montaigne's political education: raison d'État in the essais

MONTAIGNE’S POLITICAL EDUCATION:RAISON D’ÉTAT IN THE ESSAIS

Doug Thompson1,2

Abstract: Montaigne is generally portrayed either as a principal proponent of the mixof scepticism, neo-Stoicism and Tacitism that feeds the early-modern reason-of-stateliterature or as a thoroughgoing political moralist who rejects this literature’s politicsof necessity and princely deception in favour of a politics of classical or Christian vir-tue. I argue that Montaigne inhabits neither of these positions exclusively. Instead, heargues in utramque partem, both for and against reason of state, in order to educate hisreaders about the perils of following elites who would use either political necessity orreligious moralism as pretexts for violence in pursuit of political gain.

Keywords: Montaigne, Essais, raison d’état, political education, political realism,political moralism, dissimulation, French Wars of Religion.

Whoever has morals established and regulated above his time, either let himtwist or blunt his rules, or, what I rather advise him, let him withdraw apartand have nothing to do with us. What would he gain from us?

— Michel de Montaigne, On Vanity3

Montaigne’s role in the late sixteenth-century decline of Ciceronian human-ism is a matter of much contention in the growing contemporary literature onhis political thought. It is clear enough that Montaigne is keen to break withcharacteristic aspects of this humanist tradition; his oft-stated ambivalencetowards classical eloquence and his criticism of Ciceronian style are evidenceof this, as is his pessimism regarding the project of training young men intoclassical virtue.4 Less clear, however, is Montaigne’s attitude towards the

HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXXIV. No. 2. Summer 2013

1 University of South Carolina. Email: [email protected] I would like to thank audiences for previous versions of this paper at the 2011 Cam-

bridge Graduate Conference in Political Thought and Intellectual History and the 2011meeting of the American Political Science Association. For reading earlier drafts, Iwould like to thank Ross Carroll, Jason Maloy, Elizabeth Wingrove, Janet Coleman andtwo anonymous reviewers for the journal. I give special thanks to Bonnie Honig for herinsightful comments on successive drafts.

3 The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. D. Frame (Stanford, 1958), III.9.760b,trans. amended; Essais, ed. P. Villey and V.-L. Saulnier (Paris, 1965), p. 993. I refer tothe Frame translation throughout and provide page numbers from the Villey–Saulnieredition (hereafter ‘V–S’) when modifying Frame’s text. In referring to the Essais, I fol-low the standard practice of labelling text from the 1580 couche with [a], 1588 with [b]and post-1588 (from the ‘Exemplaire de Bordeaux’, hereafter ‘EB’) with [c]. All transla-tions of other texts not originally written in English are my own unless otherwise indi-cated.

4 On eloquence, see Essais, I.40, I.51. On Montaigne’s pessimism regarding theinculcation of classical virtue, see Doug Thompson, ‘Fortuna’s Revenge: Montaigne’sCritique of Classical Virtue’, Montaigne Studies, 24 (2012), pp. 205–24.

Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011For personal use only -- not for reproduction

main alternative that was emerging as he began to write the Essais in the1570s: the peculiar mix of Tacitism, Stoicism and scepticism that was to feedthe reason-of-state literature of subsequent decades.5 In the contemporary lit-erature, Montaigne’s attitude towards the ascendant discourse of reason ofstate and his role in its emergence are generally portrayed in one of two anti-thetical ways. On the one hand, Montaigne often appears, with Justus Lipsius,as a principal proponent of this ‘new humanism’ and its emphasis on politicalnecessity as conceived from the perspective of a ‘disciplinarian prince’.6 Forexample, Anna Maria Battista identifies Montaigne as playing a major role inan early-modern detachment of conventional moral concerns from politics,and more recent commentators such as Quentin Skinner, Nannerl Keohaneand Richard Tuck attribute to Montaigne the conclusion that there is simply‘no alternative’ to the emerging doctrine of reason of state, given the ongoingdisintegration of French social and political life in the Wars of Religion.7

On the other hand, Montaigne just as often appears to offer a vehement ‘re-jection’ of reason of state in favour of a more robustly moralistic mode ofpolitical activity.8 Most recently, Nicola Panichi has attributed to Montaigne adesire for a ‘retour à Cicéron’ and a reaffirmation of classical humanist poli-tics of public virtue against the rising tide of reason-of-state thinking, whileBiancamaria Fontana and Ann Hartle find in the Essais a call for a mode of

196 D. THOMPSON

5 Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (New York, 1993),chs. 1–3; Peter Burke, ‘Tacitism, Skepticism, and Reason of State’, in The CambridgeHistory of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. J.H. Burns (New York, 1990); J.H.M.Salmon, Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of EarlyModern France (New York, 1987), ch. 1; Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the EarlyModern State, trans. D. McLintock (New York, 1982).

6 Tuck, Philosophy and Government, ch. 2 (quote on pp. 62–3).7 In this view, Montaigne is a reluctant proponent of raison d’état, but a proponent

nonetheless. Anna Maria Battista, Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino: Montaignee Charron (Milan, 1966), ch. 1; Anna Maria Battista, Politica e morale nella Franciadell’età moderna, ed. A.M. Lazzarino del Grosso (Genova, 1998), ch. 9; Anna MariaBattista, ‘Morale «privée» et utilitarisme politique en France au XVIIe siècle’, inStaatsräson: Studien zur Geschichte eines politschen Begriffs, ed. R. Schnur (Berlin,1975), pp. 87–9; Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (NewYork, 1978), Vol. I, p. 253; Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France:The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1980), pp. 112–16; Tuck, Philosophyand Government, ch. 2; Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne, trans. D. Eng (Berkeley, 1991),p. 182. From a similar perspective, some commentators identify a ‘Machiavellian’ strainin the Essais: e.g. Jean Lacouture, Montaigne à cheval (Paris, 1996), ch. 8; David LewisSchaefer, The Political Philosophy of Montaigne (Ithaca, 1990), ch. 12. Battista refutesthis connection: Battista, Alle origini, p. 44.

8 Robert Collins, ‘Montaigne’s Rejection of Reason of State in “De l’Utile et del’honneste” ’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 23 (1992), pp. 71–94.


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politics guided in part by ‘Christian values’ and an innocent goodness inimi-cal to the hard-headed public realism of raison d’état.9

In this article, I offer a new interpretation of Montaigne’s attitude towardsthe emerging discourse of reason of state. Contrary to recent scholarship, Iargue that Montaigne finds both Ciceronian and Christian virtue to be unreal-istic and therefore dangerous guides to political action; and yet he does notsimply affirm the priority of reason of state. Instead, he argues in utramquepartem, both for and against reason of state. Montaigne’s purpose, I contend,is not primarily a sceptical suspension of judgment, as Anna Maria Battistahas argued, nor is he simply engaged in humanist intellectual exercise, asClaude Blum has suggested.10 Instead, Montaigne alerts his readers to theperils of following powerful elites who use either moralism or necessity aspretexts for violence in pursuit of political gain.

A Book ‘Consubstantial with its Author’:Implications of the Form of the Essais

Before turning to the text, it is important to elaborate on two points. First, it issignificant that Montaigne never uses the phrase raison d’état, though it wascurrent in humanist discourse by the late sixteenth century.11 Nonetheless, weshould not conclude, with Hugo Friedrich, that Montaigne therefore ‘nevergave special treatment to the idea of reasons of state’.12 Montaigne addresses anumber of thematic aspects of the emerging discourse of reason of statedirectly and in depth. I focus on three of these in this article, due to theirimportance in the text and their central roles in key chapters of the Essais: theoccasional necessity of extrajudicial action, the usefulness of politicaldissimulation and even outright simulation, and the conflict between the

9 Nicola Panichi, ‘Au-delà de la vertu «innocente»: Montaigne et les théoriciens de laraison d’état’, in Montaigne Politique, ed. P. Desan (Paris, 2006), pp. 78–9; Ann Hartle,Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher (New York, 2003), chs. 8–9; Ann Hartle, ‘Montaigne’sAccidental Moral Philosophy’, Philosophy and Literature, 24 (2000), pp. 138–53, pp.150–1; Biancamaria Fontana, Montaigne’s Politics: Authority and Governance in theEssais (Princeton, 2008), pp. 54–8, 142–3. See also: Géralde Nakam, Les Essais deMontaigne, mirroir et procès de leur temps (Paris, 2001), pp. 252–60; Géralde Nakam,Montaigne: La Manière et la Matière (Paris, 2006), pp. 210, 220; André Tournon,«Route par ailleurs»: Le «nouveau langage» des Essais (Paris, 2006), pp. 73–4.

10 Battista, Politica e morale, p. 259; Claude Blum, ‘Les Essais de Montaigne: Lessignes, la politique, la religion’, in Columbia Montaigne Conference Papers, ed.D. Frame and M. McKinley (Lexington, 1981), pp. 29–30, n. 18. See also: John ChristianLaursen, The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant(Leiden, 1992), chs. 4–5; Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism in theRenaissance (Ithaca, 1985), ch. 5.

11 Tuck, Philosophy and Government, p. 39.12 Friedrich, Montaigne, p. 182.


demands of political action and conventional moral rules, whether classical orreligious in origin.

Second, the innovative literary form of the Essais and Montaigne’s methodof composition tend to subvert interpretive claims of authorial intention. Notonly does Montaigne happily and constantly contradict himself, he alsoclaims (convincingly) that his own choice of arguments is often taken fromwhatever material ‘Fortune offers’ and not from any coherent plan.13 When itcomes to the idea of reason of state, it is perhaps not surprising, then, that‘Montaigne seems to vacillate’.14 My claim that there is a ‘purpose’ of politi-cal education within this apparent vacillation might therefore seem unlikely atbest. I shall give detailed reasons for it but for now would simply note thatthere is some warrant for such an approach in the book’s own history. The cir-cumstances surrounding the initial publication of the Essais and the book’sgenre lend themselves to a focus on the ubiquitous Renaissance projects,ideas and literatures of political education. Montaigne’s reasons for writingand the identity of his intended audience have long been matters of contro-versy, but the most convincing explanation for the appearance of the first edi-tion of the Essais in 1580, put forth recently by Philippe Desan, is thatMontaigne wished to use the book as a sort of curriculum vitae, to win himselfa wider reputation at the royal court in Paris and thereby to further his politicalcareer.15 Montaigne appears to have intended the limited printing of the 1580Essais as a ‘private edition’ with a ‘royal audience’ in mind.16

Scholars often treat the Essais as a radical departure from existing forms ofhumanist prose, but I want to suggest that we read the 1580 Essais as, at leastin part, an odd cousin of the humanist genre of political advice books for

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13 I.50.219a, translation amended (V–S, p. 301). See also II.10.297a. On the irreduc-ible role of fortune in literary and artistic expression in general (as well as military out-comes), see I.24.93a. On Montaigne contradicting himself, see III.2.611b.

14 Friedrich, Montaigne, p. 186.15 Philippe Desan, ‘Introduction’, Michel de Montaigne, Essais (1582), ed. P. Desan

(Paris, 2005), pp. vi–xlviii; Philippe Desan, ‘Les politiques éditoriales de Montaigne’, inMontaigne Politique, ed. P. Desan (Paris, 2006), pp. 263–86. For more on the composi-tion and publication history of the the Essais, see: George Hoffmann, Montaigne’sCareer (Oxford, 1998); Claude Blum, ‘Dans l’atelier de Millanges: Les conditions defabrication des éditions bordelais des Essais (1580, 1582)’, in Editer les Essais deMontaigne, ed. C. Blum and A. Tournon (Paris, 1997).

16 Desan, ‘Introduction’, p. xlvi. In this view, Montaigne rushed publication by thelocal Bordeaux printer, Simon Millanges, to coincide with his scheduled journey toParis, where he is known to have presented the book to Henri III and other ‘grands’ of thecourt (ibid., p. xiv). This is the opposite of the standard interpretation that Montaigne’sact of writing is part of a comprehensive, principled withdrawal from political activity in1571 following his retirement from the Parlement de Bordeaux (e.g. Skinner, Founda-tions, Vol. II, pp. 276–7).



gentlemen and princes.17 If we read the Essais principally through its histori-cal and generic aspect as a political advice book, the innovation that stands outmost is Montaigne’s insertion of himself into the book. He contributes to thepolitical advice literature, but with a work that is ‘consubstantial with itsauthor’.18

Indeed, the early reception of the Essais identified it precisely as a contri-bution to literature on political education. Girolamo Naselli, for example,titles his 1590 Italian translation Discorsi morali, politici e militari, whileJohn Florio follows Naselli’s lead in the title of his 1603 English translation,The essayes or Morall, politike and millitarie discourses of Lo[rd] Michaellde Montaigne, and Francis Bacon, openly inspired by Montaigne, sees hisown use of the essay-form as an opportunity to give ‘Counsels Civil andMoral’, not simply musings personal and literary.19 The content of the 1580edition of the Essais is certainly consistent with the advice-book genre; itis full of topical political and military advice, with chapter titles such as‘Whether the governor of a besieged place should go out to parley’ (I.5), ‘Atrait of certain ambassadors’ (I.17) and ‘Of the arms of the Parthians’ (II.9) —not to mention that most humanist of topics, ‘Of the education of children’(I.26).

By the time Montaigne published a second major edition in 1588, with athird book of additional chapters and several new passages interspersedamong the original chapters, his political career was effectively over.20 Thefirst edition had worked, and Montaigne was elected Mayor of Bordeaux in

17 The form of the Essais is unique, but it has connections to several already existingliterary and political genres. It is part confessional in the manner of Augustine (thoughwithout Augustine’s concern for repentance), part commonplace book, part advice book,and undoubtedly more; I am foregrounding its relation to the advice-book genre here. Inthe standard picture of Montaigne’s literary innovation, the essay form breaks radicallyfrom contemporary Latin and vernacular prose styles as a means to allow him the free-dom to follow his thoughts wherever they may lead (e.g. Friedrich, Montaigne,pp. 334–40). I say ‘gentlemen and princes’ here because of the often rigidly genderedaspect of Rensaissance political discourse.

18 II.18.504c. This is apparently how Montaigne presented the book to Henri III.When Henri told Montaigne that the Essais had pleased him, Montaigne is said to havereplied, ‘Sire . . . it is therefore necessary that I will please Your Majesty, since my bookis agreable to him; because it contains nothing other than a Discourse of my life andactions’. François de La Croix du Maine, Bibliothèque française (Paris, 1772), t. II,p. 131.

19 Bacon saw his own Essays as members of the advice-book genre. Martin Dzelainis,‘Bacon: Of Simulation and Dissimulation’, in A Companion to English RenaissanceLiterature and Culture, ed. M. Hattaway (Malden, MA, 2000), p. 234.

20 I call it the second major edition because Millanges printed a second editionlocally with minor corrections and a very few additions in 1582, probably to tidy up thebook for when Montaigne entered into the mayoralty. Desan, ‘Introduction’.


1581; but he was out of office as he began the expanded edition in 1585.21 Inthe interim, the Essais had become an unexpected success. In preparing the1588 edition, Montaigne could not help but be aware that he had stumbled,perhaps inadvertently, upon a successful career as a writer.22 In Desan’swords, a ‘political abyss’ separates the 1580 and 1588 editions of the Essais.23

Montaigne was suddenly free to expand his idiosyncratic advice book and toprepare it for a large, international, unknown, and even growing, public audi-ence. The same conditions apply to the further expansions of the 1588 editionon which Montaigne was working when he died in 1592, and which havesince been incorporated into the Essais.24 In sum, I read the Essais here as abook of advice, pervaded by political themes and motivations and marked byits intention first for a private, royal audience and, later, for a large and grow-ing public.25

Fortune, Necessity, Law

I pray you Sir for God’s sake, sith you cannot have what you would, thatyou will have what you may.

— Terence, Andria26

Montaigne avoids systematization and canonical forms of organized argu-ment, and yet certain themes persist throughout the Essais. Prominent amongthem is the complex role of custom in political life. Like other politique think-ers and trained lawyers in late sixteenth-century France, Montaigne repeat-edly affirms the ancient constitution and established local, regional andnational legal customs as the most reliable sources of stability in a time ofcivil war.27 In Montaigne’s view, laws do not enter into force because they

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21 This post involved not only the normal duties of mayor, but also the role ofhigh-level negotiator between warring Catholic and Huguenot camps in the Guyenne.Richard Cooper, ‘Montaigne et Matignon’, Montaigne Studies, 13 (2001), pp. 107–40;Daniel Ménager, ‘La diplomatie de Montaigne’, in Montaigne Politique, ed. P. Desan(Paris, 2006), pp. 139–54. The old picture of Montaigne sitting ‘quietly in his study in theGironde’ withdrawn from public life (given here by Tuck, Philosophy and Government,p. 45) is no longer widely accepted.

22 Desan, ‘Introduction’, p. xlvi.23 Ibid., p. xlvii.24 See note 3, above.25 Desan, ‘Les politiques éditoriales de Montaigne’, p. 264.26 ‘Quoniam id fieri quod vis non potest, velis id quod possis.’ Terence, Andria,

II.1.6–7. Translated here as Andria: the first comoedie of Terence, in English. A further-ance for the attainment vnto the right knowledge, & true proprietie, of the Latin tong.And also a commodious meane of help, to such as haue forgotten Latin, for their speedyrecouering of habilitie, to vnderstand, write, and speake the same (London, 1588).

27 On different uses of the concept of custom in the Essais and in classical andRenaissance thought more broadly, see Thompson, ‘Fortuna’s Revenge’, pp. 213–20.See also: Tournon, «Route par ailleurs», pp. 220–49; André Tournon, ‘Justice and the



issue from the will of the sovereign, as in the civil law tradition, but rather‘take their authority from possession and usage’, often from time immemorial(II.12.440a). Furthermore, Montaigne understands long use of a law to consti-tute ‘common consent’, which is the central ingredient that sets legal customapart from civil law for Renaissance jurists.28 Of course, Montaigne alsowarns of the dangers of blind reverence for custom; but on the whole, while headvocates criticism and reform of particular customs he deems pathological,such as venality of office, he affirms custom as the most secure foundation forthe constitution of political authority and the least likely to be abused, due toits grounding in consent.29 In any case, the conventional accretion of rules andlegal practices is unavoidable; even those laws we take to be most natural arereally just human-made rules ‘born of custom’ (I.23.83c).

Montaigne’s most sustained treatment of this theme appears in his chapter‘Of custom, and not easily changing an accepted law’ (I.23). He has in mindhere in particular both the introduction of Calvinism and the advent of theHuguenot resistance theories in the 1570s, as prime examples of dangerousconstitutional changes.30 The main thrust of the chapter is to warn of the civildanger of changing, suspending or otherwise introducing sudden ‘novelties’into customary law, because ‘a government [une police] is like a structureof different parts joined together in such a relation that it is impossible tobudge one without the whole body feeling it’ (I.23.86a, V–S, p. 119). InMontaigne’s view, any abrupt intervention into the glacial drift of custom islikely to have unforeseen and potentially disastrous consequences.31

Another consistent theme of the Essais is Montaigne’s dogged insistencethat political actors must take into consideration the particular circumstances

Law’, in The Cambridge Companion to Montaigne, ed. U. Langer (New York, 2005);Battista, Politica e morale, ch. 9.

28 I.23.89b. Hence Jean Bodin’s efforts to sever the link between custom and ‘com-mon consent’ in his absolutist tract, Six Books of the Republic, asserting that ‘custom hasno force but by sufferance, and only in so far as it pleases the sovereign prince’. JeanBodin, On Sovereignty, trans. J. Franklin (New York, 1992), pp. 57–8, 82.

29 Hence Montaigne’s praise of the fellow Gascon who resisted Charlemagne’simposition of ‘Latin and imperial laws’ (I.23.85a); and hence also Montaigne’s turn, inthe middle of his criticism of the arbitrary ‘sovereignty of custom’, to the great value ofobedience to established customary law, which he announces with the sudden interjec-tion, ‘Here is something from another vat’. I.23.83c, 86a.

30 The Francogallia, Du droit des magistrats, Réveille-matin des françois andVindiciae contra tyrannos all appear in the 1570s, as Montaigne is writing the first edi-tion of the Essais. On the meaning of ‘constitution’ in early-modern France, see RolandMousnier, ‘Comment les Français du XVIIe siècle voyaient la constitution’, XVIIeSiècle, 25–6 (1955), pp. 3–36.

31 As Bodin describes the distinct temporalities of different sources of law, ‘customacquires its force little by little and by the common consent of all, or most, over manyyears, while [civil] law appears suddenly, and gets its strength from one person who hasthe power of commanding all’. Bodin, On Sovereignty, p. 57.


in which they act. He rejects the abstract exercise of constructing ‘artificialdescriptions of a government [police]’, which are fit only for ‘controversyand dispute, and which have no life apart from that’ (III.9.730b; V–S, p. 957).In acting politically, Montaigne writes, we must ‘take men already bound andformed to certain customs’ (ibid.). In politics we are constrained to act not byour favourite norms, rules and prescriptions, but rather ‘according to the time,according to the men, according to the business’ at hand (III.9.758b). Prudentaction can never be determined by a rule; we can only take action ‘accordingto . . . [selon . . .]’: that is, with the acknowledgment of action’s radicaldependence on particular and always changing circumstances.

With this in mind, Montaigne writes in ‘Of custom’ that political actorswould do well to acknowledge the power of Fortune, who ‘always reserv[es]her authority above our reasonings’ (I.23.89a). While the common consentthat grounds the customary law might function under normal circumstances,this is clearly not the case under conditions of civil war (I.23.89b). In suchcases, ‘Fortune . . . sometimes presents us with such an urgent necessity thatthe laws must needs give some place to it’ (I.23.89a; V–S, p. 122). In otherwords, in cases of extreme ‘public necessity’, the laws must be forcibly bentto fit political circumstances (I.23.90a). Quoting Terence, Montaigne writesthat in such cases ‘it would be better to make the laws will what they can do,since they cannot do what they will’ (I.23.89a ).

In these 1580 passages, Montaigne’s emphasis is on the need for flexibilityin law as a means to prevent violence and preserve political society in a situa-tion of great political turbulence. Refusing to bend existing law to fit politicalconditions will, in this case, probably ‘give violence an occasion to trampleeverything underfoot’.32 In other words, Montaigne is not here talking aboutdeparting from legal order entirely through extrajudicial action, such as assas-sination — a common enough practice in late sixteenth-century France. Itseems likely, then, that he has in mind the recent royal edicts of toleration.33

Montaigne’s focus here on ‘moving’ ( remuer) the law in order to avoid

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32 Essais, I.23.89a. Later, Montaigne writes of the ‘conservation des estats’ (III.9.732b,V–S, p. 959)).

33 These include the Edict of Saint-Germain (1562) and elements of the Edict ofAmboise (1563). The Edict of Beaulieu (1576), which anticipates much of the languageof the later Edict of Nantes (1598), took place well after Montaigne began writing thechapter in 1572 (V–S, p. 108). I call it ‘toleration’ here, but Montaigne only uses thisword twice (II.17.488b (V–S, p. 644), II.37.576a (V–S, p. 760)), and only in the contextof tolerating/enduring pain or discomfort rather than the legal toleration of religious dif-ference (although ultimately these are related conceptually; one only tolerates what onewould prefer to do without). In practice, as John Dunn has noted, it is often hard to tell thedifference between toleration and the absence or cessation of persecution, and thisabsence is all the politique thinkers seem to mean. John Dunn, ‘The Claim to Freedom ofConscience: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Worship?’, in TheHistory of Political Theory and Other Essays (New York, 1996), p. 101.



catastrophic political violence is consonant with the pro-toleration stance ofother moderate, politique Catholics. These thinkers generally held religiousuniformity to be ideal in principle and yet unrealistic as actual policy in acountry marked by a more or less even balance of power between competingconfessional blocs.34 In the words of Chancellor Michel de l’Hôpital just priorto the Edict of Saint-Germain in 1562, uniformity may be ‘beautiful in itself’,but this does not change the fact that ‘experience has shown it to be impos-sible, just as the ships that Demetrius had built . . . were beautiful to see . . . butimpractical and useless for navigation’.35 In his chapter ‘Of freedom ofconscience’, Montaigne views toleration in much the same way, as a meansto ‘extinguish’ civil strife rather than a moral end in itself (II.19.509a).Montaigne repeats a variation of the same line from Terence’s Andria that heuses in ‘Of custom’. Of the various extensions of civil toleration to the Hugue-nots, he writes, ‘having been unable to do what they would, they have pre-tended to will what they could’.36

In the 1588 and EB additions to these passages, Montaigne’s tone is radi-cally different. Suddenly, the emphasis shifts from an occasional need to bendor move the law to a pressing contemporary need for more robust, whollyextrajudicial decision and action. Why the change? By the time Montaignebegan writing these additions in 1585, the French political landscape hadaltered dramatically. Henri de Guise had formed a renewed and strengthenedCatholic League in 1584 in opposition to the likely accession of the HugenotHenri de Navarre. The League turned against Henri III as well and ultimatelyadopted the pro-resistance language of the Huguenot monarchomach theo-rists of the previous decade.37

During this time, Montaigne adds a reflection on ‘our present quarrel’ tothe above passages. In combatting a violent political innovation like that of

34 As Bodin puts it, the goal of religious uniformity should be abandoned in cases likehis contemporary France, where ‘the consent and agreement of the nobilitie and peoplein a new religion or sect, be so puissant & strong, as that to represse or alter the same,should be a thing impossible, or at leastwise marvelous difficult, without the extremeperill and daunger of the whole estate’. Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweal (Cam-bridge, MA 1962), p. 382. See also Etienne Pasquier, Exhortation aux princes etseigneurs, in Écrits politiques, ed. D. Thickett (Geneva, 1966).

35 Michel de l’Hôpital, St-Germain-en-Laye, 3 janvier 1562, in Oeuvres complètes,ed. P.J.S. Duféy, de l’Yonne (Paris, 1824–5), p. 438. Demetrius’s massive vessels werethe original showboats.

36 II.19.509a. In a characteristic example of Montaigne’s arguing both sides, he con-trasts the French monarchy’s ‘use’ of the liberté de conscience to quell civil strife withJulian the Apostate’s ‘use’ of the very same policy as a means to sow civil strife, thuskeeping dangerous factions weak (ibid.). Here, liberté de conscience is not an end initself but rather a policy instrument to be applied differently — or abandoned — accord-ing to the circumstances.

37 See Montaigne’s criticism of these dangerous ‘imitateurs’: I.23.87c (V–S,pp. 119–20), II.12.323c.


the League, ‘it is a dangerous obligation and a handicap to keep yourself incheck and within the rules, in all matters and places, against those who arefree as air, to whom everything is permissible that can advance their plan, whohave neither law nor order except to follow their advantage’ (I.23.89b). Insuch contexts, Montaigne endorses robust action outside the ‘ordinary disci-pline’ of the law (ibid.). At the Estates General at Blois in 1588, the same yearin which this addition to ‘Of custom’ appeared in print, Henri III had Henri deGuise assassinated, paving the way for Navarre’s accession, which then tookplace after Henri III’s assassination the following year. In an addition tothe above passage in the EB, Montaigne writes, ‘The law-abiding pace is acold, deliberate, and constrained one, and it is not the kind that can holdup against a lawless and unbridled pace’ (I.23.89c). James Supple suggeststhat Montaigne makes an effort in the post-1588 additions to avoid theappearance of support for these ‘Machiavellian’ acts.38 But in these passagesMontaigne — who was present at Blois in 1588 but was not involved in theassassinations there — seems rather to approve retrospectively of Henri III’scoup de main against Guise for reasons of state.39

Montaigne is not championing the utilité of just any sort of extrajudicialaction, such as the chaotic massacres of 1572, as Jean Lacouture has sug-gested.40 The harm of extrajudicial action in the case of the assassinations atBlois is justified by its prevention (in Montaigne’s view) of the greater harmof continued civil war. Additionally, we must remember that the ‘state’ to bepreserved is, in Montaigne’s view, not simply Henri de Navarre’s status asheir and then as king, but rather the status of the ancient constitution, whichMontaigne would like broadened to accommodate a people now marked bylimited confessional pluralism. In the 1588 text, Montaigne continues his1580 criticism of the introduction of political novelties that might come tothreaten this state, writing that even the best ‘ground given for innovation isvery dangerous’.41 In the EB, following the League’s adoption of the monarcho-mach position, Montaigne sharpens his attack in this passage, substituting forthe word ‘ground’ (tiltre) a more pointed term: ‘But even the best pretext forinnovation is very dangerous’ (I.23.87c; V–S, p. 120, emphasis added). Evena claim to defend the faith — in this case a faith Montaigne sincerely shares —is not enough to justify the violent introduction of constitutional novelties.Montaigne is left in the paradoxical position, then, of both condemning and

204 D. THOMPSON

38 James J. Supple, Les Essais de Montaigne: Méthode(s) et méthodologies (Paris,2000), pp. 229–30.

39 Montaigne’s friend, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, records his presence at Blois in1588 as an unofficial observer. Ingrid A.R. de Smet, ‘Montaigne et Jacques-Auguste deThou: Une ancienne amitié mise à jour’, Montaigne Studies, 13 (2001), pp. 223–40,pp. 233–4. Henri de Guise’s brother, Louis, the Cardinal de Lorraine, was also assassi-nated at Blois.

40 Lacouture, Montaigne à cheval, pp. 169–71.41 Montaigne, Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne (Paris, 1588), fol. 42r.



advocating action contrary to established custom: one must never introducenew and sudden modes against the customary law . . . unless one must.

The ‘New-Fangled Virtue of Hypocrisy and Dissimulation’

Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare.[Who knows not how to dissimulate knows not how to reign.]

— Attributed to Louis XI

The above question of pretexts — especially of religious pretexts for vio-lence — is an important one, and it resurfaces in the context of Montaigne’svarious discussions of the role of dissimulation in politics. It is not surprisingthat Montaigne should have much to say about dissimulation, given its cur-rency as a focus of the Tacitean humanism popular at the French court. Inaddition, it was a major preoccupation of the related anti-Machiavellian liter-ature which had begun to appear in reaction to the new humanism and to thepolitical violence in the early 1570s.42 Montaigne is aware of this contempo-rary trend in political discourse, and he observes that ‘dissimulation is amongthe most notable qualities of this century’: so much so that ‘it is now a virtue’in the minds of political actors especially in France, much as Tacitus noted itwas for Tiberius.43

Montaigne’s most significant treatment of dissimulation in the 1580 edi-tion appears in his chapter ‘Of presumption’ (II.17). At first glance, it appearsthat Montaigne simply ‘hates dissimulation’ and blames the practice for thecontemporary ‘corruption of public discourse’.44 A closer reading reveals amore nuanced view, however. ‘Of presumption’ follows the chapter ‘Ofglory’ (I.16) and begins as a meditation on the self-deception of vainglory,which ‘represents us to ourselves as other than we are’ (II.17.478a). After arambling and ostensibly frank discussion of his provincial Gascon mannerof speech, his short stature, his disdain for small talk, and a number of otherbits of self-deprecating self-description, Montaigne suddenly switches his

42 Donald R. Kelley, ‘The Murd’rous Machiavel in France: A Post Mortem’,Political Science Quarterly, 85 (1970), pp. 545–59. Tacitist writing was often labelledas ‘Machiavellian’ by opponents, such as Innocent Gentillet. This is not far off themark, as ‘new humanists’ such as Lipsius acknowledged the connection between thelessons of Tacitus and those of Machiavelli. In a passage on the Tiberian virtue ofdissimulation, Lipsius writes that we should not ‘so strictly condemne the Italianfaulte-writer [Machiavelli]’, whose ‘poore soule is layde at of all hands’ these days.Lipsius, Sixe bookes of politickes or ciuil doctrine (London, 1594), IV.13, p. 114.

43 Essais, II.18.505a. In a famous passage of the Annals, Tacitus writes: ‘Of all hisvirtues, as he counted them, there was none on which Tiberius so prided himself as hiscapacity for dissimulation.’ Tacitus, Annals, trans. J. Jackson (Cambridge, MA, 1931),IV.71, translation amended; cf. Lipsius, Sixe bookes, IV.14; Gabriel Naudé, Politicalconsiderations upon refin’d politicks, and the master-strokes of state (London, 1711),p. 32.

44 Hartle, Michel de Montaigne, p. 215; Fontana, Montaigne’s Politics, p. 112.


attention to the ‘misfortune’ of being born into a ‘depraved’ century markedby civil war and religious violence (II.17.490a). This bad luck has the sidebenefit, Montaigne says with tongue in cheek, of allowing even a man ofminimal scruple to be ‘considered virtuous for a cheap price’. He quips, ‘Any-one who is only a parricide and sacrilegious in our days is a good and honour-able man’ (II.17.490a).

Then, in a more serious tone, Montaigne turns his attention to the newpolitical morality currently in vogue at court. His judgment is unequivocaland worth quoting in full:

as for this new-fangled virtue of hypocrisy and dissimulation, which is sohighly honoured at present, I mortally hate it; and of all the vices, I knownone that testifies to so much cowardice and baseness of heart. It is a cravenand servile idea to disguise ourselves and hide under a mask, and not to dareto show ourselves as we are. In that way our men train for perfidy.(II.17.491a)

Montaigne concedes that ‘[w]e must not always say everything, for thatwould be folly’; but while some quiet circumspection may be necessary andeven desirable in political action, outright simulation — the active spinning offalse appearances — is apparently not.45 A comparison with Lipsius is illus-trative of what Montaigne is up to here. Lipsius and Montaigne are oftenlumped together as proponents of the ‘new’ Tacitean humanism, but their dif-ferences are often stark.46 Lipsius, for example, will be much more tolerantthan Montaigne of instances of outright simulation, ‘when for thy profit thouenticest another by an error or false tale’;47 and Lipsius is a rather enthusiasticproponent of princely dissimulation. For example, in his defence of the virtueof dissimulation in the Politica, Lipsius cites the commonplace saying, Qui

206 D. THOMPSON

45 Essais, II.17.491a. This distinction between simulation and dissimulation is com-mon in the Tacitean literature, which often sets guidelines for acceptable levels of politi-cal deceit. The question of ‘how farre forth deceipts are to be admitted’ is the theme ofLipsius’ Sixe bookes, IV.14. See also Bacon, ‘On Simulation and Dissimulation’, inMajor Works, ed. B. Vickers (New York, 2008).

46 There are of course similarities too, as both writers recognize. Montaigne praisesthe work of ‘Lipsius in the learned and laborious web of his Politics’ and calls Lipsius‘the most learned man we have left, with a most polished and judicious mind’ (I.26.108c,II.12.436b). Similarly, Lipsius writes in a letter to Montaigne in August 1588, ‘I havefound no one in Europe whose way of thinking about things is closer to my own’ (Essais(V–S ed.), Appendix III, p. 1316).

47 Lipsius, Sixe bookes, IV.14, p. 119. Lipsius distinguishes between ‘light deceipt’(simply veiling one’s motives but letting one’s actions be seen and known) and ‘middledeceipt’, ‘when for thy profit thou intisest another by an error or false tale’ (IV.14,p. 119). These two actions are acceptable and even desirable for a prince for reasons ofstate (although ‘it ought not to bee amongst priuat persons’ (p. 117)); but the third level ofdeceit, outright treachery, is not. ‘The first sort of deceipt I persuade, the second Itollerate, and the third I condemne’(IV.14, p. 115).



nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare (‘Who does not know how to dissimulatedoes not know how to reign’), usually attributed to Louis XI.48

Montaigne, too, refers to this same commonplace, but he departs fromLipsius’ judgment. In the 1570s, this political maxim had become associatedwith the St Bartholomew’s Day massacres, thanks largely to the Huguenotjurist, political thinker and acquaintance of Montaigne, François Hotman.The event that had sparked the 1572 massacres was the assassination of thepowerful Huguenot Admiral Coligny and the strategic cull of the Huguenotleadership that followed. The official explanation and justification of CharlesIX’s role in ordering Coligny’s murder was that Coligny was planning animminent coup d’état and that preemptive, extrajudicial action was thereforenecessary: a more or less standard reason-of-state rationale.49 In 1573,Hotman published De furoribus gallicis with the apparent purpose of counter-ing the official explanation and justification of the massacres.

In De furoribus gallicis, Hotman paints a picture of a cold, calculatingmonarchy. He sets the scene in which Charles IX explains his actions beforethe parlement of Paris, just two days after Coligny’s assassination. Charles pro-claims the official narrative: ‘that the Admiral with certaine of his compliceshad conspired hys death’ and that ‘he had commaunded his friends to slay thesayde Admiral and all his confederates, and so to preuent the treason of hisenimies’.50 When the king has finished, the president of the parlement,Christofle de Thou, whom Hotman describes as ‘a man verie notable for hislighte brayne and his cruell heart’, congratulates Charles on his prudentpre-emptive coup de main. The king, he said, ‘had nowe with guile andsubtiltie ouercome these his enimies, whom he could neuer vanquishe byarmes and battell’.51 Where the lion was not up to the job, in other words, theKing did well to play the fox, conjuring a plot as a cunning pretext to defeat anotherwise insuperable enemy. In engaging in this bit of trickery, De Thousays, ‘the King had most fully verified the olde saying of Lewes the eleuenth

48 Lipsius, Sixe bookes, IV.14, p. 117. This maxim was popularized earlier in the six-teenth century by Philip de Commines, the so-called ‘French Machiavelli’. Kelley,‘Murd’rous Machiavel’, p. 553. On the use of the maxim in the reason-of-state literature,see Adrianna Bakos, Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in PoliticalThought, 1560–1789 (New York, 1997), ch. 5.

49 The excesses of the massacres, in which mostly Protestants were killed, went wellbeyond any measure of necessity, but the official line was that these were the work ofpopular mobs, committed after the fact, and were thus not the responsibility of the king.See Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Ornatissimi cujusdam viri, de rebus Gallicis, ad StanislaumEluidium, Epistola (Lyon, 1573), p. 18.

50 François Hotman (as Ernest Varamund), A true and plaine report of the furiousoutrages of Fraunce : & the horrible and shameful slaughter of Chastillion the admirall,and diuers other noble and excellent men, and of the wicked and straunge murder ofgodlie persons, committed in many cities of Fraunce, without any respect of sorte, kinde,age, or degree (London, 1573), p. 65.

51 Ibid., p. 66.


his progenitor King of France . . . Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare, Hethat can not skill to dissemble, can not skill to be a king’.52

Montaigne attacks this political maxim on prudential grounds. What princesdo in professing publicly that ‘a man who does not know how to dissembledoes not know how to rule’ is, in effect, ‘warning those who have to deal withthem that all they say is nothing but deceit and lies’.53 Lipsius will note thatprinces must not use dissimulation ‘immoderately and to small purpose’, lesta reputation for the practice put others too much on guard, thus making dis-simulation impossible.54 This limits Lipsius’ otherwise enthusiastic defenceof princely dissimulation. For Montaigne, by contrast, the limitation is ratherthe main point. Dissimulation most often does a prince more harm than good.Plain dealing is not only the honourable thing to do; it is also aligned withone’s practical interest.

In an addition to the EB, Montaigne reinforces this point with what appearsto be a direct reference to Chapter 8 of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Montaigne’starget in this passage is the collection of thinkers ‘in our time’ who counseldissimulation as a political virtue. They might ‘have something to say to aprince whose affairs Fortune had so arranged that he could establish themonce and for all by a single breach and betrayal of his word. But that is not theway it goes.’55 Instead, a prince’s dealings with others necessarily have multi-ple iterations. In reality, a prince will inevitably ‘fall into the same sort of bar-gain again; you make more than one peace, more than one treaty, in your life’(II.17.492c). To gain a reputation for dissimulation is therefore fatal to theaffairs of a prince.

Given the criticism of political dissimulation as a ‘Machiavellian’ vice bysome of Montaigne’s contemporaries, we might expect him to echo popularattacks on the Florentine when he brings him into the conversation in ‘Ofpresumption’.56 But what Montaigne does is much more interesting. Hedeparts from his discussion of dissimulation to return for a while to the

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52 Ibid., pp. 66–7.53 II.17.491a. Cf. the same argument regarding professional dealings. I.9.24b.54 Lipsius, Sixe bookes, IV.14, p. 118; cf., later, The Political Testament of Cardinal

Richelieu: The Significant Chapters and Supporting Selections, trans. H.B. Hill (Madi-son, 1964), p. 102.

55 II.17.492c. This seems to be a reference to Machiavelli’s notorious discussion of‘cruelties well used’, which are those acts of cruelty ‘that are done at a stroke, out of thenecessity to secure oneself, and then are not persisted in but are turned to as much utilityof the subjects as one can’. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. H.C. Mansfield (Chicago,1998), ch. 8, p. 38.

56 Kelley, ‘Murd’rous Machiavel’. See especially Innocent Gentillet’s 1576 Discourscontre Machiavel, which Montaigne seems to have read. There is some overlap in use ofexamples (e.g. the story of two monks: Essais (V–S), II.29.709a; cf. Innocent Gentillet,Discours contre Machiavel, ed. A.D’Andrea and P.D. Stewart (Florence, 1974), II.12),and Montaigne also cites Gentillet in a passage on Homer (V–S, II.36.753a).



self-description with which he began the chapter. Here he recommends hisown unique power of judgment, with which he is capable of grasping andeven inhabiting both sides of an argument. Montaigne explains that thiscapacity captures something important about the nature of political action anddecision.57 Montaigne writes: ‘Notably in political matters, there is a fine fieldopen to vacillation and dispute’ (II.17.497a). It is simply a fact of all ‘politicalarguments’ that ‘whatever role you are given, your game is just as easy asyour opponent’s, so long as you avoid colliding with the most obvious andevident principles’ (ibid., trans. amended, V–S, p. 655). It is in this contextthat Montaigne turns to the contemporary controversy surroundingMachiavelli:58

Machiavelli’s arguments, for example, were solid enough for the subject,yet it was very easy to combat them; and those who did so left it no less easyto combat theirs. In such an argument there would always be matter foranswers, rejoinders, replications, triplications, quadruplications, and thatinfinite web of disputes that our pettifoggers have spun out as far as theycould in favour of lawsuits.

There is no certainty to be found in maxims reflecting reason of state or in thevarious political moralisms that seek to oppose such maxims. Political judg-ment cannot be determined by a doctrine or rule. In acting politically, humanreasoning ‘has little other foundation than experience, and the diversity ofhuman events offers us infinite examples in all sorts of forms’ (II.17.497a).

On ‘Legitimate Fictions’

So, in the spirit of arguing in utramque partem in ‘lawsuits’, Montaignealso argues for political dissimulation — and even outright simulation — but

57 Montaigne’s purpose is not simply recreational autobiography; he is recommend-ing his unique form of judgment to those ‘who have an interest in knowing’ him(II.17.479a). Montaigne concedes that his tendency towards ‘irresolution’ can certainlybe ‘a most harmful failing in negotiating worldly affairs’, but it also allows for deepinsight into the uncertainties built into a given situation of action, a healthy attitude ofdoubt, and a certain boldness; with his judgment ‘evenly balanced’ between two options,he recognizes that, at some point, calculations must end, and then action is largely a mat-ter of abandoning oneself ‘to the mercy of fortune’. Montaigne makes it clear that he iswilling to share his judgment with bold and even reckless candour towards ‘great men’and then submit to their decisions (II.17.492a, 496a). In other words, Montaigne is anideal counsellor, capable of seeing multiple sides of a situation, of seeing through falsecertainties, of recognizing the irreducible role of chance in a given course of action, ofresisting the temptation of flattery, and of submitting willingly to the decision of another.

58 II.17.497a. Gentillet writes that prior to the arrival of Catherine de’Medici, Francewas ‘governed à la Françoise, that is, following the traces and teachings of our Frenchancestors: but since we have been governed à l’Italienne or à la Florentine, that is,following the teachings of Machiavelli the Florentine’. Gentillet, Discours contreMachiavel, Bk. I, preface, p. 14.


only under certain conditions. Consider the contrast with Innocent Gentillet,author of the 1576 Discours contre Machiavel, who vehemently rejects thenew political (a)morality in vogue at the French court. While Gentillet con-cedes that it is morally permissible to use ruses in a just war, he vehementlyrejects the notion that a prince must know ‘how to deceive, dissimulate, andperjure himself’ as a matter of ordinary policy.59 For the Christian moralistGentillet, the very worst sort of princely dissimulation is the cultivation of afalse air of piety.60 But Montaigne is not so troubled by this, as long as the endis political stability. Just as Lipsius would write that the ubiquity of ‘simplepeople’ makes dissimulation necessary, Montaigne writes that dissimulationis indispensable to statecraft because of the moral and intellectual ‘inade-quacy’ of the vast majority of people. Since most people ‘cannot be suffi-ciently paid with good money, let us also use counterfeit money. This meanshas been practised by all lawgivers, and there is no polity [police] in whichthere is not some admixture either of vain ceremony or of lying opinion toserve as a curb to keep the people in their duty.’61

Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the ‘temporal benefits’bestowed by religion (II.12.380c). This general need for ‘counterfeit money’in statecraft is where most religions find ‘their fabulous origins and begin-nings, enriched with supernatural mysteries’.62 In later additions to the ‘Apol-ogy for Raymond Sebond’, Montaigne even seems to take pleasure in Plato’smost fantastic religious inventions and origin myths, which are ‘as useful forpersuading the common herd as they are ridiculous for persuading himself’(II.12.379c).

This is true not only in religion but also in law. In looking honestly at con-temporary law, ‘even our law’, Montaigne admits that ‘the truth of its justice’is in fact most often founded in ‘legitimate fictions’ (II.12.401b). If we wereto follow a given law back in time to its original purpose and use, we would beshocked at the tiny, delicate beginnings of what is now considered ‘full of dig-nity, awe, and reverence’, and taken easily ‘by authority and on credit’(II.12.440a). It is important that Montaigne is not seeking here to unmask orexpose the ‘mystic foundation of [law’s] authority’ in order then to promote aconstitutional politics or jurisprudence based instead on natural law or philo-sophical reason (III.13.821b). Montaigne criticizes appeals to natural lawas error or self-delusion; in his view there simply is no natural law, only

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59 Gentillet, Discours contre Machiavel, III.12, p. 325; III.18, pp. 356–7. SeeIII.18–19 in general.

60 Ibid., II.1–2, pp. 147–67. A prince should not just appear dévot; he must be dévot,for God is watching. Ibid., II.1, p. 147.

61 Lipsius, Sixe bookes, p. 114; Montaigne, Essais, II.16.477a, trans. amended (V–S,p. 629).

62 II.16.477a. Like Machiavelli, Montaigne uses Numa Pompilius as an example;and he contrasts this and other, similar, stories with the truth of the revelation to Moses.



human customs, all the way down.63 While authority may be based on ‘legiti-mate fictions’ and sometimes acts of outright dissimulation, these imperfectarrangements are essential to solidifying the ‘fortuitous bond’ of a politicalsociety (III.9.730b, trans. amended, V–S, p. 956). From Montaigne’ssceptical perspective, there is no other available ground. Even the truth ofScripture must pass through the weak, inconstant and passionate prism of theimperfect human powers of interpretation (II.12.442a).

But all acts of dissimulation are not equal. Montaigne distinguishes sharplybetween the ‘legitimate fictions’ conducive to social and political order and aform of dishonesty that ‘betrays human society’ (II.18.505a). Without someminimal level of truthfulness between subjects, ‘we have no more hold oneach other, no more knowledge of each other’ (ibid.). If a minimal level oftrust in public speech fails, ‘it breaks up all our relations and dissolves all thebonds of our society’ (ibid.). This is especially true for acts of dissimulationabout religion undertaken for personal political gain. In a later addition,Montaigne writes that ‘where religion serves as a pretext, even kinshipbecomes untrustworthy, under the cloak of justice’ (II.15.467c). This is theunfortunate condition of Montaigne’s France, and he is not alone in levellingthis charge. For Etienne Pasquier, the violence in France is really a function of‘private ambition, masked by the name of God’ and pursued for particulartemporal gain ‘under the veil of religion’.64 In a similar analysis, Montaignereckons that if one could assemble only those combatants who are motivatedprimarily ‘from the pure zeal of affection for religion’ or who have in mind‘only the protection of the laws of their country or the service of their prince’,the resulting group would ‘not make up one complete company of men-at-arms’ (II.12.323a). Instead of defenders of their faith or their prince, the fight-ers on both sides ‘are driven to it by private and accidental considerationsaccording to whose diversity they are stirred’.65

In later additions, Montaigne’s tone is sharper. In 1580, Montaigne hadalready warned about those, even on his preferred Catholic side, who wereusing religious ideals and defence of the ancient constitution ‘as a pretexteither to wreak their private vengeances, or to supply their avarice, or to pur-sue the favour of princes’ (II.19.506a). In the EB, he attacks both sidesequally for shaping religious reasons ‘as if from wax’ for their own terrestrial,

63 II.12.437a. In an EB addition, Montaigne pokes fun at the notion that humanbeings are capable of discovering something like natural law with reference to the oddbehaviour of philosophers, the very people best suited to take ‘as their pattern the originalimage of nature’ (II.12.440a). What does it look like if we follow whatever norms ourflawed human reason discovers in nature? Well, Montaigne says, it looks like a friendly‘farting contest’ between Crates and Metrocles; and it looks like Diogenes the Cynicmasturbating in the agora (II.12.440–41a, c). There’s your natural law for you.

64 Pasquier, Exhortation aux princes et seigneurs, p. 89.65 Ibid. The words ‘and accidential’ (‘et casuelles’) in this sentence are an EB addi-

tion to the 1580 text (V–S, p. 444).


political ends and for using religion as a pretext ‘for their violent and ambi-tious enterprises’ (II.12.323c). In this regard, there is no real differencebetween the parties, as they both ‘conduct themselves in these [enterprises]with a procedure so identical in excess and injustice’ (ibid.). Faced with all ofthis nastiness, Montaigne readily concurs with Lucretius’ infamous judg-ment: ‘So many grievous crimes religion has inspired!’66 In one of his mostfamous passages, Montaigne writes that the cannibals of the New World actmuch more humanely in openly killing and eating people than do these sup-posedly civilized European Christians in devouring each other slowly throughtorture ‘on the pretext of piety and religion’ (I.31.155a).

There is a clear distinction here between a constructive and a destructivedissimulation of political motives under cover of religion. Dissimulationwith a long-term focus on the ‘temporal benefit’ of stability is perfectly fine;the problem is rather the short-sighted use of religion by Montaigne’s coun-trymen as a pretext for violence in pursuit of personal gain. This is whyMontaigne is so intensely critical of the Catholic League for having adoptedthe Huguenot doctrine of a God-given right to resist the king when its mem-bers found it politically expedient to do so towards the end of the 1580s(I.23.87c, II.12.323c). It is not so much the sheer hypocrisy of the switchthat troubles him. It is rather that the short-term strategic deployment of anormative pretext for violence destroys public trust, perpetuates the conta-gion of violence and introduces into the country ‘so many inevitable evils,and such a horrible corruption of mœurs, as civil wars and political changesbring with them in a matter of such weight’ (I.23.87b, trans. amended, V–S,p. 120).

As with Montaigne’s reference to the ‘legitimate fictions’ of law and justice,it is important to note that Montaigne’s attack on the use of religion as pretextdoes not entail a pursuit of pure religious motives. Montaigne reports that hetakes scriptural revelation to be true (e.g. II.16.477c). However, just as the truthof Scripture must pass through the imperfect prism of human interpretation, sodoes all religious ceremony and belief require a human-made, earthly supple-ment. As an apparently serious sceptical fideist, Montaigne is committed to theopinion that human reason can know nothing of God. In order to worship thedivinity, the human mind must create as an object of devotion ‘a definite pictureafter its own pattern’, and ‘divine majesty has thus let itself be somewhat cir-cumscribed within corporeal limits on our behalf’ (II.12.381c). God himselfmay be imperceptible, but worship of God ‘is expressed by perceptible ritualsand words; for it is man that believes and prays’ (ibid.). This necessary earthlysupplement is also a matter of human custom. The brute fact of the great diver-sity of customs and beliefs in the world shows that our minds and behavioursare shaped largely by where we were born (II.12.431–33b, c). When Montaigne

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66 Essais, II.12.388c, II.12.389a. ‘Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.’ Lucretius,De rerum natura, trans. W.H.D. Rouse (Cambridge, MA, 1992), I.80–81 and I.101.



writes, famously, that ‘[w]e are Christians by the same title that we arePerigordians or Germans’, he is not trying to unmask a religious truth lyingbeneath merely human ceremony, nor is he trying to erode religious bases ofauthority; Montaigne is simply noting that such ceremony is our only way ofexpressing devotion to an otherwise incomprehensible God.67

In the end, Montaigne’s problem is not with dissimulation as such, whichhas many salutary effects in political life and is in any case unavoidable.Montaigne is concerned instead about a situation in which short-sighted dis-simulation becomes the norm and in which this ‘ugly vice’ is incorporatedinto habit as a ‘new-fangled virtue’, fit for all occasions. For Montaigne, the‘first stage in the corruption of mœurs’ is not so much those indispensablemoments of dissimulation as it is the total ‘banishment of truth’ from politicallife through the embrace of dissimulation as a short-sighted virtue or habit(II.18.505a, V–S, p. 666). The source of the problem — and the species ofpolitical actor whom we should never trust — is the type who cannot exit thehabitual state of ‘being always different outside and inside’, like Tiberius.68

While Lipsius’ later lesson for princes is that ‘Dissimulation is necessarie’ —with Tiberius as a prime example of a prince who ‘loved’ this political vir-tue — Montaigne’s lesson for princes in the 1580 edition has more to do withthe power and political utility of truth-telling.69 While the use of ‘counterfeitmoney’ may be a necessary part of statecraft, it is also true that a prince canonly carry on his affairs ‘by the will of the people’; and nothing can ‘flatter’this popular will as effectively as displays of ‘humanity, truthfulness, loyalty,moderation and, especially justice’ (II.17.490c). Montaigne does not heresubvert the high Tacitean valuation of dissimulation by offering a merely real-ist affirmation of the efficacy of truthfulness, as Géralde Nakam suggests;rather, Montaigne weighs the political efficacy and risks involved in bothstrategies and warns against the complacent acceptance of either as fit for alloccasions.70 Dissimulation well-used may be good policy, but so, too, maytruth-telling be.

67 II.12.325b. On the latter claim, see Battista, Politica e morale, ch. 9.68 II.17.491a. Montaigne is concerned that his fellow countrymen are becoming ‘ac-

customed [duicts] to speak false words’ to the point that they can no longer tell when theyare doing it (II.17.491a, b; V–S, p. 647). He is making a distinction similar to DavidRunciman’s recent typology of first-order and second-order hypocrisy. Runciman,Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond (Princeton,2008), pp. 51–6.

69 Lipsius, Sixe bookes, IV.14, p. 117.70 Nakam, Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 254.


The Useful and the Honourable

The useful [utile] can never conflict with the honourable [honestum].— Cicero, De Officiis71

I follow common usage in language, which distinguishes between thingsuseful [utile] and honourable [honneste].

— Montaigne, ‘De l’utile et l’honneste’72

As should be clear by now, Montaigne’s deep engagement with the emergingdiscourse of reason of state constitutes neither a straightforward rejection nora simple endorsement of the new political morality. It should also be clear thathis reflections on reason of state emerge out of engagement with politicalevents and ideas that are part of the civil wars then going on in France. WhileMontaigne was content to let these reflections weave in and out of variouschapters of the first two books of the Essais, with no discernible pattern, hesituates the question of reason of state squarely at the beginning of his newthird book of chapters in the 1588 edition, where he meditates on the classicalmoral categories of utile and honestum, the useful and the honourable, in thevery first chapter of Bk. III. Montaigne not only places the controversy overreason of state front and centre in the 1588 edition, he also gives this politicaltheme a more sustained, theoretical treatment than in the 1580 edition. This isespecially significant in light of the likelihood that Montaigne by now under-stands himself to be addressing a large public readership. Here, Montaignebrings the new political morality out of the shadows of private counsel toprinces and courtiers, the likely audience of the first two books of the Essais,and he puts that counsel before the eyes of a more or less open-ended publicaudience. It is this topic that is driven to the fore by his awareness of a newpublic. What should we make of that?

The discussion in ‘Of the useful and the honourable’ addresses the fadingCiceronian political morality directly. In Bk. III of De officiis, Cicero arguesfor the essential harmony of the useful and the honourable in political life.The two words may sound different upon first hearing them, Cicero writes,but this is just an illusion; we should conceive of them as ‘one and the same’.73

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71 Cicero, De Officiis, trans. W. Miller (Cambridge, MA, 1968), III.3.11, III.7.34.72 Essais, III.1.604b, V–S, p. 796.73 Cicero, De officiis, III.21.83. Cicero’s own treatment of how to negotiate this

harmony in practice is subtle and well attuned to the difficulties of acting with honestasin an imperfect, complex and ever-changing world. (E.g. see his discussion of decorumin De officiis (I.27.93–I.42.151) and especially the passages on the four personae(I.30.107–I.33.121), which acknowledge positive attributes of shrewdness, cunning anddeception (e.g. I.30.108).) That said, the general Ciceronian idea that ‘it is always ration-al to be moral’ and that honestas and utilitas can be aligned in public life, was taken up byRenaissance humanist thinkers (more or less) ‘in its entirety’. Quentin Skinner,Machiavelli (New York, 2010), p. 57; Tuck, Philosophy and Government, ch. 1.



Montaigne confronts a situation in which this sense of harmony is no longertenable. He points to the ‘common language usage’ of his contemporaries inFrance, according to which the useful and the honourable are so far out ofjoint that certain ‘natural actions that are not only useful [utiles] but neces-sary’ are called ‘dishonourable [deshonnestes] and foul’ (III.1.604b, V–S,p. 796). Moreover, certain honourable actions are no longer considered usefulper se. They might well be useful, but they might just as well not be, asMachiavelli had argued in The Prince. As Philippe Desan observes, thisconceptual conflict in Essais Bk. III, Chapter 1 ‘is symptomatic of a largerproblem of two ideologies competing for dominance in French society’.74 Thequestion is whether the older Ciceronian humanist value of noble honnêteté willbe swallowed up by the newer Tacitean and Machiavellian value of politicalutility.

In ‘Of the useful and the honourable’, Montaigne confirms the growingsense, which he had begun to express in earlier chapters, that actions such asdissimulation are indispensable, unavoidable, and even good for politicalsociety in certain cases. He begins the chapter with a direct approach to theTacitean literature and its emphasis on the disjunction between motives andpolitical words and deeds. Montaigne points to a rare episode in the Annals inwhich Tiberius ‘gave up the useful [l’utile] for the honourable [l’honneste]’,refusing to poison the German general Arminius when it would have beenexpedient to do so, because (as Tiberius noisily proclaimed) Roman soldiersshould avenge themselves overtly, ‘arms in hand’, and not through trickery.75

Now of course Tiberius was a notorious ‘impostor’ in his public dealings,which, Montaigne quips, ‘is no great miracle in people of his profession’.76

Nonetheless, Tiberius’s motives here are more or less irrelevant; once uttered,his ‘acknowledgment of vertu’ has a life of its own (III.1.599b).

Montaigne takes this example of a gap between intention and outcome asan occasion to note the role of ostensible moral defects in producing salutarysocial and political effects. Human beings are not prone to have perfectlyclean or honourable inner lives, and yet we often get along just fine with oth-ers because of, and not in spite of, this fact. Montaigne writes, ‘Our structure,

Montaigne is responding to this aspect of humanist political culture rather than to Cicerohimself.

74 Philippe Desan, ‘The Worm in the Apple: The Crisis of Humanism’, in Humanismin Crisis: The Decline of the French Renaissance, ed. P. Desan (Ann Arbor, 1991), p. 17.See also: Philippe Desan, ‘Montaigne et l’éthique marchande’, L’Esprit Créateur, 46(2006), pp. 13–22, p. 19; Philippe Desan, Les commerces de Montaigne: Le discourséconomique des Essais (Paris, 1992), ch. 8; Nakam, Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 257.

75 III.1.599b, V–S, p. 790, citing Tacitus, Annals, II.88.76 III.1.599b. Characteristically, Tacitus exposes Tiberius’s otherwise hidden motive.

The idea that Romans only take their vengeance in the open was ‘a high saying intendedto place Tiberius on a level with the old commanders who prohibited, and disclosed, theoffer to poison King Pyrrhus’. Tacitus, Annals, II.88.


both public and private, is full of imperfection’ (III.1.599b). It is an irreduc-ible aspect of the ‘human condition’ that our minds and bodies are in a con-stant state of flux and that ‘[o]ur being is cemented with sickly qualities’.77

Even our compassion at the suffering of others is mixed with an inconstanttouch of vicious pleasure at the spectacle. Montaigne is not moralizing here;his point is rather that these imperfections are absolutely necessary. Toremove them ‘would destroy the fundamental conditions of our life’ as humanbeings (III.1.600b).

Montaigne then moves from soul to city, as it were, projecting this pictureof human psychology onto political society as a whole. Whereas in the 1580edition he had expressed concern that a pervasive habit of deception maydestroy ‘all the bonds of our society’, he now understands deceit, dissimula-tion, and even the dirty deeds they mask to be indispensable for holdingpolitical society together (II.18.505a). Montaigne now finds that ‘in everygovernment [toute police] there are necessary duties which are not only abjectbut also vicious’, and these vices are ‘employed for sewing our societytogether, as are poisons for the preservation of our health’ (III.1.600b; V–S,p. 791). It is simply unavoidable that the ‘public welfare’ sometimes requirespeople to ‘betray and lie’, and even on occasion to ‘massacre’.78 Montaigne’searlier expressed hatred of deceit and dissimulation has apparently softened.He writes, ‘I do not want to deprive deceit of its proper place; that would bemisunderstanding the world’ (III.1.604b). Deceit is integral to ‘most of men’soccupations’, and even ‘[i]nnocence itself could neither negotiate among uswithout dissimulation nor bargain without lying’ (III.1.603b).

Despite the tone of these reflections, many of Montaigne’s most recentcommentators find in this chapter a rejection of political deception, of thevalue of political utility, and of reason of state more generally. This is prob-ably because Montaigne contrasts these demands of public life with his owndistaste for telling lies and for the vicious side of political action. He simply,personally, ‘hate[s] to deceive’, he says (III.1.600b). In fact, he thinks thewhole political matter of the necessary ‘lawful vices’ would be better left tostronger, less squeamish types (ibid.). But this does not mean that Montaigneadvocates a return to a more innocent form of political morality — whetherclassical or Christian. He has learned from his own political experience thatsuch ‘scholastic and novice virtue’ is in reality ‘inept and dangerous’ in poli-tics (III.9.758b), and he cites the French annals that still rightly ‘reproach one

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77 III.2.611b, trans. amended (V–S, pp. 804–5b); III.1.599b.78 III.1.600b. The phrase ‘qu’on massacre’ is an EB addition (V–S, p. 791). As James

Supple notes about Montaigne’s notorious addition of the word massacre here, the termwas often used at the time to refer to assassination (Supple, Les Essais de Montaigne,p. 231). In Supple’s view, Montaigne’s addition of this word is meant to be ‘ironic’, but Itake to be another straightforward expression of approval for the assassination of Guiseat Blois in 1588, which I discussed above. See also Tournon, «Route par ailleurs»,p. 265.



of our kings for having given in too simply to the conscientious persuasions ofhis confessor’ in political deliberations.79 Nor does it mean that Montaigneprefers or counsels a full neo-Stoic withdrawal into a private life of otium.While his own moral inclinations mean that ‘public occupations’ and dirtyhands are not his ‘quarry [gibier]’, he readily admits that he would havewillingly followed further down a path of public service, if ‘Fortune . . . hadcalled me’ (III.1.603b; V–S, p. 795). Montaigne sees the benefit of moderat-ing political attachments and of cultivating dispassionate service to the publicgood, but this does not mean that one must, or even can, abandon theseentirely (III.1.601b, III.10). ‘We may regret better times, but not escape thepresent’ (III.9.760b).

In highlighting the disjunction between his own moral inclinations andtastes, on the one hand, and the demands of political service, on the other,Montaigne means to highlight the tragic dimension of the disjunction betweenthe useful and the honourable. In political life, we cannot avoid yielding tothe necessity of doing what is useful, and yet according our ordinary lan-guage and customs such actions are often dishonourable. And so, for thepolitical actor who engages in the ‘extreme and desperate remedies’ some-times demanded by ‘public necessity’, there are often negative consequences,whether one is a subject or a prince (III.1.606b). For subjects, Montaignewrites that receipt of a commission to act within the darker side of politicallife should really be seen as a sort of condemnation and punishment. It is acondemnation because the one giving the commission thinks that the onereceiving it is reliably capable of acts considered dishonourable, and it is apunishment because ‘[a]s much as public affairs are bettered by your deed,so much your own are worsened; the better you do, the worse you do’(III.1.605b). Montaigne gives numerous examples of agents coming to a badend because they became involved in morally questionable actions for rea-sons of state.

By the same token, if ‘some urgent circumstance and unexpected accidentof state necessity’ should befall a prince, forcing him to act outside his ‘ordi-nary duty’, then according to reason of state this cannot be considered vice,‘since he has abandoned his own reason to a more universal and powerful rea-son’ (III.1.607b). Yet the prince should also look at this situation as a sort ofdivine punishment, for while he has not committed a crime ‘it is certainly mis-fortune’ (ibid.) If a prince is ‘really racked between these two extremes’ of

79 III.9.758b. It is important to note that Montaigne does not seem to be guiding hisresponses to these political questions with reference to ‘Christian values’, as Fontana andHartle claim today. In fact, although he is a committed Catholic, he recognizes that thereare no Christian values to which to appeal without controversy, only conflicting Catholicand Calvinist values. He writes: ‘we say in disputes about religion that we need a judgenot attached to either party, free from preference and passion, which is impossible amongChristians’ (II.12.454a).


committing morally unpalatable action or facing the ruin of the state, then hemust choose the former, but only with a pique of conscience (ibid.).

Montaigne maintains that such moments are and ought to be ‘rare andsickly exceptions’. Extreme action should only be undertaken with the ‘publicutility’ in mind — never merely ‘private utility’ — and only ‘with great mod-eration and circumspection’.80 But the tragic dimension of the disjunctionbetween the useful and the honourable often makes the separation betweenpublic and private difficult to sustain.81 Montaigne illustrates this by playingwith Cicero’s treatment of the potential for conflict between filial duty andduty to the res publica in Bk. III of De officiis. There, Cicero explores an argu-ment on both sides of this controversy, taken from Hecaton.82 The specificquestion concerns what to do if your own father commits public crimes or,worse, tries to usurp the domination of the res publica. After briefly goingback and forth, Cicero says that faced with such a circumstance a son oughtsimply to ‘sacrifice his father for the safety of his country’.83 For Cicero, thereis no real conflict here; the res publica takes clear priority.

For Montaigne, however, things are not so simple. During a time of civilwar, the possibility of violent enmity between family members is not merely atopic for abstract moral exercise, and it is often difficult to see the boundariesbetween the res publica and kinship bonds, especially in a conflict drivenlargely by powerful noble families with their own dynastic ends.84 Montaigneturns at the end of the chapter to three classical examples of possibleapproaches to conflict between one’s ‘private interest’ in the bonds of friend-ship or family and the ‘common interest’ of public life in political society(III.1.609b). First, as an example of the tragic dimension of reason of state andits priority on public utility, Montaigne offers the story of Timoleon, whoallowed his own brother, a tyrant, to be killed for the public good. InMontaigne’s telling, Timoleon was pained that it had been ‘necessary to pur-chase the public utility at such a price as honnesteté and his meurs’. In fact, the

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80 III.1.607b. This is a common difference in the reason-of-state literature, which dis-tinguishes between ‘good’ reason of state, which keeps the ‘common good’ in mind andtries to combine honestas and utilitas when possible, and ‘bad’ reason of state, whichthinks only of what is useful for the prince. Burke, ‘Tacitism, Scepticism, and Reason ofState’; Noel Malcolm, ‘Reason of State and Hobbes’, in Reason of State, Propagandaand the Thirty Years’ War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes, ed. N. Malcolm(New York, 2007), p. 101.

81 Fontana, Montaigne’s Politics, p. 55.82 Cicero, De officiis, III.15.63, III.23.89–90.83 Ibid., III.23.90.84 This is not to say that it was merely a philosophical exercise for Cicero, who was of

course all-too-well acquainted with civil war by the time he wrote De officiis. Nonethe-less, Montaigne understands his own reflection on the useful and the honourable as adeparture from the public moralism of Ciceronian humanism, which no longer seemstenable from his perspective in the 1580s.



deed itself had two ‘contrary faces’, one public and one private; whileTimoleon achieved the public glory of liberating Syracuse from tyranny, healso privately ‘became altogether a prey to grief and disordered in mind’ as afratricide and retired from public life despondent and suicidal.85 Timoleon’saction was deemed ‘excusable’ by his contemporaries, and he ultimately sur-vived the ordeal through his appropriate self-immersion in grief and regret,yet the public and private faces of Timoleon’s action — the good tyrannicideand the bad fratricide — could not be reconciled, to Timoleon’s personal det-riment (III.1.60708b; cf. I.38.174a).

Montaigne’s second example, Epaminondas, does his heroic best to attendto private bonds of friendship and kinship, regardless of circumstance.Montaigne addresses this example specifically to those of his contemporarieswho believe that the highest expression of ‘greatness of courage’ and ‘rareand singular vertu’ requires a blanket mistrust of ‘friendship, private obliga-tions, our word, and kinship, for the common good and obedience to the mag-istrate’ (III.1.609–10b, trans. amended; V–S, p. 802). Against this view,Epaminondas is an exceptional character because he does not shy away frompublic life or refuse to engage in harsh measures for the public good, and yethe still allows private bonds of friendship and kinship to coexist with hisexceptional courage and public vertu, even amid violence. One ofEpaminondas’ attributes that Montaigne most admires is his care in refrainingfrom killing personal friends if he and they find each other on opposing sidesin battle.86 The lesson in Epaminondas’ example, Montaigne says, is that the‘common interest’ must not totally overwhelm one’s ‘private interest’(III.1.609b).

This does not mean, however, that Montaigne gives private attachment ormoral consideration priority over the pull of public necessity. Playfully mis-quoting Cicero’s discussion of the conflict between filial duty and public dutyin Bk. III of De officiis, Montaigne merely wants to say that ‘our country doesnot come before all other duties; and it is good for it to have citizens who aredutiful to their parents’.87 Montaigne calls this ‘a lesson proper for the times’

85 III.1.607b, trans. amended, V–S, p. 800. The latter quote is from Montaigne’ssource, Plutarch: Lives, trans. B. Perrin (Cambridge, MA, 1918), Vol. VI, p. 273.

86 III.1.609b, c. Even amid the din of battle, Epaminondas could hear the voices ofcivilité and courtoisie (III.1.609b). Montaigne likes many other things about Epaminondas(II.36), but this attribute is especially important here.

87 III.1.609c. Whereas Cicero had tried to resolve the conflict by effacing it andasserting the ultimate priority of public duty to the patria, as we have seen, Montaignefuses and selectively quotes pieces of Hecaton’s argument from the other side. Montaignewrites, ‘Non enim patria praestat omnibus officiis, et ipsi conducit pios habere cives inparentes’ (V–S, p. 802), while the original reads: ‘Non igitur patria praestat omnibusofficiis?’ (‘Well, then, do the claims of country not stand out before all other duties?’)‘Immo vero, sed ipsi patrie conducit pios habere cives in parentes’ (‘No, truly, they do,


(III.1.609b). But the lesson does not entail the further position that it is in factfilial duty that stands out before all other duties. The problem is precisely thatneither duty simply takes priority over the other, and while we might try tobalance them as best we can, like Epaminondas, the truth is that they oftenconflict, as they did within same action in the case of Timoleon, and as theyoften do in the civil wars in France. This is one of the principal tragedies ofcivil war, specifically, in which ‘one must necessarily take sides by deliberateplan’, and which therefore so often pits family members against each other.88

In this public mess, motives get all mixed up. Montaigne’s concern is that‘every day’ in the civil wars his countrymen call their own ‘private interestand passion’ by the name of public ‘duty’, and they call their ‘treacherous andmalicious conduct’ by the name of ‘courage’.89 It is neither genuine religious‘zeal’ nor the rightness of their cause that inspires them to fight but rather‘their self-interest’ (III.1.602b). The irony, then, is that private interest oftendrives actors on both sides to place their party’s advantage, masquerading aspublic duty, above all other duties and attachments.

Montaigne attacks this dangerous dynamic at the end of the chapter withhis third example, Julius Caesar’s speech to his men before the battle ofPharsalus, taken from Lucan.90 In the passage in question, Caesar exhorts hisassembled men to place victory over filial duty and affection: ‘while weaponsglitter, let no thought of piety move you, nor any sight of your fathers in theopposite ranks; mangle with the sword those faces that demand reverence’.91

In Montaigne’s opinion, these are the ‘rabid exhortations of an uncontrolledsoul’, counselling the polar opposite of Epaminondas’ admirable restraint inbattle (III.1.610b). Yet Caesar’s words match well the prevailing thought ofthe combatants in the civil wars in France, both parties of which often claimpublic duty as their motivation.92 Montaigne takes this as an opportunity towarn his readers about those who would use public duty and reason of state as

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but it is good for our country to have citizens devoted to their parents’), Cicero, Deofficiis, III.23.90.

88 III.1.601b, emphasis added. Neutrality is a sort of ‘treason’ in a civil war(III.1.601c). The word nécessairement is an EB addition (V–S, p. 793).

89 III.1.602b. Cf. Montaigne’s comments on Thucydides’ treatment of the twisting oflanguage during the civil war in Corcyra (I.23.87b).

90 The Pharsalia, with its account of civil war in which ‘kindred fought against kin-dred’, had understandably become quite popular during the troubles in France. Lucan,The Civil War (Pharsalia), trans. J.D. Duff (Cambridge, MA, 1928), I.4; Jean-ClaudeTernaux, Lucain et la littérature de l’âge baroque en France: citation, imitation, etcréation (Paris, 2000).

91 III.1.610b; from Lucan, The Civil War, VII, 320–22, my translation.92 Like the combatants in the French civil wars, Caesar’s motivations are ambiguous;

they sit uneasily on the scale of public and private. See Raymond Geuss, Public Goods,Private Goods (Princeton, 2001), ch. 2. Montaigne’s attitude towards Caesar is alsoambiguous; he reveres Caesar’s greatness (e.g. II.10.303a) and yet condemns him as the



pretexts for violence in the civil wars. We must occasionally bow to publicnecessity and reason of state, Montaigne acknowledges, but at the same time,‘[l]et us take away from wicked, bloodthirsty, and treacherous natures thispretext of reason. Let us abandon this monstrous and deranged justice andstick to more human imitations.’93 We cannot always avoid tragic conflict andchoice between private moral obligation or sentiment and public necessity,especially during civil war, but we can avoid following those who wouldinvoke such choices as pretexts for their own violent schemes.

Conclusion

I have set out to show that Montaigne neither simply accepts nor rejects rea-son of state. Instead, he explores both sides of a number of aspects of thisemerging discourse: the occasional necessity of extrajudicial action, thepolitical usefulness of dissimulation and simulation, and finally the conflict inhis contemporary France between the values of the useful and the honourable.In doing so, Montaigne adopts aspects of the ancient Pyrrhonists’ façons deparler, in which ‘it is equally legitimate to argue pour et contre’ and perfectlyreasonable to say that ‘the appearances are equal on both sides’ (II.12.373a,V–S, p. 505). However, he does not deploy this sceptical method simply tosuspend judgment on questions of political or ethical import, as SextusEmpiricus had counselled, nor would it be fair to say that Montaigne isengaged in rhetorical exercise for its own sake.94 Montaigne’s aim is clearestin the 1588 edition of the Essais and in the passages he was adding to it up tohis death in 1592. There, precisely when he has become aware that he isaddressing a large, international, open, and probably growing public audi-ence, Montaigne entreats his readers to deprive the ‘wicked, bloodthirsty, andtreacherous natures’ rampant in France at the time of any ‘pretext of reason’,or of piety, in their violent, politically disruptive projects.

Noting that ‘[s]peech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener’,Montaigne knows the importance to speakers of a ready, receptive audience.It is worth taking seriously the public dimensions of his own text as well.95

Lipsius characterized his De constantia as a work of civil instruction or

destroyer of Rome’s ancient liberty (II.11.309a) and declares that he would have sidedwith Pompey (III.9.760b, 763b).

93 III.1.610b, trans. amended, V–S, p. 803. This is as close as Montaigne comes tousing the phrase raison d’état.

94 E.g. Sextus’ ‘tenth mode’ of achieving a suspension of judgment, which ‘bears onethics’. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Skepticism, trans. J. Annas and J. Barnes (NewYork, 2000), pp. 37–40.

95 III.13.834b. Hence Montaigne’s efforts to deflate the influence of preachers:‘Whatever they preach to us, whatever we learn, we should always remember that it isman that gives and man who receives; it is a mortal hand that presents it to us, a mortalthat accepts it’ (II.12.423b). Preachers work to agitate the passions because they know


consilium that ‘formed citizens for endurance and obedience’, and he character-ized the purpose of his Politicorum as the formation of ‘those who rule for gov-erning’.96 Although it would be wrong to attribute a single, governing aim toMontaigne’s Essais when he so strenuously affirms the rich plurality of hisbook, which he composed and reworked over decades, I do not think it wrong tofind in his treatment of the emerging reason-of-state discourse, at least as it hasappeared in post-1588 editions of the Essais, an abiding concern for a differentsort of civil instruction. I suggest that Montaigne’s concern is to educate hisgrowing public readership about the perils of providing a receptive audience forthose who would use moral, religious and political pretexts for their own per-sonal gain or for projects that would unleash the unpredictable social forces ofviolence and cruelty with minimal public reflection. Montaigne’s warning, ineffect, beckons and constitutes the public it addresses: a savvy and realisticallywary public, worthy of the kind of civil instruction about political motivationsand ways of government usually reserved for princes.

This picture of Montaigne’s writing as a form of political activity compli-cates a traditional picture of Montaigne as an early instance of a ‘modern’interiority and privacy. Many scholars understand the seeming incompatibil-ity between Montaigne’s acceptance of the occasional need to ‘betray and lieand massacre’ for the ‘public welfare’ and his own private distaste for decep-tion and violence as exemplifying a conflict between public ‘raison d’état’and private ‘autonomie de conscience’.97 James Supple, André Tournon andGéralde Nakam, among others, take this approach and understand Montaigneto come down decisively in favour of private conscience over the heter-onomous pull of such morally questionable political imperatives.98 From theirperspective, Montaigne cultivates and maintains a ‘moral attitude biasedstrongly in favour of the private life’, as a means of surviving the fraughtpublic mess surrounding him.99 Similarly, though from a different perspec-tive, Anna Maria Battista, Richard Tuck, Quentin Skinner and others under-stand Montaigne’s significance within the flow of late-Renaissance andearly-modern political ideas almost exclusively in terms of an apolitical turn

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well, like the best orators, that strong emotion inclines an audience towards belief(II.12.426b).

96 ‘Quod nunc tibi damus, Politica esse vides, in quibus hoc nobis consilium, utquemadmodum in Constantia cives formavimus ad patiendum & parendum; ita hic eosqui imperant, ad regendum.’ Lipsius, Politicorum, siue, Ciuilis doctrinae libri sex, qui adprincipatum maxime spectant (London, 1590), fol. 5v. This section, ‘De consilio etforma nostri operis’, is for some reason omitted from the 1594 English translation.

97 III.1.600b. Supple, Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 235.98 Supple, Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 235; Nakam, Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 254;

Tournon, «Route par ailleurs», p. 269.99 John Parkin, ‘Montaigne Essais 3.1: The Morality of Commitment’, Bibliothèque

d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 41 (1) (1979), pp. 41–62, p. 61.



to privacy, sceptical self-interest and a detached and inward-looking individ-ual freedom.100

I do not mean to deny here Montaigne’s effort to craft a measure of (hisown) private tranquillity and freedom from the unstable fortunes of popularopinion and political circumstance. Montaigne is quite serious in his famousprescription that we ‘reserve an arriereboutique all our own, entirely free, inwhich to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude’, evenwhile performing in public office (I.39.117a, III.10.774b). However, I dowant to contest the persistent narrative that identifies Montaigne exclusivelythrough the lens of privacy, solitude and apolitical withdrawal. Montaignenever resolves, but rather chooses to deepen, the tension between ‘privateinterest’ and ‘public utility’, and he does not simply model a withdrawal intotranquil privacy. Instead, as we have seen, he dwells uneasily within this ten-sion to make a very public point to a very public audience: namely, that oneshould be wary and even suspicious of political actors offering reasons fortheir violence.

Recent biographical work by George Hoffmann, Philippe Desan, RichardCooper and others has complicated the traditional picture of Montaigne com-posing the Essais ‘quietly in his study in the Gironde’.101 This work invitespolitical theorists, too, to complicate our image of Montaigne: Does he seekrespite from a violent political culture through retreat into privacy or work totransform this violent culture through a power of publicity forged to someextent in private? Of course Montaigne valued and cultivated private con-science and inner freedom. However, I have also tried to show here howrobustly political Montaigne indeed was in writing and printing the Essais.

In addition to making a contribution to scholarship on Montaigne’s poli-tics, the interpretation I present here is of more immediate contemporaryinterest, as it offers a unique historical perspective for those today who areinterested in affirming the value of some form of ‘realism’ in politics and yetwish to avoid an intellectually and morally barren Realpolitik that wouldreduce politics to a matter of ‘interests’ or ‘power’, however these vague cate-gories are defined. 102 With his picture of the ‘human condition’ as a

100 Battista, Politica e morale, p. 259; Tuck, Philosophy and Government, p. 52;Skinner, Foundations, Vol. II, pp. 275–83.

101 Tuck, Philosophy and Government, p. 45; Skinner, Foundations, Vol. II,pp. 276–7. Montaigne’s supposed ‘withdrawal’ from public life in 1571 involved over-seeing the significant day-to-day economic activity of his estate, serving as a high-levelnegotiator between Catholic and Huguenot camps in the Guyenne, completing two termsas Mayor of Bordeaux, and overseeing the metamorphosis of his experimental book froma small local printing with Simon Milanges in Bordeaux to a massive public documentproduced at the major printing house of Abel l’Angelier in Paris. See, e.g.: Hoffmann,Montaigne’s Career; Desan, ‘Introduction’; Desan, ‘Les politiques éditoriales deMontaigne’; Cooper, ‘Montaigne et Matignon’; Fontana, Montaigne’s Politics, pp. 4–7.

102 Raymond Geuss, Politics and the Imagination (Princeton, 2010), p. 39.


perpetually fluctuating sea of passions, interests, desires and imperfect bits ofreasoning, and his recognition that political circumstances sometimes over-whelm aspirations of conscience and personal integrity, Montaigne portrays aworld ill-fitted to the demands of political moralism. Yet, against the starkestvisions of Realpolitik today, Montaigne might say: Ethical projects are alsoreally part of the human condition, and ethical publics are necessary to them.We can find no safe harbor in retreat into an imaginary space of moral rea-sons, but some projects and ways of life are more worth practising than oth-ers — and some are simply ghastly, and we suffer for pursuing them.103

Montaigne’s project was to deprive ‘wicked, bloodthirsty, and treacherousnatures’ of ready pretexts for violence and cruelty, whether grounded in moralclaims or claims of political necessity. It is a project that still resonates today.

Doug Thompson UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

224 D. THOMPSON

103 See especially Montaigne’s criticisms of cruelty, e.g. II.11.


montaigne's political education: raison d'État in the essais

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