Philosophy
Humanism
Stefan Zweig on Michel de Montaigne
Selected quotes from Montaigne, by Stefan Zweig. Michel de Montaigne (1500s) was a French Renaissance thinker who pioneered the personal essay. He wrote during a time when France was being torn apart by civil war between Catholicism and Protestantism. Periodic religious mobs rose, paranoia was rampant, and witch hunts happened on the regular.
The book was Zweig's last biography, and he projected his own situation onto Montaigne's as he fled the rising barbarism of Nazi Germany. Zweig saw Montaigne as proof that when the world goes mad, a person can refuse to go mad alongside it. During both times institutions broke down, free thinkers were under threat, reason fell to emotional contagion, violence was common, and extremism reigned.
Montaigne loved the dazzling advances in science and general human knowledge that flourished in the Renaissance, similarly the period preceding Zweig's age, the Industrial Revolution was also a time of great advancement. On the heels of both of these leaps forward, Zweig says:
"But always when the wave climbs too high and too quickly, it falls more violently, like a cataract.... instead of humanism, it was intolerance that spread." - Stefan Zweig
This makes me wonder if these periodic spasms of civil war and authoritarianism is the result of the shadow stemming from rapid shifts in culture. With the Information Age in mid-swing and accelerating, might it be that the reason we are sliding into fascism have its roots at least partly in this. People today are responding in similar ways to the stressors of "progress" extremism, failing systems, even violence just like both Montaigne and Zweig's time. Perhaps we are living through this age's crash...just with the internet.
"Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord. - Montaigne
After his study of Montaigne, Zweig boiled down what he had learned as a list of ways to liberate the self from the madness of the Nazi era. Since history seems to rhyme, save the last one, which seems to glorify taking one's life and the rejection of family life, they are a roadmap to freedom and internal resistance:
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To be free of vanity or pride, these perhaps the gravest of all indulgences.
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To guard oneself from presumption.
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To free oneself from fear and hope, belief and superstition.
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To be free of convictions and parties.
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To be free of customs: (direct from Montaigne) "Custom clouds the true face of things."
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To free oneself of ambitions and all forms of avarice: (direct from Montaigne) "Thirst for glory os the most futile of all, the most valueless and bogus currency known to man."
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To be free of family and familiar surroundings.
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To be free of fanaticism: (direct from Montaigne) "Each country imagines it alone has the perfect religion." To be free of possessiveness, the urge to stand at the summit of all things. To stand free before Fate. We are her masters. We lend things their color and expression.
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And the last freedom: in the face of death, life hangs on the will of others, but death is our own will: The most voluntary death is the most beautiful." - both Zweig and Montaigne
Stoic Philosophy
"Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It's not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them and." - Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 12.5
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How many of us wander through life aimlessly only to wake up at forty and wonder where our lives went? Why we didn't do the things we always wanted to do? In therapy practice we always develop a treatment plan with our patients because keeping an end goal in mind is necessary for change. Having that goal is no guarantee we reach it, but NOT having a goal in mind guarantees you won't. To have a cause or purpose or goal is the ruler against you can measure the progress of your life, how you know what to do every day instead of wasting time scrolling or sitting on the couch.
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For me, that purpose has been helping people, communities, and society overcome addictions, and uncover the values and vital life underneath. Whether that is my day job in County government or the books I write, they are all aimed at that purpose.