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AN Apology for Raymond Sebond (Penguin Classics)

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Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) was never famous for staying on topic. The titles of his essays, and this book is his longest essay, are pretexts for writing about what interested him at the time. If you don't know any more about Raymond Sebond after reading this essay than you did before, don't worry about it! If you gave it a slow, thoughtful read, you have experienced one of the greatest minds in all of history asking what was the value of man's mind to arrive at the truth.

The answer could be expressed as the saying for which Montaigne is most famous: "Que scais-je?" or "What do I know?" Reason may be what separates man from the animals, but what benefit has man derived from it? Is he any happier for it? Is he any closer to the ultimate truth?

As one who has loved the _Essaies_ (French for "attempts") for many years, my advice to readers is to take them a little at a time. Don't be put off by all the quotes from Classical Antiquity. This was, after all, the Renaissance; and Montaigne was, like many of his contemporaries, delighted to see reflections of his thoughts in the writings of the Greeks and Romans. (Rabelais in _Gargantua and Pantagruel_ did the same thing.) Many of those quotes are interesting enough to make we want to follow up on Lucretius, Cicero, Marcus Manilius, and others whose names predominate through the essay.

Montaigne had the motto "Que scais-je?" inscribed on the walls of the tower on his property. He was the ultimate skeptic, but (forgive the pun) he essayed to explain his thoughts more thoroughly, perhaps, than any man who ever lived. I heartily suggest you read this, and follow it up with a reading of his greatest essay, "Of Experience."

The Apology which Montaigne wrote for the work of Raymond Sebond arose from his understanding of a book, Theologia Naturalis, written in an obscure form of Spanish, which Montaigne's father ("in the `last days' of his life") requested that Montaigne translate into French for the benefit of those who were engaged in the struggles of the Reformation, "a period of intellectual ferment and of religious and political disarray." (p. ix). Montaigne finished and dedicated his translation on the day of his father's death, 18 June 1568, when Montaigne was 35, married, and engaged in a legal position. The Apology does not identify which of its ideas were original with Sebond. There is no index, so I am unsure of how often the name Sebond appears in the text The Introduction on pages ix to xxxiii explains the circumstances and theology of the book philosophically, as understood at All Souls College, Oxford, on Easter 1986. The dedication and "Montaigne's translation and adaptation of the Prologus of Raymond Sebond" appear on pages xl to xliv. Those who have a complete edition of the ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE should be able to find the material in this book at II:12, though this book is clear in which portions appeared in 1580, 1582, 1588, or from the "text of the manuscript edition being prepared by Montaigne when he died, interpreted in the light of the posthumous editions." (p. xxxv).

On the doom or dumber question, we can find, "Philosophy in general agrees that there is an ultimate remedy to be prescribed for every kind of trouble: namely, ending our life if we find it intolerable." (p. 62). This is associated with, "As the Greeks said at their banquets: `Let him drink or be off! (Aut bibat, aut abeat!')~That is particularly apt if your pronounce Cicero's language like a Gascon, changing your `B's to `V's: Aut vivat ~ Let him live . . ." (p. 62). The long latin poems are provided with English translations in brackets, so it is possible to understand that a poem by Cicero ends with him worrying "lest you start to drink too much and find that pretty girls laugh at you and push you away." (pp. 62-3). This might be typical of philosophy, but Montaigne is capable of grasping more difficult situations. On learning, this work declares, "even our system of Law, they say, bases the truth of its justice upon legal fictions. Learning pays us in the coin of suppositions which she confesses she has invented herself." (p. 111). Civilization might be based on a belief that law is a better solution than suicide for every kind of trouble, but a lot of news is about people who have opted for some form of suicide or something worse. Our appreciation of knowledge about these things might be so small that this book will only appeal to those who might find it entertaining. People who can look back on life and realize that some of the best jokes that they ever heard were in latin ought to try reading this book, too.