DISCUSSION: De Las Casas and Montaigne

Another guest lecturer tonight, Dr. Ellie Stebner leading our discussion of Montaigne.

We started with De Las Casas.  I'd sent out the following questions for consideration:

QUESTIONS

• 1.     De Las Casas devoted most of his adult life to travelling around the “Indies”, and back & forth to Spain, advocating for reform in how the Spaniards were governing in the Americas (especially with regards to their abuse of the indigenous peoples).  Was De Las Casas motivated by reason or by passion?

or alternatively

• 2.     De Las Casas wrote a very disturbing text, full of strong condemnation of Spain.  Was De Las Casas more motivated by compassion for the injustice and the suffering inflicted upon the indigenous people, or by fear of Divine Retribution being visited upon Spain for Spanish “sins against the honour of God?”

• 3.     In ‘A Short Account’ De Las Casas uses both reason and passion to support his plea for ‘legal and institutional reform’ in the Americas.  Consider examples of each type of argument.  Which approach was the most effective?

• 4.     De Las Casas speaks about the greed of the Conquistadors as a root cause of the abuses.  He writes, “Spaniards […] would attack and rob the Devil himself if he had gold about his person.”  He also quotes Hatuey, a ‘cacique’ who fled the Spanish slaughter on Hispaniola, only to find Cuba similarly overrun by the Conquistadors.  Hatuey told his people that the Christians “have a God whom they worship and adore, and it is in order to get that God from us so that they can worship Him that they conquer and kill us.” Pointing to a basket of gold jewellery Hatuey said “Here is the God of the Christians.”  De Las Casas makes mention many times that the local people were neither ambitious nor greedy.  Is greed a particularly European trait, a Catholic or Christian trait?  Was it purely greed that impelled the Spaniards to behave so abhorrently in the Americas or did the distance from home and society allow human qualities to come out that are waiting to manifest themselves within each of us?  Were there any other factors that likely contributed to the scale of the atrocities?

• 5.     One of the abhorrent aspects of the ‘Spanish Conquest’ in the Americas was the enslavement of the indigenous peoples and the resulting slave trade.  In his chapter on Guatemala, Las Casas describes an episode where de Alvarado laid waste to a region because they didn’t have the gold the Spaniards wanted.  They enslaved the survivors and De Las Casas writes “when they pressed for further slaves to be handed over by way of tribute, the natives gave up their own sons and daughters, as they had no further slaves to surrender.” (pg 61)  Was the enslavement of Amerindians by the Spaniards morally any different than the enslavement practiced by the Amerindians themselves?

• 6.     De Las Casas uses very strong and vivid language to describe the cruelty and perfidy of the Spaniards.  In contrast he infantilizes the local peoples, consistently describing them as “gentle lambs”, “open and innocent”, “submissive”, “obedient”, “without malice or guile”, “particularly receptive to learning”.  Was this paternalistic perspective his true view of the Amerindian people or merely a rhetorical device to simplify and strengthen his pleas to the Spanish Crown for reforms in the Americas?

• 7.     De Las Casas’ report of the Conquistadors’ actions in the Americas reads like a textbook description of a Machiavellian campaign.   Consider the number of Machiavelli’s principles that were employed in the ‘Spanish Conquest’.  Below are 4 examples:

a.     Slaughter the leaders

b.     Use fear to control the people
                                               i.     “It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved”
c.      Lie and deceive to get what you want
                                               i.     “Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked”.
                                              ii.     “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present”.

d.     Act severely and strongly
                                               i.     If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.                                              ii.     Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.
                                            iii.     Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

I was also aware of De Las Casas use of sarcasm to make his point or as commentary on the baseness of the actions he is writing about.

Use of Sarcasm

· “This is yet another example of the great deeds of these benighted Spaniards and of the ways in which they bring lustre and honour to the name of the Lord” (pg 67).

· “As they were subject to more and yet more injustice by Spaniards passing through the region on their way to tyrannize other provinces (or, as they would put it, ‘explore’ them)” (pg. 69)

· Noting that Spaniards buying slaves would say to the devil with any sick or elderly people, he comments “Reactions like these serve to give some idea of what the Spanish think of the native people, and how closely they obey that commandment to love one’s neighbor that underpins the Law and the books of the Prophets.” (pg 93)

We had a good discussion in class.  When we were speaking about the "Lord of the Flies" aspect, whether all humans would be capable of such "inhumane" actions given the right set of circumstances, it seemed that the majority of the class felt that this capability lies within all of us.  Several people cited various 20th and 21st century experiments where people very quickly were induced to behave very unjustly to colleagues or fellow students by fairly mild psychological or situational manipulations.  Stephen maintained his view that this "inhumanity", brutality and lack of compassion or empathy is not an innate human trait.

We didn't get into a discussion of slavery - something practiced by the Spaniards against the natives as well as against imported African slaves but also something practiced by many of the indigenous tribes and nations themselves.  I was interested in this topic because slavery is such a contentious topic in North America but it is far from being a practice used only by Europeans.  They did manage to utilize slavery on a much broader scale than most other contemporary nations/cultures (though historically I would imagine the Mongols, Romans and the Ottomans had slavery on a similar scale).

Regarding whether reason or passion was more persuasive or more motivating, I think it is the combination of the two that is most effective.  And in fact, when we were discussing this the question came up of the definition of reason vs passion and Stephen remarked that we will likely find by the end of the year the two are inextricably intertwined.

MONTAIGNE
Dr. Stebner lead a good, though brief discussion about Montaigne.  I found this a challenging text, especially having to read it as quickly as I did due to the extra class and extra books this week.  Ellie gave a wonderful intro and summary of Montaigne - I was scribbling hard to get much of it down as it seems to make so much of what I had read clear.

• Humans find difficult to distinguish between true and false.  How do we even know?
• Passions/minds deceive us
• All previous sages limited and disagreed with one another
• No way to get beyond limitness of human limits
• We think we are superior to all other creatures yet we can’t even understand other creatures
• Regard other humans as barbarians
• No understanding of nature yet alone what is within us
• Constrained by an order we don’t or can’t understand
• All must come from an outside source – for Montaigne, this is God
• Problem for Montaigne that Luther and Calvin base their arguments on reason
• What is reason or conscience?
• Christian beliefs can’t be based on reason
• Ignorance and violence of human reason – results in vanity and foolishness
• Humans need to get beyond ourselves
• Acknowledge God as incomprehensible, not limited by time or impermanence
• We are all impermanent – this is the bottom line for Montaigne
• We are just human – yet become stuffed up and self-centered
• We don’t even know how to be happy, ignorant people often happier than learned
• We don’t even know how to think, know nothing about our bodies let alone spirit
• Reason doesn’t make us content, doesn’t make us ethical or moral

Montaigne wants to be practical – if there is a purpose for reason it is that it calls us to freedom – freedom from doctrinal ideological thinking, can we imagine things being other, can we imagine a world beyond what we know?

Our goal is to question everything not only what we see but what we feel, not only what we feel but what we taste – we have to recognize what we taste but realize that it’s not what everyone tastes.

Montaigne's strengths: Style, earthiness, ability to point to smallest of things

He was the father of the essay – from the French word essayer “to make an attempt”, attempt to understand something, to weigh something

Mentioned a Sarah Bakewell book – the whole point of Montaigne is how to live – The book sets out 20 tips on how to live

•     Don’t worry about death
•     Pay attention
•     Be born
•     Read a lot but forget
•     Survive love and loss
•     Use little tricks
•     Question everything
•     Have a Private room (a Room of One's Own?)
•     Be convivial
•     Wake from sleep of habit
•     Live temperately
•     Guard your humanity
•     Do something no one else has done before
•     See the world
•     Do a good job but not too good
•     Reflect on everything and regret nothing
•     Give up control
•     Be ordinary and imperfect
•         Let life be its own answer

Lessons she has drawn from Montaigne

Says Montaigne is the 1^st truly modern individual

QUESTIONS

1. 1st modern - this title is usually given to Rousseau, Descartes – but truly modern person is not a sceptic but is a believer in Reason. Post-modern writer Derrida opens with Montaigne

Truth is what you want to make it, what is plausible

Scepticism is a healthy starting point, for Montaigne it’s also an ending point. Doesn’t preclude accepting something - his skepticism is an ethical stance – ‘virtue is not happiness’ – difficult to be a sceptic about everything

Byron says it’s easier to accept things than to question everything -

Sceptic lifestyle – difficult to put into practice – not enough time to take everything down to the foundations

Bruce – Scottish train with mathematician, biologist and philosopher - black sheep (philosopher says "all the sheep in Scotland are black", biologist says "no, there is one black sheep in Scotland", mathematician says "no, there is at least one sheep in Scotland is black on one side")

Be clear about the limits of your knowledge

We have to start somewhere or else we are paralyzed – where you start is often a place where you have to make an assumption.

Jonas – loved the book – are ignorant people really happier than learned people?

Abilio felt that Montaigne used imagination in the reverse way, to deconstruct everything rather to to create things.

Stephen said Montaigne uses footnotes to justify things in a way we don’t do now – he relied on masses of ancient thinkers and quotes to justify his ideas – this soon fell out of favour – last of the ancient scholars – Montaigne respects those sources -

Naomi – liked where Montaigne says he took a position opposite to his opinion and argued it just for fun - and convinced himself and ended up changing his opinion.

2 . Those who don’t know are happier than those who know – maybe we can’t attain freedom because we won’t know it when we have it – those who don’t ponder happiness are happier – though there is much danger of romanticizing the “simpler” life. Utopian ideal is not to return to a simple subsistence lifestyle but to want to transcend this to a better life, simpler but through a complex societal evolution that takes away or manages our daily needs and dangers so that we can have a simple happy life (Bacon's New Atlantis?).

3 . Montaigne wants to free himself from Doctors – be free from reliance on others?

4 . How do we live?

5 . What do we do with what we don’t know?

6 . Are our senses reliable?

7 . Did he himself reject dogma – can only take to a certain point then need something external to provide 1st principles


A related book to read: Saul Frampton – When I’m playing with My Cat . . .