From Machiavelli to Montaigne

HUM 2052: Civilization IISpring 2015Dr. Perdigao

January 23-26, 2015

Framing Montaigne (1533-1592)• Catholic father and Protestant mother

• 1557 member of Bordeaux parliament

• Retires from politics in 1570 at age 38, sells post as magistrate, meditation and writing at castle of Montaigne

• Essays written during this time

• Mayor of Bordeaux (1581-85)

• Divisions between Catholics and Protestants , France in civil war three times between 1562-8

• Threat of French war with Spain, Catherine’s attempt at assassinating supporter Huguenot Coligny; St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre August 24, 1572

• Politiques, party including Montaigne—religious tolerance

Of Philosophy• Question of “Who am I?” as a basis of an existential crisis (later articulated by

theorists such as Sartre and Camus)

• “a precursor of modernity, a representative of his time, and an avid student of the classical past” (2178), detailing the self changing in the world

• Existential dilemmas, cultural and psychological identity crises

• Idea of self transforming as world around it does

• Ethnographer, historian—perspectives in writing: what he sees in conquests in the New World—from impartial gaze or introspective and moral

• “His hatred of political radicalism influenced much of what he saw in ancient history and in contemporary accounts of New World discovery and conquest. This alienation from his own political context suggests one cause of his celebrated doubleness of perspective, which is at once ethnographic (outward-looking and impartial) and self-critical (introspective and moral).” (2180)

Views• Epistemology:

Shift during the period in ways of knowing. How do we know what we know?

• Like Socrates, emphasizes how knowledge “reveals how little he truly knows” (2179)

• Focus on the “elusive and unstable character of the ‘self’” (2180)

• “Of Cannibals” influences the representation of Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest, Shakespeare’s reflections on the “ideal commonwealth, colonialism, and the nature of savages” (2180).

• Barbaric is loosely defined as that which is not ours

• Counters that logic by showing how the “Golden Age” is experienced by such “barbarians”

On Montaigne’s Philosophies• Barbarians as non-Greeks; “others” considered barbarians

• Of Cannibals raises the question of one’s relation to others

• “whatever is not his own practice”; “very desire of philosophy” (pp. 2192-2193)

• Yet Montaigne raises the issue that, because we corrupted pure and natural nature, we are barbarians

• Cannibals fight to know what they are

• Question of virtue raised in a new context

Ch-ch-ch-changes• Changes in art, politics, science, and religion

• Machiavelli’s The Prince—reflecting city-states’ new systems of governance, new ideas about the constitution of society, the individual’s role within it; opposing humanist ideals and instead focused on “reality”

• Montaigne—humanist scholar, pessimistic view of man’s virtue, other side of what Machiavelli describes; sees reality and questions man’s motivations, actions, appeals for virtues

• Montaigne’s writing—reflective of Reformation and exploration during the period

On Conquests• 1394-1460 Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal, encourages expansion

into Africa • 1430 Portuguese expand into Canaries and Azores• 1488 Bartholomeu Dias reaches Africa• 1492 Christopher Columbus reaches Hispaniola; Granada, last Muslim

kingdom in Spain, is conquered• 1497 Vasco de Gama sails around Cape of Good Hope in Africa to India• 1513 Balboa discovers Pacific Ocean at Isthmus of Panama• 1519-1521 Hernando Cortés conquers Aztecs in Mexico• 1520-1521 Magellan’s soldiers circumnavigate the globe• 1531-1533 Francisco Pizarro conquers Incas in Peru• 1545 Silver discovered by Spaniards in Peru• 1552 Silver from New World enters Europe through Spain, creating

price revolution• 1590s Dutch shipping carriers for grain• 1602-1609 Dutch East India Company is founded, Bank of Amsterdam• 1651 Navigation Act passed in England • 1694 Bank of England is founded

(Perry 342)

From Politics (Back) to Religion• Luther and Calvin as key figures that offer alternatives to the rigid structure of the

Roman Catholic Church, making matters of faith more individualized, personal, rather than sanctioned by priests

• Ideas about salvation, man’s relationship to God questioned

• Issues of class divisions arise—peasants following Luther, into rebellion; Luther dissociates himself from those factions

• Ideas about social reform, its possibilities, during the period

• Ch. 16—modern political state, influence of the Reformation, separation from the Catholic church, strengthening power of monarchs and magistrates (Perry 336)

From Reformation to Revolution• By the Late Middle Ages, rejection of pope’s claim to “supremacy over kings and to

spiritual sovereignty over all of Western Christendom” (Perry 317)

• Protestant Reformation—appeal to masses as well as princes

• Martin Luther (1483-1546), German, studied law, entered monastery, professor at Wittenburg, preacher (Perry 320)

• Opposed selling of indulgences, separate matters of faith from finance

• Faith, meaning in Bible—moving from centralized authority of Catholicism

• 1517—Ninety-five Theses• 1520—Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (urging princes to break

from pope, citing his exploitation) (Perry 323)• 1521—charge of heresy by Charles V, Holy Roman emperor

• Religious reform to social revolution

Upheavals• Uses for disenfranchised—peasant revolt in 1524 (Luther disassociates)

• Protestantism—spread to Zurich, Germany; Peace of Augsburg in 1555 left determination of religion to the territory’s prince

• John Calvin (1509-1564), French scholar and theologian (and humanist), preacher of Reformation (Perry 327)—left France for Geneva; established theocracy (elders regulating through church courts)

• Predestination

• 1534—Protestantism illegal in France; Huguenots (Calvinist minority), as underground movement (Perry 329)

• 1562—civil war between Catholics and Protestants

• 1572—Failed conciliation with marriage of Protestant leader Henry of Navarre (later becomes King Henry IV after reconverts to Catholicism) into royal family when queen mother, Catherine de Medici, led plot to murder Protestant guests; uprising led to more murders; period known as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (Perry 329)

• Henry IV gives Protestants limited toleration; issues Edict of Nantes in 1598; assassinated in 1610; edict revoked in 1685