«Il n’y a que les fols certains et résolus». Le rôle de la raison, qui «est une touche pleine de fausseté, d’erreur, de faiblesse et de défaillance» (II, XII, A, 541), n’est pas de discerner la vérité, mais de détruire les vérités prétendues afin de les réduire à ce qu’elles sont: de simples opinions. Elle déraisonne lorsqu’elle veut construire. Son rôle, le seul qu’elle puisse, dans son usage théorique, mener à bien, est purement critique, destructeur. Elle s’égare et se fait sophistique lorsqu’elle engage le débat autrement que pour mettre en doute. Les principes d’une philosophie, quelle qu’elle soit, sont essentiellement douteux, puisqu’on peut leur opposer des principes contraires. Comment bâtirait-on du certain sur du douteux? Lorsqu’un philosophe se voit demander raison de ses principes, il ne peut la donner, car il ne peut remonter à l’infini. Or la raison ne se lasse pas de demander le pourquoi, d’interroger, et ainsi va à l’infini. Il suffit donc d’exercer sa raison pour mettre toutes choses en doute. Le doute est l’exercice même de la raison. Le bon usage de la raison et la certitude sont exclusifs l’un de l’autre. (Marcel Conche, 1991, Montaigne et la Philosophie)

“We are surrounded by mysteries: the mystery of the absence of outstanding leaders anywhere on this planet; the mystery of teachers no longer able to teach children to read and write; the mystery of the blurring of differences between men and women — in San Francisco even a close look does not always tell you beyond doubt the sex of a person; the mystery of a majority incapable of getting angry with those who trample it underfoot. No other century has seen so great a waste of young lives as we have seen with our eyes — not only in the two World Wars but in the 1960s. The twentieth century seems a crazed monstrous beast devouring its young.” (Eric Hoffer, 1979, Before the Sabbath)

“It is not only the fevers, the potions, and the great accidents that upset our judgment; the slightest things in the world whirl it around. And there is no doubt, even though we do not feel it, that if a continuous fever can prostrate our soul, tertian fever causes some alteration in it, according to its measure and proportion. If apoplexy completely deadens and extinguishes the sight of our intelligence, there is no doubt that a bad cold dazzles it. And consequently, we can hardly find a single hour in our life when our judgment is in its proper seat, our body being subject to so many continual changes, and filled with so many springs of action that I can well believe the doctors how unlikely it is that there will not always be one of them pulling crooked. Moreover, this malady is not so easily discovered, unless it is wholly extreme and irremediable; inasmuch as reason always goes its way, even though crooked, lame, and broken-hipped, and with falsehood as with truth. Thus it is not easy to discover its miscalculation and irregularity. I always call reason that semblance of intellect that each man fabricates in himself. That reason, of which, by its condition, there can be a hundred contradictory ones about one and the same subject, is an instrument of lead and of wax, stretchable, pliable, and adaptable to all biases and all measures; all that is needed is the ability to mold it. However good a judge’s intentions are, unless he listens closely to himself, which few people amuse themselves in doing, his inclination to friendship, kinship, beauty, and vengeance, and not only things so weighty, but that fortuitous instinct that makes us favor one thing more than another and that assigns us, without leave of our reason, our choice between two like objects, or some shadow of equal emptiness, can insinuate insensibly into his judgment the favor or disfavor of a cause, and tip the scales.” (Montaigne, tr. Frame)

“Good scholars need intelligence, creativity, persistence (Sitzfleisch), and intellectual honesty. (Luck, too, is useful.) Outside mathematics and physics, a high level of intelligence is not essential, although a modicum is obviously necessary. Creativity seems to depend both on the innate capacity of the unconscious to form associations, which cause the solution to a problem to appear when you wake up in the morning, and on the accumulation of elements between which those associations might be made. That accumulation in turns depends on a wide and broad reading of the classics and of history. The classics can provide explicit mechanisms, often in lapidary form. Historians often provide implicit or potential mechanisms, in addition to showing us the varieties of human behavior and social organization. Psychology and behavioral economics can refine the mechanisms and transform them into testable hypotheses, as well as coming up with ideas that nobody has thought of. Persistence is needed for the necessary attention to detail. It is too much to ask that scholars should have ‘the infinite capacity for taking pains’ that has been used as a definition of genius, but they should use shoe leather. Intellectual honesty may not matter much in mathematics and physics, since formal proofs and replicable experiments do not depend on the possession of that quality. Honesty (and modesty) is vital, however, in disciplines where the constraints created by deductive logic and hard facts are lacking. If someone asked me how to acquire it, I would say: Read Montaigne.” (Jon Elster, 2015, Explaining Social Behavior)

L’agitation et la chasse est proprement de nostre gibier: nous ne sommes pas excusables de la conduire mal et impertinemment; de faillir à la prise, c’est autre chose. Car nous sommes nais à quester la verité; il appartient de la posseder à une plus grande puissance. (Montaigne)

Agitation and the chase are properly our quarry; we are not excusable if we conduct it badly and irrelevantly; to fail in the catch is another thing. For we are born to quest after truth; to possess it belongs to a greater power. (Donald Frame, 1943)

Agitation, stirring and hunting, is properly belonging to our subject or drift; wee are not excusable to conduct the same ill and impertinently, but to misse the game and faile in taking, that’s another matter. For wee are borne to quest and seeke after trueth; to possesse it belongs to a greater power. (John Florio, 1603)

To hunt after truth is properly our business, and we are inexcusable if we carry on the chase impertinently and ill; to fail of seizing it is another thing, for we are born to inquire after truth: it belongs to a greater power to possess it. (Charles Cotton, 1685)

The real object of our hunting is excitement and the hunt itself; we have no excuse for conducting it badly and irrelevantly. To fail in capturing any thing is another matter, for we are destined from birth to quest the truth; to possess it belongs to a greater power. (George Burnham Ives, 1925)

The excitement of the chase is properly our quarry. We are not to be pardoned if we carry it on badly or foolishly; to fail to seize the prey is a different matter. For we are born search after the truth; to possess it belongs to a greater power. (Emil J. Trechmann, 1927)

The activity of the hunt is properly our business; we are not excused if we conduct it badly and unsuitably; to fail in seizing the prey is another thing. For we are born to quest after truth; to possess it belogs to a greater power. (Jacob Zeitlin, 1934)

The active pursuit of truth is our proper business. We have no excuse for conducting it badly or unfittingly. But failure to capture our prey is another matter. For we are born to quest after it; to possess it belongs to a greater power. (John M. Cohen, 1958)

The game which we hunt is the fun of the chase: we are inexcusable if we pursue it badly or foolishly: it is quite another thing if we fail to make a kill. For we are born to go in quest of truth: to take possession of it is the property of a greater Power. (M. A. Screech, 1987)

“A Lacedaemonian was asked what had made him live healthy so long. ‘Ignorance of medicine’, he replied. And the Emperor Hadrian kept crying out as he was dying that the crowd of doctors had killed him. BA bad wrestler turned doctor. ‘Take heart’, Diogenes said to him, ‘you are right; now you will bring down those who brought you down before’. But they have this luck, according to Nicocles, that the sun shines on their successes, and the earth hides their failures. And besides, they have a very convenient way of making use of all kinds of results; for the good and the health that fortune, nature, or some other extraneous cause (of which the number is infinite) produces in us, it is the privilege of medicine to attribute to itself. All the happy results that happen to the patient who is under its care are due to it. The circumstances that have cured me and that cure a thousand others who do not call the doctors to their aid, they usurp in the case of their patients. And as for the mishaps, either they completely disavow them, by attributing the blame to the patient, for reasons so frivolous that they cannot possibly fail to find always a good enough number of them: he uncovered his arm; he heard the noise of a coach… someone opened his window; he lay down on his left side; or some troublesome thought passed through his head — in short, a word, a dream, a look, seems to them sufficient excuse to put the blame off their own shoulders. Or, if they so please, they actually make use of our getting worse, and do their business by this other means that can never fail them, which is to reward us, when the disease has become hotter by their prescriptions, with the assurance they give us that it would have become even worse without their remedies. The man whom they have cast from a chill into a quotidian fever, without them would have had a continued fever. They need not worry about doing their job badly, since the damage turns to their profit. Truly they are right to require the full confidence of the patient; it must indeed be well-intentioned and very pliable to apply itself to notions so hard to believe.” (Montaigne, tr. Frame)

“…wise men are reluctant to take charge, knowing that there are people who are still wiser and that it is they who should rule the world. Meanwhile, fools and villains leap into the breach, take charge of the world, and conduct it willfully and foolishly. This is how it happens that wise men allow idiots and criminals to destroy the world. Since the wise men are wise and growing ever wiser, what they regarded yesterday as ultimate wisdom they realize, a day later, is not wise after all. They seldom maintain a position or remain committed to anything, because wisdom keeps leading them a step further. Not so with fools. Whatever they fix their eyes on, they stick with, never letting go; should they let go, they’d have nothing. Their entire life is a strategy, a way to keep the world in their hands.” (S. Y. Agnon, Shira, tr. Zeva Shapiro)

החכמים מושכים ידיהם מהנהגת העולם, מפני שהם יודעים שיש חכמים מהם ורוצים שיתנהג העולם על ידי חכמים גמורים, בתוך כך קופצים הטפשים והרשעים ובאים ונוטלים את העולם לידיהם ומנהגים את העולם כפי זדונם וכפי טפשותם. מעתה היאך נותנים החכמים לעולם שיאבד על ידי השוטים והרשעים, אלא מתוך שהחכמים חכמים ומוסיפים חכמה, כל שנראה להם אתמול כחכמה שלימה רואים אותו היום שאינו חכמה ואינם עומדים על דעתם ואינם תוקעים עצמם לשום דבר מפני החכמה שמוליכה את החכמים ממעלה למעלה. לא כן הטפשים. כל דבר שנתנו בו עיניהם הרי הם מחזיקים בו ואינם מניחים ממנו, שאם יניחו ידיהם ממנו אין להם מה יעשו בעולם. (ש”י עגנון, שירה)

“Lying is an ugly vice, which an ancient paints in most shameful colors when he says that it is giving evidence of contempt for God, and at the same time of fear of men. It is not possible to represent more vividly the horror, the vileness, and the profligacy of it. For what can you imagine uglier than being a coward toward men and bold toward God? Since mutual understanding is brought about solely by way of words, he who breaks his word betrays human society. It is the only instrument by means of which our wills and thoughts communicate, it is the interpreter of our soul. If it fails us, we have no more hold on each other, no more knowledge of each other. If it deceives us, it breaks up all our relations and dissolves all the bonds of our society.” (Montaigne, tr. Frame)

“The venerable senate of the Areopagus judged by night, for fear that the sight of the plaintiffs might corrupt their justice.” (Montaigne, tr. Frame)

“Et à fin que les luges ne peussent estre destournez par quelque affection de la verité, ils cognoissoient des causes criminelles la nuict, & en tenebres.” (G. Bouchet, 1584, Les Sérées, v. II, Nevfiesme Seree, p. 134)

“It is very easy, upon accepted foundations, to build what you please; for according to the law and ordering of this beginning, the rest of the parts of the building are easily done, without contradictions. By this path we find our reason well founded, and we argue with great ease. For our masters occupy and win beforehand as much room in our belief as they need in order to conclude afterward whatever they wish, in the manner of the geometricians with their axioms; the consent and approval that we lend them giving them the wherewithal to drag us left or right, and to spin us around at their will. Whoever is believed in his presuppositions, he is our master and our God; he will plant his foundations so broad and easy that by them he will be able to raise us, if he wants, up to the clouds.” (Montaigne, tr. Frame)