They're Writing Songs of Myself, But Not For Me

Montaigne, Essays
Over the years, I've read a few of his essays ("On Cannibals" comes up a lot in early modern contexts); there was sometimes a clever argument, but I was never really moved to dig further. Well, in the spirit of all things coming due to those who read extensively, I gave the complete essays a shot, and promptly abandoned them after I.14. 

I accept as a matter of historical importance that people continuously try to make compatible things that are not, at first glance, compatible with each other. I've even taken a scholarly interest in them, from time to time: what was my dissertation if not trying to merge liberal Protestantism with moral universalism, historical-textual (and therefore Biblical) criticism, and a rejection of natural law? I can see how that would be of no interest to most people, but it was of great interest to me, because I wanted to found my moral judgments on the grounds that were important to me, and wouldn't you know it but someone else had done the same thing 400 years earlier.

But these overlaps are not really interesting, most of the time. How is Aristotle compatible with Islam, Judaism, or Catholicism? The developments of Ibn Rushd, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas are all watershed moments in Western thought, but I don't believe in Aristotle's science, or Islam, Judaism, or Catholicism. So they can really only be of academic interest to me, which is to say, if I am not motivated by a specific question (or teaching, a different type of intellectual exercise), I can't really bring myself to care much.

(cf. also last week's post on Ovid, and the failure to integrate Egyptian deities or anticipate Rome's collapse: it's interesting to me because it's an artistically interesting failure. I don't really feel compelled to have a view on Isis as a god or Cleopatra, so.)

Montaigne is devoted almost exclusively to a similar project: reconciling Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism with Stoicism. It's hard to imagine two views I am troubled by less, either on their own or in combination. If they can be reconciled, so much the worse for both. Which leads one back to the question that frames a lot of my own non-fiction reading these days as an ex-academic: "why would I bother reading a book about viewpoints I don't like in a style that's not my favorite, when there's no hope of being convinced by anything I couldn't get from other, preferable sources?"