Adam Goetz

9-20-2020

Dr. Phillipson, PHI 322

Exegesis 1

In the examination of Michel de Montaigne’s work, Apology for Raymond Sebond, one will find

support for Montaigne’s view that true Christian life roots in faith and a general account of Montaigne’s

views. He initially states that the foundation of ignorance lies within the senses, though the senses provide

unique knowledge that cannot be obtained without them. Montaigne argues that, for the senses one

possesses, that they must ultimately have faith as they possess certainty as to the reality of their senses.

This essay will explore Montaigne’s philosophy and argue against his faithful empiricism by showing

there are some things that one can possess certainty of. This will be accomplished by evaluating

Montaigne’s main views and drawing out examples of certainty there against.

Montaigne first argues that “all knowledge is conveyed… by the senses.” 1 Montaigne poses that,

since a man judges in the action of judging, similarly should knowledge begin and be resolved in the

senses as they are the sensors, those that he views as the sole source of knowledge. Upon this one could

find a counterargument brewing, for another source of knowledge could be the mind itself, but this will be

articulated as Montaigne’s argument progresses. Montaigne argues that one couldn’t know a stone’s true

essence without having experienced it through sensory experiences such as sight, hearing, smelling. On

the contrary, one could raise that the mind could define what a true stone’s nature is in itself without some

of the senses, but not to the extreme of being entirely derelict of the senses. One does have to understand

some sensory field to have a basis for defining knowledge, such as touch: as long as one has encountered

and formed their understanding of hardness and softness, they don’t have to encounter basalt physically

nor do they have to sense it via the other indirect senses, like scent or vision, it in order to know that it is a

1
Michel de Montaigne, “Apology for Raymond Sebond (1580-88),” in Modern Philosophy an Anthology of Primary
Resources, ed. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2019), 5.
hard substance. Take, for example, pure iron: one could feel iron ore’s hardness and cognize in their mind

that a purer form of the ore would possess more of that perceived physical quality. Montaigne roots the

source of knowledge in the senses but mentions that they should also “be credited with as little as

possible, they will always have to be granted… all our instruction is routed by their means and

mediation.”2 On the contrary, one could argue against the former that the senses should be very credible,

for many people could be exposed to the same phenomenon and report the same painful sensory

experience that fire is indeed hot. Additionally, one’s instruction could be independent of sensory

experience, for mathematics can be cognized by mere concepts. Among this, Montaigne simultaneously

supports that senses are modes by which one knows the true essence of something, i.e. fire is hot, that it

cannot be intrinsically understood without having experienced its heat: “There can be nothing more

absurd… than to maintain that fire does not heat.” However, one could draw a counterexample that the

origin of motion can be inferred though unperceived, such as watching a flower bloom which is based on

rationalist knowledge of biological principles. This establishes that knowledge comes to us through more

than just the senses.

Montaigne takes this doubt of the senses into another direction as he believes it unlikely that

humans possess all the senses. Since some animals go about their lives without senses and achieve their

fullest potential, as moles do without vision, so too might people lack senses and enjoy life without ever

knowing they lacked anything or not know if they were fully enjoying life. He argues that reason

wouldn’t be able to sense the defect with itself, just as much as it would be impossible to make a blind

man understand that he lacks vision. On the contrary, one could use reason for its metaphysical aim and

follow a certain hermeneutic, or procedural thinking style, and realize that they did not arrive at the

conclusion or establish what they’d originally intended. This would be a way that reason could sense a

defect with itself and purify itself, being another non-empirical sense of knowledge. Montaigne

appreciates how, without a sense, people couldn’t realize how much knowledge they would have missed

out on had they been deprived of one. However, a counterargument could be posed that animals that use
2
Ibid, 5.
echolocation could construct a mental image of the form and distance of and from an object. Montaigne

attempts to propel sense’s helplessness by articulating there are obstacles to people’s perception that lie in

weakness of the senses, for if one’s body has defects in reporting sensation, then knowledge will be

skewed for the person akin to someone with congenital analgesia never knowing what painful stimulus

truly is. He argues, with all these opportunities of error, people must ultimately have faith in their senses,

and without them, humans would be senseless and helpless. However, one could posit that there are some

things that will be always painful to people and rejects the helplessness of the sense, for dyslexic people

could read a harsh text or insult meant for them and still feel the same emotional pain. Dyslexics, though

reading this harsh word in its disarray, could habituate themselves to the spelling, affirming the possibility

of having obstacles to sensation, but still receive the same insult or emotional pain value from the word.

Or even for people of a different race than which the racial slur was intended for, they can still read or

hear the derogatory term and feel pain for the attacked race in a sense of empathy. To regress to the case

of analgesic people, the brain is capable of rededicating the neuronal capacity of algesic information

towards information on pressure so as to help them understand pain in a different sense. This establishes

that there can be some other certainty about sensory information and furthers the potential of certainty to

be held in reason.

He furthers this idea of not perceiving the reality of the world and phenomena as result of lacking

senses as he articulates how people can sense much of an apple, “redness, smoothness, odor and

sweetness; beyond that, it may have other virtues, like drying up or shrinking, for which [people] have no

sense to inform”3 them, and he argues further that the lack of sensing this subtility is causal of people’s

ignorance of things’ true essence. However, Montaigne believes the senses can span vastly in what they

can receive and create understandings of more complex ideas, like harmonious synchronization, and that

people argue and infer things from the diversity and variety of the senses.

3
Ibid, 6.
 Montaigne considers the possibility of being mistaken in lieu of rationalist beliefs. On one hand,

he accepts the situation where one holds a pen between two fingers and there exists the illusion of there

being two objects being felt, but one the other hand, he observes that there is the undeniable sensation of

nociception in which epicureans and stoics who proclaim that people “have no knowledge if the

appearances of the senses are false… [and] the appearances of the senses are so false that they can

produce no knowledge”4 respectively, even themselves shout out and admit pain. Montaigne leverages off

the undeniability of pain as he argues the absurdity of rationalists in situations, for no matter what people

tell themselves, they will still grow nervous while walking across a plank suspended high above, or they

will still cringe, turn away, and feel the pain in medical procedures, though they understand what will

happen. This demonstrates how senses have specialization and authority in their particular field of

sensation. Montaigne further attacks rationalism’s absurdity as music can be supposedly understood

written on paper but better experienced when played, arguing against the rationalist idea that people can

appreciate music without having heard it. On the contrary, deaf composers like Beethoven have been able

to cognize, compose, and appreciate pieces that they will never physically perceive. Similar arguments

could be given for mathematics as the symbols and numbers represent ideas and patterns that will never

be perceived. Returning to deception, Montaigne posits that the soul can even trick the senses, for it can

make “the object [people] love seems to [them] more beautiful than it is,” 5 making human’s exterior and

interior both sources of error, consequentially calling people to deeper faith. There exists a

counterargument to be had about this, for what one could view as the soul tricking the senses could

actually be argued for pointing the body towards a higher reality, that the present object possesses a

fragment of an absolute truth of the character of God which calls for a person to be aimed or destined for

God. This would stand as an argument against both sides of sources of error, internally as to the soul

being mistaken that it is truly participating in and aimed toward an absolute, and then externally that the

4
Ibid, 7.
5
Ibid, 10.
external beauty perceived may truly be there, but our limited state doesn’t permit our senses to realize that

the absolute is truly present and perceived.

Stepping from the soul and the senses as deceptive but knowledgeable, Montaigne explores these

in their roles of slumber. Since Montaigne does not find the waking reality as cloudy and indiscriminate

as the dreaming state, he knows his soul can judge and distinguish between the two realities, providing

foundation for asserting the soul and reason receive fancies and opinions and make decisions while

dreaming and that thought is the action of dreaming while waking up is a different type of sleep.

Inversely, if the senses are the first to judge while waking, this would equate humans with animals, for

they are just as good, if not better, that humans at sensing, as owls do for hearing or eagles for vision. In

order to judge senses, Montaigne believes, humans must be not only in accord with animals but also

among themselves, for a youngling would hear things different than would a man or an elder. This

collective consultation is what allows for judgment upon perceptions of controversies or miracles, for it is

difficult to tell if phenomena possesses a quality “in its essence and in truth is more than [people] are able

to,”6 in their limited condition. Further on this condition, Montaigne believes that people accommodate

things to their limited condition, for people cannot know the true essence of things due to the senses

altering the truth of things experienced. In order to truly judge or understand something, Montaigne

affirms, there would need to be a judge that is unbiased by their own state, so in order to judge a constant

thing, humans would need something that is constant. Humans change too often, as they enjoy something

one day and abhor it the next, they are in between the condition of being born and dying as they progress

through life, so Montaigne arrives at God as the solution, since God is immutable, eternal, unchanging,

and the one who is truly real who would therefore be the true one to judge and know things in themselves.

Ultimately, since people cannot encounter God in His incorporeal and immutable state, this seals

Montaigne’s argument of faith in the capacity for knowledge and surety thereof. To most of these

arguments, one would find them very sound, but for the later part of needing God to be the unbiased

judge one could raise a few objections. Primarily, one could use a robot or measuring device to not be
6
Ibid, 11.
biased in judging phenomena. Secondly, one could possess certainty if they operationalized their

judgments binarily or reduced them to mathematical qualities. Overall, this paper established the fact that

people can indeed possess certainty about phenomena about much in life.