Falsehood Disguised: Unmasking the Truth in La Rochefoucauld

Chapter Three-Truth and Its Masks: In Search of I'Etre Vrai

Chapter Three Truth and Its Masks In Search of I'Etre Vrai Madame de La"Fayette me disait que de toutes les louanges qu'on lui avait donnees, rien ne lui ava'it plu davantage que deux choses que je lui avais " dites: qu'elle avait Ie jugement au-dessus de son esprit, et qu'elle aimait Ie vrai en toutes choses, et sans dissimulation. C'est ce qui a/ait dire a Monsieur de La Roche/oucauld qu'elle etait vraie, /afon de parler dont il est auteur, et qui est assez en usage. Segrais, Segraisianat In La Rochefoucauld's eyes, our eternal search for truth, in a wide range of areas but particularly in the illusory world of human motivations and, human interaction, is continually being thwarted by the many masks that, for a multitude of reasons , we social creatures constantly find it advantageous, and even necessary, to make and wear. La Rochefoucauld believes that like true friendship and true love, there does exist the etre vrai ("genuine person") who is concealed beneath the many disguises human beings routinely deploy, both consciously and unconsciously. This etre vrai appears in so many different guises, however, that unmasking it is extremely difficult. The Maximes repeatedly demonstrate that even those we are closest to, our t Madame de La Fayette told me that ofall the praise she had received, nothing had pleased her more than two things I said to her: that herjudgment was above her wit and that she loved truth in all things, and without dissimUlation. This is what made Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld say that she was a genuine person, an expression which he coined, and which is in common usage. 27 Chapter Three lovers or our best friends,-very often succeed in hiding from us their true feelings. The image we have oftheir character and tastes is therefore inevitably false on one level or another, since it is based on the cleverly disguised falsehoods we all use to mask our real motives and our true identity, both from ourselves and from others. . La Rochefoucauld is not, of course, the first moralist to use mask as metaphor. Indeed, throughout Baroque literature, masks are a powerful-symbol not just f the theatricality of life but also, on amuch deeper level, of the illusory nature of the face most people present, metaphorically speaking, to the world.! In Montiligne, for example, the idea ofmasking one's trueiden-_ tity-or having it masked by some illusion-making internal or external force--and the necessity of tearing off the mask to reveal the seldom-seen face concealed beneath it appear frequently . In the essay "De la coutume" ("On Habit"), Montaigne uses the concept ofthe mask to describe the various ways in which experience (I'usage) falsifies our perception of re-ality and effectively prevents us from gaining access to the truth: ce masque arrache, rapportaJit les choses ala verite et ala raison, iI [l'homme] sentira son jugement comJl1e tout bouleverse, _ et remis pourtant en bien plus seur estat.2 (Montaigne, (Euvres completes 1.23; see Appendix 25) Like Pascal, Montaigne sees habit as a source ofdelusion, both ofourselves and ofothers. Without our knowledge,-habit forces us to wear a mask that inhibits our ability to perceive reality and to make sound moral judgments based on that perception. According to La Rochefoucaul