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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
This is how Montaigne explains the principles which he followed in his role as mayor, a statement whose very expression casts all the light needed on the nature of what has been called Montaigne's conservatism. In Montaigne's political language, to conserve is defined by its opposition to innovate. Conservation receives its lexical “value” from its contrasting relation with innovation and with “novelties.” This semantic pair, common in sixteenth-century French and in most European languages, is profoundly different from the present system. In today's language, the concept of conservatism (itself of recent formation) is defined principally in terms of the notion of progress or (because of the symmetry of the suffixes) of progressionism, in the sense which it had taken on during the 18th century, but the antonym innovation has not ceased contributing to the “value” of conservation. Today's semantic system cannot avoid attributing to “conservatism” an essentially antithetic function in reference to historic “progress,” or to theories of progress in which innovation is generally seen in a favorable light.
1 III, x, p. 927; TR, p. 1001.
2 III, vi, pp. 819, 820; TR, pp. 885-6.
3 II, xii, 519-20; TR, p. 559. This "theory of the climates," which can be traced back to Hippocrates (Concerning Water and Places), also includes the idea of the influence of the planets and heavenly bodies on changing opinions (read religions). For a discussion of astral determinism of religious eras, cf. F. Boll, C. Bezold, W. Gundel, Sternglaube und Sterndeutung (1931), repr. Darmstadt, 1961, p. 200-205. This notion could not but awaken the suspicions of the Church.
4 II, xii, p. 520-1; TR, p. 560.
5 Ibid.
6 II, xxiii, pp. 614-15; TR, pp. 662-3.
7 III, xii, p. 947; TR, pp. 1023-24.
8 III, xiii, pp. 985-6; TR, p. 1066.
9 III, xii, pp. 943-5; TR, pp. 1019-20.
10 II, xvii, p. 594: TR, pp. 639-40. For a history of the concept of decline, the best treatment can be found in the series of studies published by Reinhart Koselleck and Paul Widmer, Niedergang: Studien zu einem geschichtlichen Thema. Klett-Cotta, 1980.
11 See particularly his criticism of interpretation at the beginning of Essay III, xiii, "Of Experience."
12 The close association, on a verbal plane, of avarice and ambition is ex tremely frequent in Montaigne. Of the passions, these are the ones whose evil consists, more than for all the other vices, in removing us from ourselves, making us "think elsewhere," misleading us with their deceitful promise of future benefits. Whatever might be gained can never make up for the loss of self-presence. Even on a material level, Montaigne still belongs to an age where agricultural revenues are paid annually, and where commercial exchanges are made only on a short-term basis. Although he wisely was able to increase his land holdings, we rarely hear him mention, let alone approve of, long-term investments or work which will bear fruit only in the distant future. This is not simply the wisdom of an old man living "one day at a time."
13 III, x, p. 926; TR, pp. 1000-01.
14 III, x, p. 922; TR, p. 995.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid. The futility of causes with which we are familiar has its corollary the similar futility of seeking unknown causes. Nothing is more simple than to find "reasons" in all kinds of "dreams" (III, xi, p. 936; TR, p. 1012).
17 III, x, p. 922; TR, p. 996.
18 III, x, pp. 922-3; TR, pp. 996-7.
19 III, x, p. 925; TR, p. 999.
20 Ibid.
21 We know that this is quite different for Rousseau, for whom the future is important as a time of future rehabilitation. A long time is necessary for him to wipe out the calumny which he feels incapable of refuting in the present circumstances. The idea of reparation requires a future.
22 III, x, pp. 915-6; TR, pp. 987-88.
23 III, x, p. 920; TR, p. 994.
24 III, ix, p. 889; TR, pp. 960-1. There is the same affirmation in a note to Madame de Duras: "The very same conditions and faculties, I will place and reduce (but without alteration and change) into a solide body, which may happily continue some dayes and yeares after mee." (II, xxxvii, p. 703; TR, p. 763).
25 III, x, p. 912; TR, p. 984.
26 III, x, p. 919; TR, p. 993.
27 III, x, p. 920; TR, p. 993.
28 III, x, p. 916; TR, pp. 988-89.
29 II, xii, p. 482; TR, pp. 518-19. On the image of the circle and circular movement in the Renaissance, see Georges Poulet, Des Métamorphoses du Cercle, Paris, 1979, pp. 25-69; and Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore, 1957.
