‘belief’ in the sense in which some say, quite generally,that belief is acquiescing in something; for Skeptics assent to the feelings forced

upon them by appearances....” That is, “when we investigate whether existing

45 HAH , I, 101; Essais, II, 12, 513-14.46 See Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, tr. Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (Cam-

bridge, 2000), I, 35-163; hereafter “ PH ” for Purrhoneioi Hupotuposeis, with citations by book

number and section numbers in Annas and Barnes. See also Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes,

The Ten Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1985) and R. J. Hankinson, The Sceptics (London,

1995).47 Essais, II, 12, 505.48 See PH , I, 12ff.




things are such as they appear, we grant that they appear, and what we investi-

gate is not what is apparent but what is said about what is apparent—and this is

different from investigating what is apparent itself.”49 It is by attending only to

the appearances that the skeptic claims to attend to the business of everyday

life without compromising his skeptical practice by holding opinions or form-ing beliefs.50

Second, Montaigne makes extensive use of a technique that is one of the

cornerstones of the Pyrrhonian strategy in argumentation. The strategy of in-

troducing equipollent arguments essentially involves the attempt to balance the

argument in favor of any conclusion with arguments of roughly equivalent per-

suasive force in favor of its opposite. Montaigne discusses the use of this strat-

egy explicitly (just after his first lengthy borrowing from Sextus51); but even

earlier than that he begins employing it himself and he continues to do so

throughout the “Apology.” Entertaining some of the reasons that might be of-fered in support of the assumption that animals do not reason, for example, he

seeks to show that if we must draw a conclusion from appearances, the weight

of evidence on the side of animals having rationality fares just as well as the

evidence against it. Thus, we should hold back from formulating any conclu-

sions about the comparative power of animal and human rationality and stick

to the appearances, which suggest we are in much the same epistemic position

as the “brutes.”

His mode of demonstration here is pure Sextus: he introduces seemingly

inexhaustible catalogs of animal anecdotes hoping, by the sheer volume of examples he produces, to make an equal case for “raising animals up,” as it

were, from the lowly position to which human arrogance would relegate them.

Rather than taking aim at one specific presupposition of this position, the argu-

ments that follow have rather the effect of grapeshot fired from a cannon: the

impact of any one of them is sufficient to cause some damage, but some may

overshoot and others fall short of the mark; their success really depends on

their being deployed collectively. This dialectical strategy (common in Sextus’s

works and particularly fitting for the Skeptics, whose program precludes the

typical philosophical attempt to launch one solid argument in favor of a posi-tion) accounts for the number and variety of Montaigne’s examples.

Montaigne does not attack religious orthodoxy overtly, but he challenges

the dogmas that accord with that orthodoxy, such as the belief that human be-

ings are endowed with special cognitive gifts, which properly exercised will

reveal the features of God’s design. Skepticism on this issue raises further ques-

tions—which Montaigne leaves unasked and unanswered—about humans’ abil-

49 PH , I, 19.50 PH , I, 23.51 Essais, II, 12, 562.




ity to know religious truths. Like Nietzsche, Montaigne comes to think the

dogmas produced by religious and philosophical speculation are not only un-

sustainable but also idle: his position finds him in perfect harmony with

Nietzsche’s pragmatic argument against metaphysical and religious discourses.

In the second half of the “Apology,” he turns his attention to the issue whether metaphysical inquiries, the kind to which philosophers devote themselves, have

any relevance to human happiness. Philosophical theories, he concludes, do

not help us overcome the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, nor do they

make physical or psychological pain easier to deal with. Such hypotheses, even

if ultimately justifiable, would be irrelevant for much of human experience,

and they certainly would do nothing to promote human well-being. The focus

of the attack on “learning” in this part of the “Apology” is the same as Nietzsche’s

indictment of the usefulness of inquiry into metaphysics: it is not an attack on

the value of inquiry itself. As Sextus remarks, on the question whether Skep-tics should study “natural science,” “We do not study natural science in order

to make assertions with firm conviction about any of the matters on which

scientific beliefs are held. But we do touch on natural science in order to be

able to oppose to every account an equal account....”52

In the end Montaigne issues a curious “warning” to his readers to regard

skepticism as a weapon of last resort in defending religious belief against unor-

thodox challenges.53 It is a curious addendum, since as we have already seen

Montaigne’s “Apology” does more to undo Sebond’s argument for natural the-

ology than it does to defend it. Sebond, arguing for divine illumination, insiststhat without it human beings are in no better position than the irrational ani-

mals. The success of his reductio rests on his readers’ rejection of that possibil-

ity, which Montaigne re-opens. But Montaigne’s warning that one should not

“undo oneself” with skeptical arguments in order to undo an opponent unless

there are no other means available is a curious contrast not only with the rest of

the text, but with what we know about much of Montaigne’s life and work. In

1576 Montaigne, just three years before writing the “Apology” and exactly

three hundred years before Nietzsche set down the first words of HAH , had a

medal struck bearing the picture of a balance and the motto “Que sçay-je?.” Hewas genuinely impressed with Skepticism—he clearly made a careful study of

Sextus Empiricus as well as Cicero and Diogenes as soon as the publications

became available. And among the dozens of inscriptions on the walls and beams

of his study many were taken from Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Montaigne medi-

tated on such Pyrrhonian phrases as Sextus’s “[It is] no more this than that ...”

and “It appears to me that....” This skeptical attitude led Montaigne to a level-

headed naturalism that put him many times at odds with the orthodoxy he pro-

fessed to support.

52 PH , I, 18.53 Essais, II, 12, 628.




V. Now that we have seen the skeptical arguments Montaigne brings in to

introduce his naturalistic view, we should return to HAH and make its debt to

Montaigne’s thought clearer. Part I of HAH sets the stage for the debate be-

tween science on the one hand and philosophy on the other. Ultimately, Nietzsche

advocates science as a remedy for the sickness he associates with the metaphysical outlook. The task of “rigorous science,” he reminds us, “is quite gradu-

ally and step by step, [to] illuminate the history of the genesis of this world as

idea—and for brief periods at any rate, lift us up out of the entire proceed-

ing.”54 Fundamentally, the task is a psychological one insofar as illuminating

the history and genesis of what Nietzsche calls the metaphysical “errors” brings

to light their underlying psychological drives so as to show that they are sup-

ported only by the “worst of all methods of acquiring knowledge.”55

This way of characterizing the task of science, I think, explains Nietzsche’s

move in Part II of HAH (“On the History of the Moral Sensations”) from acritique of philosophy, that is, metaphysics, to an engagement with psychology

as a particularly indispensable and genuinely “scientific” project: “[A]t its

present state as a specific individual science the awakening of moral observa-

tion has become necessary, and mankind can no longer be spared the cruel

sight of the moral dissecting table and its knives and forceps. For here there

rules that science which asks after the origin and history of the so-called moral

sensations....”56 The science Nietzsche has in mind here is moral psychology.

Accordingly, this part of the book opens with a lament about the general state

of neglect into which the French moralists have fallen: “Why does one noteven read the great masters of the psychological maxim anymore?”57 The an-

swer, he suggests, is that the “unpleasant consequences of [their] art” have

compelled us to direct our eyes away from it.58 The masters of the art of “psy-

chical examination,” according to Nietzsche, “are like skillful marksmen who

again and again hit the bulls-eye—but it is the bulls-eye of human nature.”59

The “art” these marksmen undertake dispels metaphysical illusions by uncov-

ering the motivations that give rise to them in the first place. And their ap-

proach yields disconcerting results for “the ordinary, everyday man” for whom

“the value of life rests solely on the fact that he regards himself more highlythan he does the world.”60

To give up the belief in a metaphysical world is to give up the flattering

idea that human beings stand above nature and are capable of a “God’s-eye”

54 HAH , I, 16.55 Loc. cit.56 HAH , I, 37.57 HAH , I, 35.58 HAH , I, 36.59 Loc. cit.60 HAH , I, 33.




view of things. Nietzsche puts the point in terms of a conjecture about lan-

guage, the source—as he sees it—of much metaphysical confusion:

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this,

that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world,a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the

rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the

extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names

of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that

pride by which he raised himself above the animal ....61

The human “pride” and arrogance attacked by both Montaigne and Nietzsche,

however serviceable it may at times have been for the survival of the species,

originates in make-believe, a kind of projection. The non-naturalistic view ac-cording to which human beings are “over and above” is founded upon meta-

physical fantasizing, which is why skeptical attacks on metaphysical philoso-

phy and other “arts of narcosis” are supposed to be effective against it. In a

human being who is not equipped with the proper temperament, giving up such

beliefs is apt to bring about a state of despair. Nietzsche acknowledges that this

is so but claims that “whether psychological observation is more advantageous

or disadvantageous to man may remain undecided; what is certain, however, is

that it is necessary, because science cannot dispense with it.”62

In the face of the stark naturalistic picture offered by science we can fullyappreciate the value and importance of the “cheerfulness” Nietzsche attributes

to Montaigne. For it is only with such a temperament that “In the end one [will]

live among men and with oneself as in nature, without praising, blaming, con-

tending,” and so on.63 That Nietzsche opens Part II of HAH by paying homage

to the French tradition indicates that he views these figures as the progenitors

of the scientific spirit in moral psychology. But Nietzsche’s regard for Montaigne

is not due to his eminence as a fore-runner of naturalism and as a psychologist

only. Nietzsche is also keenly attuned to Montaigne’s skepticism, since in HAH ,

too, skepticism is a necessary antidote to metaphysical dogmatism. It is whatunseats the justification for metaphysical hypotheses without forcing Nietzsche

into the opposite (negatively dogmatic) position of denying the existence of,

for instance, things-in-themselves—recall Nietzsche’s reluctance to dispute “the

absolute possibility” of a metaphysical world in HAH , I, 9. There are many

reasons to think this is in fact a priority for Nietzsche, and among them is

61 HAH , I, 11 (emphasis added); see also HAH , I, 5 and his earlier unpublished essay “On

Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense.”62 HAH , I, 38.63 HAH , I, 34.




certainly the sustained attack on convictions (those “dangerous enemies of

truth”) with which the final section of HAH begins and ends.64 There, Nietzsche

urges that “gradually the scientific spirit in men has to bring to maturity that

virtue of cautious reserve [ jene Tugend der vorsichtigen Enthaltung ], that wise

moderation [ jene weise Mässigung ] which is more familiar in the domain of practical life than in the domain of theoretical life.”65 The attitude recommended

here resonates deeply with the Pyrrhonists’ adherence to epochê, or holding

back from judgment.

Finally, we must ask what effect this “holding back from judgment” has on

Nietzsche’s naturalism and on his advocacy of scientific methods of investiga-

tion. Does the very skepticism that inoculates him against the sickness of the

metaphysical outlook inadvertently infect and undermine his naturalism and

his desire to install the sciences as models for rational inquiry? This question

expresses a general philosophical worry about the compatibility of skepticismand naturalism; to see the problem more clearly, we need only recognize that

skeptics claim not to dogmatize—that is, to hold any beliefs—and that natural-

ists, surely, have at least a few beliefs. How can the two positions be commen-

surable?

The resolution to this problem will inevitably turn on the hotly-contested

interpretive issue of what the Pyrrhonist means by “belief.” The most radical

interpretation gives “belief” a very wide scope, such that the skeptic claims to

withhold his assent from every proposition: the skeptic has no beliefs at all. On

this interpretation, it is clear that no skeptic could also be a naturalist. Morerestricted interpretations, however, offer a strong reading of Sextus’s claim

that skeptics “do not hold beliefs in the sense in which some say that belief is

assent to some unclear object of investigation in the sciences.”66 This qualifi-

cation, say proponents of the restricted interpretation, gives the skeptic license

to hold all sorts of beliefs without abandoning his skeptical program.67 Neither

avenue of interpretation is without its difficulties, yet each can claim a follow-

ing in the scholarship on ancient skepticism.

Let it remain an open question whether the restricted interpretation of

Pyrrhonian skepticism gives us the most historically accurate way of readingthe extant texts: it is evident that it offers us a perfectly plausible way of under-

standing the skeptical project carried out in Pyrrho’s name, and one that has

enjoyed a long and quite respectable career in the scholarship on skepticism in

the Hellenistic era. The restricted variety of skepticism, aimed as it is at beliefs

supported by reason alone (i.e., a priori speculations about matters that are

64 HAH , I, 483; I, 629-37.65 HAH , I, 631.66 PH , I, 13-15 (emphasis added).67 See Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (India-

napolis, 1997).




“unclear” or “hidden” [adêlos] and cannot be settled by recourse to the way

things appear), leaves room for preferring certain methodological (“skeptical”

or “scientific”) practices for making diagnoses of the sort we find in Nietzsche’s

pragmatic argument and for entertaining views about the way things are—stop-

ping short of making claims about the way things really are.

68

It supports rather than rules out Nietzsche’s and Montaigne’s naturalist intuition about the way

things are with respect to human beings and their place in the world—by all

appearances, human beings ought to be counted among the rest of the ani-

mals—and it cautions us against drawing further conclusions that would be

grounded in nothing more than vanity and insecurity. The Pyrrhonian skeptics,

whom Sextus also characterizes as students of natural science, advocate sus-

pension of judgment as a therapy for a variety of psychological ills associated

with the having of beliefs, at least beliefs of certain highly specific varieties.

Nietzsche and Montaigne, who discuss the dogmas of religion and metaphysi-cal philosophy in similarly “pathological” terms, take up those arguments in a

similar spirit of service to the well-being of individuals and (for Nietzsche)

entire cultures.69

University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

68 See Michael Frede, “The Sceptic’s Beliefs,” ibid ., 12-15.69 For his helpful comments on earlier drafts, I am especially indebted to Brian Leiter. I also

thank Kathleen Higgins, Robert Solomon, Richard Bett, R. J. Hankinson, Matthew Evans, Tim

O’Keefe for their comments and suggestions, and Eric Loomis for translation advice on second-

ary sources. Finally, I would like to thank the participants of the 23-24 March 2001 conference

“Nietzsche: Philosophical Influences and Philosophical Legacies” in Austin, Texas: Maudemarie

Clark, Nadeem Hussein, Christopher Janaway, John Richardson, and my commentator PaulWoodruff.

Documents

BERRY, J. the Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and Nietzsche