140. Montaigne on the move
A central theme in this blog is movement, change: in
development, evolution, discovery, and meaning. In preceding items I have been
looking at change as an alternation, interaction, a merging and separation,
between a principle of stability (Yin) and a principle of impetus (Yang).
Movement plays an important role in the philosophy of
Montaigne, in contrast with most other Western philosophers. Might there be a
connection with Yin and Yang? Here I make use of a treatise on movement in
Montaigne by Jean Starobinsky[1].Montaigne also holds a cyclical, organic view of change, but he does not reject acting in the world, as Taoism did (in wuwei).
However, having acted in public functions, among
others as a member of the parliament of Bordeaux, in 1571, at the age of 38,
Montaigne withdrew to the tower of his castle to reflect. He retired from what
he saw as the posturing, hypocrisy, bragging, superficiality and mindlessness
of public life and discourse.
To his dismay he next discovered that in solitude his
thoughts flew off, chaotically, incoherently, in all directions. He realized
that he needed some outside anchor to arrest his thoughts in some stability and
coherence. He turned to the attempt to capture thoughts in writing them down. This
led to his Essais.
Montaigne had a humanist orientation towards justice
and empathy towards others, a strong sense of social responsibility, and an
orientation towards others as an essential part of life. He granted that any
criticism towards others might also be directed against himself.
However, a strong condition for external involvement
was the preservation of his peace of
mind and moral integrity. Montaigne remained inward looking, oriented towards
the self as the sole arbiter. In my reading he failed to recognize that one
needs not merely contributions to society, and receptive readers, but active
opposition, in dialogue, as a test of one’s ideas, to escape from one’s own
prejudice and blindness, as I have argued in this blog.
Next, Montaigne turned to a contrast between body and
mind. The body represents heaviness, inertia, and the mind lightness, impetus.
The body is needed to stabilize the mind, and the mind is needed to mobilize
the body. Life is a flow of interaction between he two.
I find this interesting because it reminds me of the
claim, which I adopted from Damasio (in item 8 of this blog), that it is the
coming together of neural and other physiological processes, in embodied
cognition, with the body as a focus, a locus of coordinated activity and mental
maps, which creates some coherence and stability of identity.
Montaigne saw movement, in interaction of mind and
body, not as continuous movement, somehow in between stability and change,
heaviness and lightness, but as an alternation and interaction between the two.
And indeed, if one watches an athlete in slow motion, one sees a flow of
movement with a rhythmic succession of restraint and release. One sees it also
in ballet. I quote Starobinski: ‘.. the paradoxical marriage of passive
surrender and active grasp, of relaxation and effort’ (p. 445, my translation).
Montaigne generalizes this to the good life, as an
alternation, a feeding into each other, of mental and bodily pause and action,
weight and lightness, rational restraint and spontaneous abandon, artifice and
nature. As a dance through life.
To me, this is attractive, and it sounds like a
description, or perhaps a manifestation, of Yin and Yang.
I would add: it is even better to have dancing
partners. It takes two to tango.
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