Montaigne politique (review)

"Montaigne politique" or "Montaigne philosophe," "Montaigne engagé" or a Montaigne active in mediating the politics of his day, Essays as leisure or Essays as political statement directly relevant to France's troubles: these are some of the questions addressed in this volume of valuable essays, many of which go to the heart of what Montaigne and his work are meant to be. As the work's editor, Philippe Desan, points out, the image of Montaigne retiring to his tower to dedicate himself to the intellectual pleasures of the vita contemplativa is a romantic construction that deserves close inspection. This volume is not meant as a purely biographical questioning of Montaigne's political tendencies, but rather attempts to highlight, and does a good job at doing so, the complexity of reading a work riddled with ambiguity during a period in which, as today, everything was politics. Many of the volume's contributors underline the tension between Montaigne's retreat at age thirty-eight and his subsequent election as Mayor of Bordeaux, his mediation between the warring Kings Henry of Navarre and Henry III and his, perhaps legendary, aspiration of becoming ambassador to Venice. The complexity of Montaigne's attitude toward politics is the primary concern of this varied collection of articles contributed by Montaigne specialists from around the world.

The volume is organized in four sections. The first provides an overview of the political theories and debates of a century dominated by Machiavellians and anti-Machiavellians, the elusive politiques, Huguenots, and the ultra-Catholic Ligue. The articles of this section analyze Montaigne's relationship to various trends in political thinking: the idea of political necessity (Marie Luce-Demonet), the role of politics in Montaigne's private life (Frédéric Brahami), politics' relationship to friendship (Thomas Berns), and the emerging theory of the ragion di stato (Nicola Panichi). These articles provide valuable background to the articles that follow.

The following three sections do a good job in responding to many of the difficulties identified in the book's first section. Section 2 is devoted to political practice. Here we see the contradictory impulses of a man caught between the desire for la retraite and political action, an ambiguity of approach that can be seen in Montaigne's beliefs on the use of political artifice (Xavier Le Person), of political engagement in a general sense (Alain Legros), and of his relationship with his king (Nicolas Le Roux). Two articles in this section (Katherine Almquist and Daniel Ménager) analyze specific periods in Montaigne's life and offer convincing explanations as to why Montaigne was consistently chosen as a diplomat (but not ambassador) and perhaps even messenger during his early years as parliamentarian at Bordeaux.

Section 3 approaches politics from a regional and local viewpoint: the vulnerability of Guyenne during the Wars of Religion (Anne-Marie Cocula) into which Montaigne established his retirement–non-retirement (John O'Brien), in which Montaigne was called (according to the analysis of Jean Balsamo) to consistently act as mediator between the royal houses of France and Navarre. Montaigne's early works are also to be read in a political light (Philippe Desan) while Montaigne's experience with medicine, doctors and thermal baths (Warren Boutcher) allows him to offer his own services as a "médecin moral" for the politically influential of his region.

The final section of this work addresses the role of national and international politics. Especially on the national scene, Montaigne is once again shown to be battled: torn between two conceptions of the ideal figure of the king (George Hoffmann), in his relationship with the Ligue (Amy Graves), and the Huguenots (Frank Lestringant). A reading of Montaigne's political correspondence (Richard Cooper) provides many new details on Montaigne's political role from 1581 to 1590 but also leaves many questions open. Concetta Cavallini analyzes Montaigne's journey to Italy...