Montaigne – of Cannibals

Frank Ocean’s “Seigfried” and Bessie Head’s “The Deep River: A Story of Ancient Tribal Migration” reveal the power of society to narrow individuals’ choices to extremes. The narrative of Head and the poetry of Ocean prove that quests for individuality is not always welcomed. It is typically understood that most matters are of many nuances (not black and white), however the collective society through groupthink may hold a monolithic stance. A stance which tasks outcasts to decide between two opposites. In our specific example, the two extremes are seclusion and conformity.

An ideal society is a model that strives to function the most efficiently. Both Thomas More’s Utopia and Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” state the fundamentals of specific ideal societies. The differences in these perfect societies are driven by the principles they are based upon. More’s society is based off cultural order while Montaigne’s is based on natural order. The two foundations cause geographic, social, and political differences.

In the On Cannibals Montaigne begins the essay by introducing, or describing, a man that he has met who has lived in Antarctic France. He describes him as being crude, and like many others, can't help but change history through his own interpretation. Montaigne continues by going into how each person has their own definition of barbarism. Those who are seen as being barbarians are those who don't have the same practices and beliefs as the other.

The authors bias opinions are backed up with facts and states that ¨Many of the worst abuses-of land, forests, animals, and communities-have been carried out by ´people who root themselves in ideas rather than opinions´.¨ As a result, he has effectively build his argument to state the migration of individuals can harm rather than subdue our environment. The author, then goes into Rushdie claim that ¨Migrants must, of necessity, make a new imaginative relationship with the world, because of the loss of familiar habitats.¨ This counterexample, in response to Rushdie claim through syntax and backing up his own previous statement, allows the reader to ponder on how can we create a new relationship with the environment, when we keep moving to new territory and doing the same actions there. Hence, why the author gave a prime example of the ¨Dust Bowl¨ and the ¨Spaniards moving into the New World.¨ Plus, the bringing up of the diseases brought by the colonist, shows that the author has thoroughly contemplated on the topics of humanity and our actions.

Throughout the history of civilization, there have been many great thinkers and philosophers who lay claim and offer their theory of the world around them. Michel de Montaigne, a prominent philosopher of the French Renaissance, argued in his essays of the habitual inconsistency of man and how it is nearly impossible for man to correct these everyday irregularities and contradictions. To say that man is flawed and utterly irregular are statements not particularly surprising or revelatory for philosophers to make, even in Montaigne’s time. However, what can be considered unique about Montaigne, aside from his sharp perceptions of the everyday man, are his sharp—and honest—perceptions of himself, never bragging about his intellectual prowess or

In the philosophical fiction, “A Discourse on Inequality,” John Rousseau, in the state of nature, distinguishes man from animals with the concepts of man possessing freewill and man’s sense of unrealized perfectibility. Furthermore, he emphasizes throughout the first discourse that man, in the state of nature, does not obtain knowledge that surpasses that of animals. Man’s free will is a prerequisite for a further gain in knowledge to be acquired; also, the sense of perfectibility man is naturally derived with allows man to change with time. I argue that free will is a necessary and crucial factor for man to leave the state of nature. Because of free will, man retains the capability to acquire and develop knowledge. Moreover, knowledge

Montaigne’s argument is centered around the European perception of Native Americans as barbarous people, which he refutes by listing the virtues of the native people, presenting them as the ideal ‘natural man’. When he says, “I am afraid our eyes are bigger than our bellies, and that we have more curiosity than capacity,” (1) he cautions Europeans in their tendency to minimize the value of the people they encounter and try to colonize.  He states about the New World: “I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation, by anything I can gather,” (3) and goes on to comment on their impressive health, writing: “as my witness informs me, ‘tis rare to hear of a sick person, and… they never saw any of the natives, either paralytic, blear-eyed, toothless or crooked with age.” (5) Montaigne explores the fact that Native Americans are happy despite

It was once said that “the only living societies are those which are animated by inequality and injustice.” A man named Paul Claudel wrote this in his work, Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher, and he criticizes the ability to have a functional society. Societies are meant to organize the values of people into a system with uniform laws and expectations; however, societies can never fully achieve this. Claudel only sees societies with dysfunctional characteristics like inequality and injustice. There are always exceptions to the social order because all people are individuals with different life experiences that help define who they are. Nathaniel Hawthorne also criticizes the Utopian ideals that societies often hold in his novel, The

This extract from Montaigne’s ‘Des Cannibales’ is found near the beginning of the essay. It is pivotal in setting the precedent for the rest of the essay since it establishes how Montaigne came to his viewpoints on the Tupinambá since they are different to those held by many of his contemporaries. When Montaigne wrote, people were only beginning to learn about other areas of the world. People on the whole had not travelled and so held ethnocentric views regarding culture. They failed to understand the people of the New World, thus labeled them as ‘sauvage’ and ‘barbare’ something which Montaigne challenges in this essay, and specifically sets out in this extract.

Throughout his essays, Montaigne expresses strong opinions against ethnocentrism, such as in On Cannibals, where he writes that, “there is nothing savage of barbarous about those peoples, but that every man calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to,” (82) and, “We should be similarly wary of accepting common

In regards to Montaigne 's statement on page 23 in Apology for Raymond Sebond, I would deduce that he was using the metaphor of nature and natural tendencies in opposition to man 's vain, self-seeking façade that displaces God the creator. Montaigne 's statement appears to (on the surface at least) value mans naturalistic tendencies and graces in a much better light than our own vain-striving presumptions that claim that our "competent utterances" hold the very answers to the "right" way in which to conduct oneself. Montaigne constantly uses the contrast of animals and humans with the former representing a more pure, natural existence that I assume is to be

According to Rousseau 's “Discourse on Inequality”, there are four stages to the social evolution in humans; it 's natural state, family, nation, and civil society. There are two types of inequalities, natural (or physical) and moral. Natural inequality stems from differences in age, health, or other physical characteristics. Moral inequality is established by convention or consent of men. One of the first and most important questions Rousseau asks is "For how is it possible to know the source of the inequality among men, without knowing men themselves?” (Rousseau, Preface) To answer this question, man cannot be considered as he is now, deformed by society, but as he was in nature. The problem is that as knowledge increases man’s ignorance. This essay, using Rousseau’s “Discourse on Inequality” as a backbone will try and identify the origins of inequality within race, class, gender and sexuality, and establish how these inequalities were brought out and maintained.

Rousseau’s state of nature differs greatly from Locke’s. The human in Rousseau’s state of nature exists purely as an instinctual and solitary creature, not as a Lockean rational individual. Accordingly, Rousseau’s human has very few needs, and besides sex, is able to satisfy them all independently. This human does not contemplate appropriating property, and certainly does not deliberate rationally as to the best method for securing it. For Rousseau, this simplicity characterizes the human as perfectly free, and because it does not socialize with others, it does not have any notion of inequality; thus, all humans are perfectly equal in the state of nature. Nonetheless, Rousseau accounts for humanity’s contemporary condition in civil society speculating that a series of coincidences and discoveries, such as the development of the family and the advent of agriculture, gradually propelled the human away from a solitary, instinctual life towards a social and rationally contemplative

With reference to emerging from the state of nature and entering into society, Rousseau highlights that free-will brings with it reason. As reason develops, man becomes more industrious and begins to adapt to

By joining civil society and becoming a part of the general will, man is enriching his actions with a morality and rationality that was previously lacking. As he states in Book I, Chapter VIII, “although in this state he deprives himself of several advantages given to him by nature, he gains such great ones…that changed him from a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent being and a man” (Rousseau 56). What man posses in nature is an unlimited physical freedom to pursue everything that tempts him, although this is viewed by Rousseau as almost an enslavement towards one’s own instincts. In a civil state man is benefited by “substituting justice for instinct in his behaviour and giving his actions the morality they previously lacked” (Rousseau 54). In acting in accordance with the general will man is granted the most important form of all freedoms, civil freedom.