Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher by Ann Hartle (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 317 second and deeper reason is that to begin the treatise on God with the person of the Father would be to treat the Father in an extensive manner before having grasped the Father in his relation to the Son, which would be tantamount to thinking about the person of the Father prerelationally. In Emery's eyes, then, since Thomas's theology of God is resolutely relational, it is only fitting that he should begin his treatise on God with the one divine essence. Emery's second reason is quite ingenious and turns the tables on Thomas's critics, though it is perhaps a tad too ingenious to argue that in order to emphasize God as personal one should begin with God as essential. I would like to recommend a third possible reason for Thomas's order ofpresentation, which as a Christian monotheist he may have felt congenitally though he never adverts to it explicitly: from the perspective of a Christian religion that grew out of a revealed Jewish monotheism, it would appear quite fitting that a speculative treatment of God should mirror the historical course of revelation about that God. The revelation of monotheism had to come first, with good reason, for to think about Trinity before monotheism is firmly entrenched in the human mind would almost certainly end up inviting in the multiple divinities of polytheism. Thomas has to show that the confession of the Trinity is the Christian form of monotheism, and the best way to do this is to start off with the one God and then introduce the divine subsistent relations as both identical with the one God and distinct from one another. From this viewpoint, Aquinas's order of presentation turns out to be more historically astute than his historical-minded critics have imagined. Dominican School ofPhilosophy and Theology Berkeley, California GREGORY ROCCA, 0.P. Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher. By ANN HAR.lLE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 296. $60.00 (cloth}. ISBN 0-52182168 -1. Howsoever great Montaigne's standing as a man of letters, he occupies a negligible place in most standard "histories" of philosophy. Even as compared with the other philosophers of his age-that the historians should name it the "Renaissance" provides as clear an indication as any to just how derivative a group ofthinkers they suppose them to be-the author ofthe Essays is generally ranked in the second tier. While many of his contemporaries dreamed of the rebirth of a "Platonism" of one form or another, he seemed to proselytize for one of the lesser schools of philosophical antiquity-scholarly opinions vary as to whether his ultimate allegiances were to Stoicism, Epicureanism, or 318 BOOK REVIEWS skepticism- which all have in common, despite or because of the differences between them, the propensity to reduce philosophy to a moral doctrine. Or if the attempt is not made to reconcile Montaigne's endless borrowings from ancient writers of every stripe by alleging some sort of development on his part, they are taken as proof of an eclecticism lacking all rigor or consistency. It is generally agreed, in any case, that he is not a philosopher in the strict or highest sense of the word, notwithstanding his exceptional ability to wield a pen. In Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Ann Hartle seeks to set straight this piece of the record. On her view, Montaigne was a philosopher of the very greatest stature, whose writing "takes up the most philosophical questions in a profoundly original, comprehensive, and coherent way" (1). Her thesis should make her book of interest to any philosophically inclined reader, and especially to those who desire better to grasp the great temporal or rather argumentative fault lines of philosophy's course through history. It ought also to earn for the book the particular attention of Thomists and other friends of high Scholasticism, who better than most ought to know how much can be learned about one's friends from their foes. For whatever else we might say about Montaigne the philosopher, he has few rivals in the breadth and depth of his opposition to medieval philosophical theology, which he had experienced at fairly close quarters...