Escribe Montaigne en sus Ensayos sobre cuál es el bien soberano del hombre:

“Unos dicen que nuestro bienestar reside en la virtud,otros que en el placer, otros que en el acuerdo con la naturaleza; este, que en la ciencia; aquél, que en no tener dolor; el de más allá, que en no dejarse llevar por las apariencias…”

Después de hacer todo un discurso sobre los sentidos y las distintas formas de vivir en las diferentes culturas entonces conocidas, llega a la conclusión de que no hay un bien definitivo y común al ser humano. Termina con una petición : “Qué cosa tan vil y abyecta es el hombre si no se eleva por encima de la humanidad” , sabiendo que es un imposible porque “no puede ver más que con sus ojos, ni agarrar más que en sus dedos”

Este vivir casi imposible es la marca de los que creen en algo más de lo que dictan sus sentidos, a unos los lleva por el sendero de las creencias y a otros por el de las utopías, pero todos buscan mejorar el mundo que encontraron al nacer. El bien soberano queda definido en la acción.

A student writes, noting that the Thanksgiving holiday officially commences on Wednesday at 5 pm… so naturally he wonders if we’ll be meeting for our regular noon class. (!)

Not a good omen, class attendance-wise. People apparently just can’t wait to start giving thanks for all they’ve been given.

But as their content provider it’s my job to show up and give them some more, so I will. Topics to be covered:

1. Gratitude (naturally!)

2. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), humanist, essayist, earthy philosopher of everything corporeally human… just because he was bumped from the syllabus earlier this semester and I’m grateful for the opportunity to re-instate him just as we arrive at his fifteen seconds of fame in our text. He was “heir to the Skeptics of old,”  the anti-Descartes who knew better than to lodge too much confidence in our ability to know anything for certain. “Que sçais-je?” (“What do I know?”)

And he owned the coolest library/study ever (much moreso than Descartes’ methodologically hypothetical “meditation” zone).

His greatest virtue may have been tolerance. His most refreshing attitude, though, may have been his candor about bodily matters. “For it is indeed reasonable, as they say, that the body should not follow its appetites to the disadvantage of the mind; but why is it not also reasonable that the mind should not pursue its appetites to the disadvantage of the body?” So he philosophized a lot about his own body parts, one member in particular. (NOTE to Plato and other transcendentalists: philosophers who rise too far above our natural state make themselves ridiculous, remote, and irrelevant in their transcendent detachment. Montaigne’s parts were all immanent, and attached, and so are yours and mine. )

“There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.” Like Socrates, and like science, not presuming to know is what drove Montaigne to study and learn and stay humble. Not a bad example for us all.

And now, scholars study and publish on Montaigne (while non-scholars quote him without attribution). He’d be amused.

Alain de Botton comes by his interest in Montaigne naturally: his late father Gilbert (1935-2000) collected Montaigne-iana. His impressive collection is now an exhibit at Cambridge University Library.

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We tend to accept that people in authority must be right. It’s this assumption that Socrates wanted us to challenge by urging us to think logically about the nonsense they often come out with, rather than being struck dumb by their aura of importance and air of suave certainty. This six part series on philosophy is presented by popular British philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life.

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Part 1: Socrates on Self-Confidence

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Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people’s opinions and partly because they don’t know when to have confidence in their own.

RunTime: 25 min

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Part 2: Epicurus on Happiness

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British philosopher Alain De Botton discusses the personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist, but an advocate of “friends, freedom and thought” as the path to happiness.

RunTime: 24 min

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Part 3: Seneca on Anger

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Roman philosopher Lucious Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE), the most famous and popular philosopher of his day, took the subject of anger seriously enough to dedicate a whole book to the subject. Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. Instead he saw it as a philosophical problem and amenable to treatment by philosophical argument. He thought anger arose from certain rationally held ideas about the world, and the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic. Certain things are a predictable feature of life, and to get angry about them is to have unrealistic expectations.

RunTime: 25 min

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Part 4: Montaigne on Self-Esteem

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Looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself – sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority – and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.

RunTime: 25 min

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Part 5: Schopenhauer on Love

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Alain De Botton surveys the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards ‘the will-to-life’.

RunTime: 24 min

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Part 6: Nietzsche on Hardship

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British philosopher Alain De Botton explores Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.

RunTime: 24 min

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Education et humanisme

Très jeunes, les enfants peuvent être éduqués. Donner la vie n’est que le tout premier pas sur le long chemin de la construction d’un être humain. Erasme nous dit que « dès sa naissance, l’enfant peut être formé aux qualités propres à l’homme ».

L’école apprend à lire, écrire, compter. L’enseignement donne toutes les connaissances nécessaires à l’acquisition d’un métier et pour devenir un bon citoyen.

Le rôle des parents est tout autre. Il s’agit d’apprendre à vivre à sa progéniture. Montaigne constate « qu’on nous apprend à vivre quand la vie est passée ». Et Erasme ajoute « la leçon coûte cher à celui qui, en se trompant, apprend à ne pas se tromper ».

La première éducation des enfants consiste à leur apprendre leur propre valeur, leur grande richesse, à leur dire qu’ils possèdent en eux de gigantesques ressources de dignité, de courage, de patience et  de sagesse, une aptitude profonde au bonheur. Il n’est pas plus grand trésor pour un enfant que l’affection sincère, désintéressée de ses parents. L’amour, l’estime de ses géniteurs nourrissent l’estime de soi de l’enfant.

Il faut donner confiance à l’enfant en son jugement, l’aider à forger sa propre morale, ses propres valeurs pour, en toutes circonstances, le rendre apte à décider seul. Très tôt, les parents peuvent donner l’exemple de la tolérance, de la générosité, du courage afin que l’enfant s’imprègne de ces valeurs et qu’elles se transforment en nature dans la profondeur de son être.

Le plus grand don que des parents puissent faire à un enfant c’est de lui apprendre à se conduire en humaniste.

R. R. Reno teaches theology at Creighton University and is the author of In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished Christianity (Brazos, 2002). From a review of the latter: “Our modernist heritage and postmodern sophistication have trained us well. We take care of ourselves, virtuously avoiding pain, rewarding ourselves with pleasure. Thanks to this thorough cultural training, we often approach the church with the same self-protective posture.

Faced with the failures, hypocrisies, and faithlessness in the church, we fall back on the modern strategy we’ve learned so well: we simply keep our distance. In this essay, as in the book, R. R. Reno, warns against this sense of aloofness and shows how it relates to acedia – a subject of many posts here on Paying Attention To The Sky. Reno’s passionate call for Christians to “suffer divine things” also provides a message of hope: through intimate loyalty to the church, daily prayer, and serious reengagement with Scripture, we can dwell in and with the living Christ. We can abandon the “temptations of distance” and embrace the “imperatives of intimacy.” It is a  bold exhortation that has  enormous appeal for critical thinkers and Christians who are disillusioned with the church yet still desire to pursue a life of discipleship.” The roots of many of his arguments you will find in the reading selections of this essay which was published in First Things in 2003.

Pride and Faith
For most of the modern era, Christian apologists have emphasized the role of pride as the primary barrier to faith. Take Milton, for example. At the outset of Paradise Lost, Satan rallies his fellow fallen angels with a speech of exculpation. Bidding farewell to the “happy Fields” now lost, Satan hails the “infernal world,” promising his followers that they, with him, might make “Heav’n of Hell.” What seems a disaster can be made a victory. Satan’s reasoning is simple. “Here at least,” he says, “we shall be free.” “Here,” he continues, “we may reign secure.” The gain, then, is autonomy and self-possession. Thus, in famous words, Milton has Satan pronounce the purest formula of pride: “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heav’n.”

To a great extent, the standard story of modernity emphasizes exactly the self-confidence and self-assertion that Milton describes in Paradise Lost. The emerging powers of modern science gave the seventeenth and eighteenth century a keen sense of the real powers of the human intellect. Rebelling against servile obedience to dogmatic and clerical authority, progressive forces in Enlightenment culture championed free and open inquiry. The same sentiment, this standard story continues, characterizes modern moral and political thought. Against traditional moral ideals and social forms, modern thinkers have sought, and continue to seek, a pattern of life derived from and properly expressive of our humanity. Thus, Ralph Waldo Emerson shouts the battle cry of modernity: “Trust thyself.” Against subservience to the ideals of another, Emerson writes, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” So central and important is this self-affirmation that Emerson reports that “if I am the Devil’s child, I will then live from the Devil.” Better to reign in the hell of self-affirmation, than to subordinate the self to external ideals or principles, no matter how heavenly.

Does Secularism Come From Self-Trust And Pride?
This modern voice of rebellion against God’s sovereignty is quite real. Yet, in the twilight of modernity, do people really attack the Christian tradition because they have vibrant Emersonian souls? Do the nay-sayers and critics of Christianity attract audiences of willful and self-assertive individualists who are eager to find leverage to free themselves from the constraining powers of dogma and priestcraft? Does secularism today stem from a deep self-trust and demonic pride?

The answer, I think, is “no.” Pride may go before the fall. However, after the fall, other spiritual temptations and difficulties predominate. In our times, whether we call the prevailing outlook late modern or postmodern, the vigor and ambition of the ideal of self-reliance has lost its luster. When the United States Army can adopt a fine Emersonian sentiment — “Be all you can be” — as a recruiting slogan, then surely what was once a fresh challenge has become a hopeless cliché. For this and other reasons we need to turn our attention away from pride and look elsewhere for the deeper sources of resistance to the Christian message.

The Demon Of Acedia And Faith
Looking elsewhere does not mean looking away from the Christian tradition. Christians have not always thought pride the deepest threat to faith. For the ancient spiritual writers of the monastic movement, spiritual apathy was far more dangerous. Recalling the sixth verse of Psalm 91, the desert fathers wished to guard against “the sickness that lays waste at mid-day.” Evagrius of Pontus, a fourth-century monk, is one of the earliest sources of information about the desert monastic movement, and he reports that gluttony, avarice, anger, and other vices threaten monastic life. Yet, of all these afflictions, he reports, “the demon of acedia — also called the noonday demon — is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all.”

Defining Acedia
Acedia is a word of Greek origin that means, literally, “without care.” In the Latin tradition of the seven deadly sins, it comes down to us as tristitia or otiositas, sadness or idleness. But citing synonyms and translations will not do. For the monastic tradition, acedia or sloth is a complex spiritual state that defies simple definition. It describes a lassitude and despair that overwhelms spiritual striving. Sloth is not mere idleness or laziness; it involves a torpor animi, a dullness of the soul that can stem from restlessness just as easily as from indolence. Bernard of Clairvaux speaks of a sterilitas animae, a sterility, dryness, and barrenness of his soul that makes the sweet honey of Psalm-singing seem tasteless and turns vigils into empty trials. Medieval English writers often speak of acedia as wanhope, a waning of confidence in the efficacy and importance of prayer. For Dante, on the fourth ledge of purgatory, those afflicted by acedia are described as suffering from lento amore, a slow love that cannot motivate and uplift, leaving the soul stagnant, unable to move under the heavy burden of sin.

Across these different descriptions, a common picture emerges. The noonday devil tempts us into a state of spiritual despair and sadness that drains us of our Christian hope. It makes the life of prayer and charity seem pointless and futile. In the heat of midday, as the monk tires and begins to feel that the commitment to desert solitude was a terrible miscalculation, the demon of acedia whispers despairing and exculpatory thoughts. “Did God intend for human beings to reach for the heavens?” “Does God really care whether we pray?” “Is it not unnatural to seek solitude and chastity?” According to another ancient writer in the Evagrian tradition, the noonday demon “stirs the monk also to long for different places in which he can find easily what is necessary for his life and can carry on a much less toilsome and more expedient profession. It is not on account of locality, the demon suggests, that one pleases God. He can be worshiped anywhere. . . . Thus the demon employs all his wiles so that the monk may leave his cell and flee to the race-course.”

A Real Modern Threat to Faith
Are these temptations that afflict the monk as strange or alien as the unfamiliar Greek word, acedia? I think not. Let me update the whispering voice of sloth: “All things are sanctified by the Lord, and one could just as well worship on the golf course as in a sanctuary made by human hands.” Or: “God is love, and love affirms; therefore, God accepts me just as I am. I need not exercise myself to change.” Or: “We should not want to put God in a box, so the Christian tradition must be seen as a resource for our spiritual journeys, not as a mandatory itinerary. I can pick and choose according to my own spiritual needs.”

In our day, these temptations seem far more dangerous than Emerson’s “trust thyself.” After all, how many people, believers or unbelievers, wish to reign anywhere, in heaven, hell, or even in their own souls? Few, I imagine. Most of us just want to be left alone so that we can get on with our lives. Most of us want to be safe. We want to find a cocoon, a spiritually, psychologically, economically, and physically gated community in which to live without danger and disturbance. The care-free life, a life a-cedia, is our cultural ideal. Pride may be the root of all evil, but in our day, the trunk, branches, and leaves of evil are characterized by a belief that moral responsibility, spiritual effort, and religious discipline are empty burdens, ineffective and archaic demands that cannot lead us forward, inaccessible ideals that, even if we believe in them, are beyond our capacity.

Finding Acedia In The Modern Milieu: Critical Distance
Acedia, then, is a real threat, a deadly sin doing its deadly work in the present age. Its presence can be detected rather clearly in two features of our intellectual and moral culture. The first is the intellectual spirit of dispassion and coolness that grows out of the ideal of “critical distance.” This ideal often contributes to the torpor animi that afflicts any who have entered into the habituating practices of our universities. For many of our professors, the drama of education is to break the magic spell of immediacy. Just as the commonsense observation that the sun revolves around the earth is quite false and must be corrected, so, we are told, we must step back from the moral and social opinions we were taught as children. Nothing that is given should be accepted. We must step back from our initial assumptions and see them as being, at best, merely true-for-us rather than being simply true.

Montaigne
In order to spur us toward critical thought, the dominant strategy of contemporary instruction is shock therapy. Anticipating the method, the early modern essayist Montaigne described his desires to “pile up here some ancient fashions that I have in my memory, some like ours, others different, to the end that we may strengthen and enlighten our judgment by reflection on the continual variation of human things.” Montaigne is confident that by “piling up” these examples, we will be forced to stop thinking parochially and recognize that men and women have lived many different ways according to many different ideals and customs. We will be shocked by the diversity, and for just this reason, we will be levered away from an atavistic loyalty to our particular ways of viewing the world.

But the ancient fashions Montaigne catalogues are not simply diverse. He chooses very carefully, and in a way that also anticipates postmodern historiography and cultural study, his examples tend toward the prurient and base. Montaigne quotes ancient descriptions of how people wiped themselves after bowel movements, as well as peculiar postcoital practices. The shock, then, is redoubled, for not only do we see the diversity of cultures, but as Montaigne insinuates, we begin to worry that those beliefs and practices we think so decisive for human decency and moral rectitude will come to seem as silly and pointless as the ancient Roman expectation that men would pluck all the hairs off their chest, legs, and arms.

What Montaigne sought to achieve has become the very ideal of “critical thinking.” He wants us to step back from our loyalty to the immediate and seemingly self-evident truths of our inherited way of life. He wants us to separate ourselves from our cultural context. To think responsibly about culture, morality, and religion, then, involves establishing critical distance. Just think about biblical criticism. In most cases, the basic strategy of instruction is to force pious students to step back from the immediacy of the canonical form of the text to see how what seems to be a doctrinally consistent and spiritually unified whole is, in fact, a text made up of heterogeneous sources and layers of editorial revision.

The Limits of Critical Thinking: John Henry Newman
The now widespread effect of the modern critical project is to undermine our confidence that any moral or cultural system should properly command our full loyalty. For this reason, as John Henry Newman observed, critical thinking has “a tendency to blunt the practical energy of the mind.” It loosens the bonds of commitment and distances us from the immediacy of truths we once thought unquestionable. Critical distance may free us from prejudice, but it can also undermine the hope that enduring truths might be found. It can engender a humility that sustains tolerance, but it can also so relax the passions of the intellect that our civility comes at the price of conviction. The ways in which this leads to acedia are, I think, obvious…

The very sentiments that the classical Christian authors feared are precisely the virtues modern educators seek to instill in their students. The lento amore, the slow love that Dante thinks must be purged from our souls, is the dispassionate heart that establishes critical distance and waits for compelling evidence. The sterilitas animae that so worries Bernard of Clairvaux describes quite well the ideal of a critical thinker who has purified himself of the corrupting parochialism that limits his larger, more universal vision. When someone prefaces a comment with the confession that he is speaking from a “white, male, upper-middle-class perspective,” it reveals either a competition for the upper-hand (“I am more critical than you are”) or a despair of ever saying anything worthwhile.

The Nobility Of Our Commitments
Critical distance is not the only ideal of our time. We can never achieve an entirely care-free approach to life. Commitment energizes our culture even as critical inquiry encourages dispassionate analysis. Yet the very nobility of our commitments can create a distance that is as debilitating as critique. Since no actual society or movement lives up to that ideal, we can end up unengaged in fact and in action — pushing away evil rather than seeking the good. Controlled by what the old writers called fastidium, a fastidious conscience, we boil with outrage on the surface of our souls, while at a deeper level, we go slack. Thus, many so-called seekers do not seek at all; they wait for something worthy of their allegiance and the waiting becomes habitual and comfortable. Our society has far more of these “waiters” than “seekers.”

The Fastidiousness Of Our Cruelty And Suffering
This fastidiousness is evident in our cultural response to suffering, the second feature of our current intellectual and moral landscape that strikes me as emblematic. We recoil from cruelty, and this dominates our collective conscience as the summum malum. The taboos of traditional morality may evaporate as we cultivate critical distance, but no pure vacuum develops in their place. Instead, our sensitivity to suffering and our horror over cruelty increases. Just consider the case of my grandmother, who went to a public hanging at a county fair in Hannibal, Missouri, when she was a child. Today, we shudder at the thought. How, we ask ourselves, could our forebears have been so insensitive to suffering and cruelty?

Once again, I do not intend a blanket criticism of our present squeamishness. Most likely, we should be thankful that something of moral significance has filled the void created by critical consciousness. At least we cannot gaze upon torture and suffering with a dispassionate and care-free attitude. Nonetheless, we must recognize how contemporary moral sensibilities tempt us toward acedia. Our vague and general moral sentiments — “suffering is evil” — overwhelm our immediate duties and corrupt our ability to function within the complexities of ordinary moral relations. As Judith Shklar wrote, “To hate cruelty more than any other evil involves a radical rejection of both religious and political conventions. It dooms me to a life of skepticism, indecision, disgust, and often misanthropy.”

Our misanthropy is swaddled in kindness, but it manifests the symptoms of acedia nonetheless. How many parents cannot muster the determination to discipline their children because they cannot bear inflicting the suffering it will require? How many educators have despaired of grading, not out of lassitude or neglect, but because they shrink from the thought of the hurt feelings of those who do poorly? The examples are but instances of a broad cultural trend. Demand and expectation are hurtful, and we turn away from zeal in order to soften the blows of discipline. Our general commitment to reduce suffering causes us to hesitate from inflicting the pain of shame. Thus, acedia, a languid disregard for moral and social standards, is now a virtue.

Fearing Evil
For this reason, I do not think our present culture of affirmation is based on an Emersonian conviction that each person is lit with genius. Rather, we hold our tongues and smile politely when people tell us of their divorces, abortions, infidelities, and transgressions because we do not want to make anyone feel bad. We indulge and we trim, because the thought of suffering paralyzes. Fixed on the horror of cruelty, the fastidious conscience is brought to inaction by the very passion of its commitment. Fearing evil — why add to the grief of divorce by condemning it? — we withdraw from action.

Bridging The Distances Demanded By Critical Thought
How can we bridge the distances demanded by critical thought? How can we overcome the fastidious conscience that cannot countenance the “no” of discipline? First, we need to guard against the tendency of modern theology to turn the afflictions of acedia into enticements toward virtue. Consider Paul Tillich’s formulation of the “Protestant Principle.” It is the negation of all positive, finite, and worldly forms of faith and practice. In this way, Tillich makes critical distance into a form of faith. “What makes Protestantism Protestant,” he writes, “is the fact that it transcends its own religious and confessional character, that it cannot be identified wholly with any of its particular historical forms.” The stepping back that marks critical thought is, then, the essence of true religion. “Protestantism,” Tillich continues, “has a principle that stands beyond all its realizations.” “It is not exhausted by any historical religion; it is not identical with the structure of the Reformation or of early Christianity or even with a religious form at all.” Or still again, “The Protestant principle . . . contains the divine and human protest against any absolute claim made for a relative reality.” Thus, Tillich draws a conclusion that is ubiquitous in modern progressive theologies: “Nobody can have the ultimate, nothing conditioned can possess the unconditional. And nobody can localize the divine that transcends space and time.” Or to quote from a bumper sticker version of the same: My God is too big to fit into any one religion.

The Torpor Of Critical Distance
If Tillich’s Protestant principle is true, then why in the world would anyone experience, let alone give in to, a burning desire to come to the Lord in baptism and worship? If nothing conditioned can possess the unconditioned, if the finite is not capable of the infinite, then who would not despair of the religious life? Contrary to Tillich, we must stop pretending that the distance and dispassion of modern intellectual life are covert forms of faithfulness. Critical thought may produce what St. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 7, calls worldly grief, the sorrow that any honest person must feel when he recognizes that sickness, disease, and death conquer finite flesh. But we must be crystal clear. Critical thought does not and cannot produce the godly grief that St. Paul commends. That comes from repentance and personal change, not critical insight.

This leads me to my second observation. In Dante’s Purgatorio, the principle of sacramental penance holds sway. Vices are cured by their contrary, and thus, the slow and tepid love of the slothful is purged by a frenzied fervor. So, in a picturesque scene, just as Dante and Virgil doze off on the ledge of lento amore, they are awakened by a crowd of penitents rushing by, shouting and weeping with overwrought passion. “Sharp fervor,” says Virgil to those who run by, “makes up for negligence and delay which you perhaps used through lukewarmness in doing good.” Here we need to be careful not to moralize, for according to Dante, as for all premodern writers, the great work of charity is first and foremost the work of prayer. To the extent that we are brought to dispassion by critical thought, we must enter into the disciplines of daily prayer with all the greater fervor and commitment. The more we feel the torpor of critical distance, the more swiftly we must run toward the daily office, toward regular study of Scripture, toward the bread and the cup of the Eucharist. An intimacy with divine things is the proper way toward a passion for divine truth. We cannot enjoy that which we hold at a distance.

Desire For Truth
This insight also holds true for the intellectual life. Critical distance easily produces a torpor animi. We must resist the temptation to forever look behind or above or below. At some point, we must train our minds on some aspect of study, whether Wordsworth’s Prelude or a puzzling question in topology. We must allow ourselves to be romanced and ravished by the promise of truth. As St. Bonaventure observes in the prologue to the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, those who study must be “anointed with the oil of gladness” so that they might be inflamed with desire for wisdom. If we are to fight the noonday devil of acedia, then the lento amore of critical distance needs to be counteracted by forms of intellectual life that hasten toward an embrace of truth. Desire for truth needs to gain the upper hand over fear of error.

Evagrius Ponticus’ Solution: Fight The Agitated Search
Evagrius Ponticus offers a different remedy for sloth. For him, the single great weapon against acedia is stability. This seems to contradict Dante’s rushing throng, but it does not. The penitent are hurrying away from their negligence. Evagrius, however, is not concerned with how to restore the fallen, but how to prevent the monk from falling in the first place. He writes, “The time of temptation is not the time to leave one’s cell, devising plausible pretexts. Rather, stand there firmly and be patient.” When, a few centuries later, St. Benedict made stability the centerpiece of Western monasticism, he did so for the same reason. A great stratagem of the slothful is to hurry about from place to place to find a more congenial locale for their spiritual projects. The moment a postmodern seeker finds worship somewhat cold, off he goes to another church to try to find more “vitality,” or even more likely, he logs onto Amazon.com and orders a book on Buddhist spirituality. We demand immediate results, and should we experience the dryness and tepidness that comes from distance and alienation, we respond by distancing ourselves still further.

This agitated search for something higher, something more transparent — “the pure gospel” — comes at a great cost. One can no more play games with separation and divorce in marriage and expect to enjoy the fruits of intimacy, than one can in one’s union with the body of Christ. One can no more serve Christ by loyalty to theological abstractions than serve human beings by loyalty to sentience. Only a focused love can overcome distance. After all, Dante’s rushing crowds on the ledge of sloth are not going hither and yon. They are all going the same direction — toward Him in whom all will rest.

There Are No Intellectual Solutions To Spiritual Problems
Knowing whether to follow Dante’s advice and rush toward intimacy or to heed Evagrius and remain in stable loyalty cannot be reduced to a formula or principle. There are no intellectual solutions to spiritual problems. Like each of the seven deadly sins, acedia must be fought with spiritual discipline. Such discipline is profoundly alien to our culture, not because we have alternatives, but because we entertain the fantasy of life without spiritual demands. This fantasy is the most important legacy of modernity. For the great innovation of modern culture was the promise of progress without spiritual discipline. All we need to do is adopt the experimental method, calculate utility, institute the rule of law, establish democracy, trust the market. In each instance, scientific knowledge, the machinery of proper procedure, the invisible hand of a well-designed process, will carry us forward. If we will but believe in this promise, we are told, then we will be free to neglect our souls. For according to this modern dream, our virtues and vices are inconsequential matters of private taste and personal judgment. Thus, although our society is increasingly willing to use economic incentives and legal sanctions to influence behavior (welfare reform and laws against smoking are signal examples), we insist that all discipline must remain on the surfaces of life. Once economic and legal requirements are met, we insist upon our right to live as we wish.

This fantasy of life without spiritual demands demonstrates the depth of our captivity to acedia. Pride has no role here, for even when vicious, ambition shapes the soul. Our ideal, by contrast, is shapelessness. We want to be free . . . to be ourselves. Our ambition is a tautology empty of any will to shape or sharpen our lives. Even as we sculpt our bodies in the gyms, we cultivate a languid spiritual disposition, one aptly described by Chaucer:

For ye be lyke the sweynte cate
That wolde have fissh, but wostow what?
He wolde nothing wete his clowes.

In our sloth, we will not wet our feet in the frightening water of any spiritual discipline, Christian or otherwise. For fear of wounding sensibilities, for fear of ethnocentric dogmatism, we abandon discipline, or we individualize discipline to the point that it is not discipline at all.

A Larger Vision Of Journey
We must wet our claws. Neither Dante’s urgent rush toward the truth nor Evagrius’ patient stability leads to an exhausted or desiccated existence. On the contrary, the spiritual disciplines they urge serve the end of intimacy. Their strategies awaken and tether, energize and focus. They wish us to become persons with distinct outlines and deep purposes. Only as such persons can we be partners in fellowship — with the truths we seek and with each other. One can no more desire the blessings of marriage with indifference or a wandering eye, than seek a lasting truth with languid disregard or lack of concentration. This holds true in our relation to God. We must desire holiness to allow the burning coal to touch our lips, and we must be attentive and focused to hear the still, small voice. We should rush toward our Lord, for we can never become too intimate, and we should wait patiently with Him, for He always has something more to give. To do so, we must place the pedagogy of critical distance and the dictates of conscience within a larger vision of journey toward the truth, a journey in which the warm and enduring embrace of love is to be cherished rather than mocked or feared. 

En su inacabado libro titulado “Montaigne”, Stefan Zweig destaca como una obsesión de los Ensayos

su afirmación categórica “La cosa más importante del mundo es saber ser uno mismo”. Ni una posición en el mundo, ni los pivilegios de la sangre o del talento hacen la nobleza del hombre, sino el grado en que consigue preservar su personalidad y vivir su propia vida

Dicho esto en una Francia del siglo XVI es todo un reto al pensamiento establecido en aquella sociedad de estamentos sociales indiscutibles, en la que se entiende que el hombre aislado no es nada porque no se puede vivir en el vacio. Montaigne no da fórmulas mágicas para alcanzar su buen arte de vivir, pero Zweig se atreve a redactar un listado de reglas que pueden encontrarse dispersas en los libros de los Ensayos:

Liberarse de la vanidad y del orgullo, que es tal vez lo más difícil, liberarse del miedo y de la esperanza,

de las convicciones y de los partidos,

de las ambiciones y toda forma de codicia,

vivir libre, como la propia imagen reflejada en el espejo,

del dinero y de toda clase de afán y de concupiscencia,

de la familia y del entorno,

de fanatismos, de toda forma de opinión estereotipada, de la fe en los valores absolutos.

La vida depende de la voluntad ajena; la muerte de la nuestra. La muerte más voluntaria es la más hermosa.(Esta última cita recogida por Richard Friedenthal)

Zweig consiguió, huyendo del horror nazi, realizar su muerte más hermosa; porque siempre luchó para liberarse de uno mismo y no ser el otro que le querían imponer los bárbarso de la esvástica.

Y yo me pregunto, nuestros políticos ¿entienden las palabras de Montaigne? o ¿su ambición es tal que ya no pueden entender nada que no sea vanidad y engaño?

Il en est des bibliothèques comme des hommes. Elles ne se donnent rarement qu’au prix d’un effort initial, d’un pas vers elles. Il faut se transgresser, se transformer pour parvenir à les connaître pleinement. Montaigne passa toute sa vie dans les allées de la sienne, s’y retirant même vers la fin, renonçant au commerce des hommes pour celui des livres. On se prend à rêver à cette « bibliothèque de Babel » dont notre essayiste préféré avait pris soin de recouvrir les murs, les solives, les travées, d’inscription lues ici et là, de maximes tirées pour l’essentiel – on aurait aimé qu’il s’agît de César ou de Sénèque – de la Bible. Parmi ces inscriptions, toutes propices à éveiller cette rêverie de chaque instant qui guette le bibliophile solitaire, une, tirée de L’Ecclésiaste me semble mériter qu’on s’y arrête :

NE PLVS SAPIAS QVAM NECESSE EST NE OBSTVPESCAS

Gravés sur la vingtième travée de la solive centrale, ces mots sont traduits par Alain Legros : « Ne sois pas plus sage que nécessaire, tu deviendrais stupide » (Les Essais, édition de La Pléiade, 2007). La phrase est habile, avec ce rien de rhétorique qui la rend parfaitement séduisante et d’emblée juste.

Il faudrait pourtant s’y pencher un instant. « Plus que nécessaire », nous dit-on ? Mais quand la sagesse cesse-t-elle d’être une nécessité ? En est-elle jamais une, au demeurant ? Que Montaigne ait décidé de graver cette phrase, parmi d’autres, sur les poutres de sa bibliothèque, est en soi significatif. C’est une phrase avec laquelle il vit, censée lui rappeler à chaque instant sa vérité. C’est aussi une phrase qui met en avant, à mon sens, trois idées fondamentales et centrales à la philosophie des Essais :

1/ Une critique de la vanité – celle de qui s’impose comme « sage » (la citation, ne l’oublions pas, est extraite de L’Ecclésiaste, lequel commence justement par : « Vanité des vanités, tout est vanité »).

2/ Une critique des excès en général et de tout ce qui s’éloignerait de la mesure et du « juste milieu » aristotélicien.

3/ Une critique fondamentale de la notion même de « sagesse » que Montaigne ne cesse de réfuter (voir par exemple « De l’experience », III, 13)

La modération est une des valeurs centrales de la philosophie de Montaigne. Il y a consacré un essai (« De la moderation », I, 29) dans lequel on peut lire : « ceux qui disent qu’il n’y a jamais d’excès en la vertu, d’autant que ce n’est plus vertu, si l’excès y est, se jouent des paroles ». Ne sois pas plus vertueux que nécessaire, pourrait aussi bien dire le philosophe bordelais. Cette haine des excès, qui fait de Montaigne un auteur si attachant, on pourrait l’expliquer ainsi : lorsque l’homme s’écarte de la mesure, qu’il ne jure plus que par une notion (fût-ce une notion aussi noble que la sagesse ou la vertu), il n’existe plus pour lui-même mais pour cette notion, pour ce concept. Il s’extraie donc de sa propre humanité. En bon humaniste, Montaigne ne peut que bannir cette idée. L’homme doit rester homme, en acceptant ses imperfections, ses failles, ses faiblesses. Il ne doit pour aucun prix disparaître dans le langage, dans le conceptuel.

Montaigne réfute donc l’idée de sagesse en ce qu’elle est une notion trop rigide, un concept éculé accordant trop peu de place à l’humain. « On pourroit tenir pour sage en telle condition de sagesse, que je tien pour sottise », écrit-il par ailleurs (« Sur des Vers de Virgile », III, 5). La sagesse n’est jamais statique. Elle n’existe, au fond, pas. Tout au moins pas en tant que concept figé. C’est une réalité qui varie, en fonction des hommes, des jugements. Elle fluctue selon chacun, s’accorde aux instants – elle est en perpétuel devenir, en perpétuel changement.

S’appeler « sage », c’est ne pas accepter ce changement, ne pas accepter sa propre humanité ; c’est « se jouer des paroles », être pris au vieux piège du langage.

La notion de sagesse, que Montaigne remet en question ici – dans le cœur même de sa bibliothèque, lieu de culture par excellence, séparant en cela les « têtes bien faites » des « têtes bien pleines » – est une de ces idées qui, traversant les lieux et les époques, ont conditionné l’humanité et notre façon de penser l’humain. Ainsi, quelques 1500 ans avant Montaigne, en Chine, Confucius faisait prise au même débat.

On sait l’importance de la notion de “changement”, de “mutation” dans la culture chinoise. C’est l’idée fondatrice du Yi Jing, grand classique dont la légende rapporte qu’il a été lu, médité, corrigé par Confucius. Et il y a, chez le philosophe chinois, la même attention que chez Montaigne accordée à la culture. Quand notre philosophe ne cessait de lire et de citer, en vrac, Sénèque, Platon, Lucrèce ou Plutarque – ces « sages » d’une Antiquité bien présente –, le maître chinois se référait à Yao, Shun, Yu le Grand ou Cheng Tang (maîtres à penser de la haute Antiquité chinoise, tous cités dans les Entretiens, ayant vécu entre le XXII^e et le XVI^e siècle avant Jésus-Christ).

L’étude (xue) tient en effet une place fondamentale dans la philosophie de Confucius. C’est en lisant, en apprenant, en récitant (notamment le Shijing, le Livre des Odes), que l’homme devient un junzi (notion complexe de la philosophie confucéenne que l’on pourrait traduire par « homme de bien », « homme juste »).

Apprendre, chez Confucius comme chez Montaigne, c’est donc apprendre à devenir un homme. Le junzi est un homme ayant appris son humanité. Tout comme le « sage », chez Montaigne, est un homme qui refuse de se considérer comme tel, un homme qui accepte ses failles et ses défauts – son humanité. L’idée de ren (humanité) est bien l’idée centrale de la philosophie confucéenne.

Car pour Confucius également, la sagesse ne saurait être uniquement livresque. Comme Montaigne, il se méfie des mots et du langage. Ne déclare-t-il pas, dans le Kong-tze Kia-yü, que ”parler trop ruine la sagesse” (X, trad. Ch. de Harlez) ? Il faut apprendre auprès d’un maître (lequel maître devra changer son enseignement en fonction de la personnalité de son disciple, adapter à chacun ce qu’il a à apprendre), c’est-à-dire apprendre dans le dialogue, dans le rapport à l’autre, dans une parole qui ne soit pas figée.

« L’homme de peu s’enferme dans le sectaire » déclare encore Confucius (Entretiens, II, 14, trad. Anne Cheng). On retrouve quelque peu l’idée de Montaigne exposée plus haut : la voie vers la sagesse est parsemée d’embûches, parmi lesquelles la plus dangereuse est incontestablement de se laisser piéger par le concept, par le langage, par le sectaire. La pensée doit vivre, battre au rythme de l’humain. La sagesse doit naviguer d’un homme à l’autre, changer d’un homme à l’autre, accepter les différences, les particularités de chacun. On ne saurait donc la conceptualiser. La culture, si elle est importante (par la connaissance des auteurs antiques et des sages anciens) ne doit jamais se résumer à elle-même : elle doit être appliquée dans la vie, vécue au cœur même de notre humanité. Ce que Montaigne cherche chez Caton, ou Confucius chez Yu, c’est plus un exemple, un mode de vie, une façon d’exister qu’une simple référence culturelle. La culture livresque doit ouvrir sur la vie, sur l’ici, le maintenant.

On a vu que Montaigne refusait de se considérer comme « sage ». De la même façon, Confucius déclare : « Atteindre le ren ou, à plus forte raison, la sagesse suprême, je ne saurais y prétendre » (Entretiens, VII, 32).

Atteindre le ren, atteindre l’humain. Voilà l’objectif de notre existence sur terre selon ces deux philosophes. Voilà la voie.

Si l’on revient sur notre citation initiale et sur ces termes problématiques, « ne sois pas plus sage que nécessaire », on peut à présent proposer une réponse : le savoir est nécessaire tant qu’il est vécu. Tant que la lecture – de Sénèque, des Odes chinoises – nous apporte quelque chose, bouleverse notre rapport au monde et à nous-mêmes, nous entraîne vers plus d’humanité. Nous rapproche du centre, pour reprendre des termes chers aux philosophes taoïstes, et nous mène à l’intériorité de notre condition.

Ce n’est qu’à ce prix – au prix de ce refus, de cet abandon – que l’homme atteint la sagesse.

« Les jeux des enfants ne sont pas des jeux et il les

faut juger comme leurs plus sérieuses actions ».

Cette citation provenant des Essais de Montaigne

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hace unos días, el escritor chileno Jorge Edwards compartió detalles de la investigación que lleva a cabo para su próxima novela, titulada, por el momento, “La muerte de Montaigne”. A modo de abrebocas, Edwards contó una anécdota sobre Montaigne que ya está desarrollando en su novela y que transcribo textual: &quot(…). El caso es que Montaigne recibió una carta de una lectora y la lectora le dice que tenía 22 años – y el tenía 56 – pero que ella leyó sus ensayos cuando tenía 17 y le dice así: ‘quedé completamente traspuesta y desde entonces sólo pienso en usted y yo le quiero pedir que usted me adopte como hija de alianza’, no le dice hija adoptiva. Y entonces le da cita a Montaigne en París en donde ella está de visita porque es del campo también. Se sabe que Montaigne la fue a visitar. Se sabe que ella lo invitó a su casa de campo y que él anunció que iría por tres días y se sabe que él se quedó por cuatro meses. Y no se sabe si hubo una relación con esa chica, es posible que no, incluso. Pero hay una escena que esta escrita: él camina con ella por la orilla de un río en el campo; él le dice: ‘búscate un hombre de tu edad y déjate de soñar con viejos como yo’ y a ella le dio un ataque de rabia cuando él dijo eso y ella tenía un moño y se sacó el pinche con que se sujetaba el moño, una cosa de metal, y se pegó varias estocadas en el brazo, andaba sin mangas porque era verano, y entonces salió un chorro de sangre y se sabe que Montaigne la consoló. Ahora, ¿cómo la consoló?… Bueno, como yo soy un escritor que tengo esa manera conjetural, a ver si hago una conjetura de como fueron esos consuelos.“

Después del evento de Edwards, quedo en tomar un café con uno de mis mejores amigos, a quien llamaré “W” y quien me confesó, hace un par de años atrás, que se había enamorado perdidamente de una poeta argentina “a primera lectura”. Por supuesto, le divierte esta historia de la enamorada de Montaigne y me dice: “Lau, esas cosas pasan. De verdad que pasan. Pero cuando uno las cuenta queda como un loco. Ahora ¿por qué pasan? Yo no lo sé explicar.”

Lo cierto es que si en 1588, siglo XVI, una muchacha quedaba “traspuesta” con la obra ensayística de Montaigne, en este siglo XXI la cosa no ha cambiado y algunos escritores, sin pretenderlo y sin saberlo, provocan reacciones en sus lectores/as que van más allá de la admiración pasajera y distante. Hace bastante tiempo ya, me llegó una invitación para hacerme “fan” en uno de estos grupos que pululan por facebook y fue inevitable detenerme un instante antes de ignorar la invitación, porque el grupo consistía, nada más y nada menos, que en chicas enamoradas de un reconocido escritor. Por curiosidad, quise saber a cuántas ascendían las “enamoradas” y me sorprendí con la cifra: 136 muchachas derretidas.

Continúo en el bulloso café de la feria con “W”. Como él es medio fantasioso y le atrae la idea de lectores y lectoras enamorados de escritores y escritoras, comenzó a hacer una de sus tantas listas y por descarte terminó concluyendo que habría enloquecido de amor por la poeta chilena Teresa Willms Montt, si hubiesen vivido en la misma época, claro. Me parece lógico que piense así, sobre todo si tenemos en cuenta que la bella Teresa traía locos a todos los poetas de la bohemia madrileña, por allá por 1917, 18.

A “W” le gusta hablar de estos gajes románticos del oficio del escritor (sospecho que él desea secretamente lo mismo) y empieza a tirar de mi lengua y quiere a toda costa que le confiese de que escritor me “enamoraría” perdidamente y porqué. Se me ocurre una explicación posible a partir de un texto que leí hace diez años atrás, una columna, tal vez una entrevista, no estoy segura, del maestro Alfredo Iriarte en donde decía que su zona más erógena era el cerebro. Un buen escritor (sea poeta o narrador) logra cierto tono, cierto pulso, ciertos matices y muestra en su prosa (o lírica) ser sensible a quien lee o produce esa impresión benéfica de que además de contar algo, está presto a atender, es decir, crea un diálogo. Probablemente el mismo escritor no esté consciente de eso. Probablemente muchos no lleguen a percatarse de que están dejando una estela de “enamoradas” por ahí, a menos que ellas se hagan notar, como le sucedió a Montaigne con esa muchacha que le pedía ser su “hija de alianza”. La verdad es que la literatura es un mundo infinito de posibilidades: un narrador que seduce a la realidad con un lenguaje esmerado y personal, un poeta que es capaz de rescatar la belleza de un lugar insospechado, no son ajenos a muchas almas sensibles.

“W” es un poco más burdo para sus conclusiones y me dice, “sí, Lau, tiene razón. En este mundo dominado por el bisturí y la jeringa del bótox, es justo que la pluma gane algunas partidas”. Y al hilo me pide que no me haga la indiferente, que me tire a la piscina, que no le tema la ridículo romántico que es a la postre esta conversación salida de un amorío de Montaigne y que revele un posible amor literario. Acosada por su curiosidad termino cediendo. Le pido su libreta y le escribo en ella este trozo que sé de memoria desde que lo leí por primera vez: “y lo que llamamos amarnos fue quizá que yo estaba de pie delante de vos, con una flor amarilla en la mano, y vos sostenías dos velas verdes y el tiempo soplaba contra nuestras caras una lenta lluvia de renuncias y despedidas y tickets de metro”. Le devuelvo la libreta a “W” y le digo que ahí está lo que me pide.

La abundancia y la indigencia, dependen de la opinión de cada uno; y las riquezas, así como la gloria y la salud, no tienen más valor que el que les atribuye quien las disfruta.

Montaigne.

Disfrútalo todo, la realidad reside en tu mente; tu realidad es lo que tú quieras que sea.

De buen grado vuelvo a esa idea de la inepcia de nuestra educación. Ha tenido como fin hacernos no buenos y sensatos, sino cultos; lo ha conseguido. No nos ha enseñado a perseguir y a abrazar la virtud y la prudencia, sino que nos ha grabado la derivación y la etimología. Sabemos declinar virtud aunque no sepamos amarla; si no sabemos lo que es la prudencia en la realidad y la experiencia, lo sabemos por definición de memoria.

Esto es lo que piensa y escribe Montaigne (1592), hoy  cuando vemos el estado lastimoso en que se encuentra el sistema educativo en nuestra comunidad con índIces de fracaso escolar vergonzosos, cuando nos quedamos atónitos ante los escándalos de algunos políticos que son apoyados por una mayoría considerable de conciudadanos nuestros, uno tiene que evitar caer en el relativismo inmovilista al pensar que cuatrocientos años después el señor de Montaigne tiene la razón de su lado cuando escribe:

La reputación a la que todos aspiran de agudeza y rapidez de inteligencia, búscola yo, mas de equilibrio; en lugar de por una acción brillante y señalada o por cierta cualidad particular, quiérola yo por el orden, la coherencia y la tranquilidad de ideas y de costumbres.

Ahora, en su afán de brillantina y grandeza de cartón piedra, nuestros poderosos dirigentes buscan más el efecto del momento que el efecto a lo largo de los años; no buscan nuestros representantes el equilibrio para conseguir una sociedad llena  de virtudes ciudadanas que ayuden a la convivencia y a la justicia. Y como dice Adela Cortina, cuando el Estado falla la única alternativa del siglo XXI es el fortalecimiento de la sociedad civil. El Estado, y con ello sus representantes, tienen que impartir justicia pero es la sociedad civil la que debe promover y alentar las virtudes de solidaridad y justicia.

Escoge un barrio famoso para vivir.

Mayfair – Londrés

Kensignton – Londrés

Sevilla – Madrid

Belair – Los Angeles

Beverly Hills – Los Angeles

Soho – Nueva York

5 Av – Nueva York

Severn Road – Hong Kong

Montaigne Av – París

Ostozhenka – Moscú

Via Suvretta – Suiza

Wolseley Road – Sydeny

Altamount Road – Mumbai

“Lo soy todo menos un escritor de libros. Mi tarea consiste en dar forma a mi vida. Es mi único oficio, mi única vocación” (Montaigne)

Me gusta tener libros sobre mi mesilla de noche y cerca del lugar desde el que escribo habitualmente. Uno de esos libros es una recopilación del libro de Michel de Montaigne, Ensayos,  en la edición del Círculo de Editores del año 1992 que recoge únicamente ocho capítulos: De la educación de los hijos, De la amistad, Del ejercicio, Apología de Raimundo Sabunde, De la presunción, Del arrepentimiento, De la vanidad, De la experiencia. Esta selección dice el recopilador se hizo por su permanente actualidad, es decir que lo que se dictó a finales del siglo XVI sigue teniendo interés el siglo XXI. Es un clásico.

Montaigne no escribe una autobiografía, ni un relato a modo de novela, ni un tratado de fisiología, ni una colección de citas famosas, ni un farragoso texto lleno de latinismos, ni un recetario de remedios para curar enfermedades. Simplemente escribe en primera persona sobre todo lo que a un hombre de su época podía preocuparle sin ningún afán de buscar premios o prebendas de los famosos.

Gracias a la bilbioteca CERVANTES VIRTUAL podemos tener acceso en línea a esta  obra, que marcó un antes y un después en la literatura personal de opinión, donde se emite una interpretación de cualquier tema sin necesidad de aportar pruebas fuera del juicio personal.

Iniciamos una nueva serie de apuntes filosóficos sobre los ENSAYOS  de Montaigne (1580) que comentaremos con noticias o aspectos observables en nuestra vida de ciudadanos del siglo XXI. Para empeza nada mejor que la entrada con la que inicia su texto, en realidad su dictado ya que Montaigne dictaba sus pensamientos  en el torreón circular de  su  castillo a donde se retiró de la vida pública:

El autor al lector

Este es un libro de buena fe, lector. Desde el comienzo te advertirá que con el no persigo ningún fin trascendental, sino sólo privado y familiar; tampoco me propongo con mi obra prestarte ningún servicio, ni con ella trabajo para mi gloria, que mis fuerzas no alcanzan al logro de tal designio. Lo consagro a la comodidad particular de mis parientes y amigos para que, cuando yo muera (lo que acontecerá pronto), puedan encontrar en él algunos rasgos de mi condición y humor, y por este medio conserven más completo y más vivo el conocimiento que de mí tuvieron. Si mi objetivo hubiera hubiera “>hubiera “>sido buscar el favor del mundo, habría echado mano de adornos prestados; pero no, quiero sólo mostrarme en mi manera de ser sencilla, natural y ordinaria, sin estudio ni artificio, porque soy yo mismo a quien pinto. Mis defectos se reflejarán a lo vivo: mis imperfecciones y mi manera de ser ingenua, en tanto que la reverencia pública lo consienta. Si hubiera yo pertenecido a esas naciones que se dice que viven todavía bajo la dulce libertad de las primitivas leyes de la naturaleza, te aseguro que me hubiese pintado bien de mi grado de cuerpo entero y completamente desnudo. Así, lector, sabe que yo mismo soy el contenido de mi libro, lo cual no es razón para que emplees tu vagar en un asunto tan frívolo y tan baladí. Adiós, pues.

De Montaigne, a 12 días del mes de junio de 1580 años.