Current Issue: Spring 2007 (Vol I)
On Plagiarism in Montaigne
In today’s world of almost unlimited access to vast amounts of information, citing one’s sources is essential. Readers cannot be expected to recognize the source of a quotation, much less the source of statistical data. Besides, intellectual property concerns make prospective authors overzealous in footnoting every idea—even a paraphrased idea—that is not their own. Yet in the 16th century this was not the case. The French essayist Michel de Montaigne was drawing upon a much smaller pool of authors, and he fully anticipated that his highly educated audience would be able to identify the origin of his thoughts without accusing him of literary theft. While modern authors often demonstrate the influence of their scholarly ancestors in subtler ways, such that we might identify ideas as “Nietzschean” or “Kantian,” Montaigne works direct quotations into his essays without ever drawing attention to them as such. Indeed, he often omits the reference altogether. In doing so, he is no different from other authors of the time period, including Luther, Descartes, Machiavelli, and Pascal, all of whom also quoted without ever identifying their sources (to the shame of modern readers who must rely upon the crutch of editorial notes). In contrast to his contemporaries, though, Montaigne sets himself the particular task of assimilating the ideas of others so well that he makes it seem to the unlearned reader that their work is actually his own. Today this might be called plagiarism. And yet our ultimate objective in writing remains essentially the same: to select and assimilate the best of the tradition in such a way that, without quoting, we can demonstrate that we stand meritoriously on the shoulders of our intellectual predecessors.
Montaigne, born in 1533, came from an upper-class family but worked as a lawyer until his retirement at the age of 38, at which point he began work on his voluminous collection of Essays (from the French essai, meaning “attempt”). Isolating himself in the tower of his chateau, he set out, as he put it in his preface to the reader, to write about himself. It is for this reason that his use of quotation is so powerful. Such an endeavor might not suggest incorporating the work of others, yet quotation abounds in Montaigne’s essays. He hearkens back to the classical tradition because he believes so strongly in the power of books and words to form and change the self. He writes in “Of Books”:
From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure from an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well.
For Montaigne, reading is about living. There is never an opportunity cost in his choice to read a book rather than to do something else. Today’s business professionals receive their information in abbreviated form, easily distilled and absorbed, meant to be put immediately into action rather than savored. While there is no danger of incurring the runaway horses of idle thoughts, what is lost is the enjoyment of reading. For Montaigne, pleasure comes first.
Yet Montaigne does not live idly. After experiencing and reflecting, he fulfills the action component of the modern Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s circle of praxis by composing his thoughts in written form. Writing is an action of forming the self. As theatrical acting is often considered to be a truer form of living, because the actor is consciously aware of following a script and embodying his created self, so composition is also truer living, because the writer is always conscious of representing what he views as his truest self. While our modern culture tosses around words as if it were an amateur juggler (making many cry out in desperation, “It’s all words, words, words!” as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina does shortly before she throws herself under a train), Montaigne assays to use the perfect word at all times, even if it means using the words of others. He acknowledges his overwhelming debt to the past geniuses of language in a way that is both reverential and personal.
Perhaps a less deliberate reason that Montaigne quotes so frequently is his famously poor memory. As Virginia Woolf observed, he could not read for more than an hour at a time, and he would often forget what he read as soon as he left the room. One explanation for his “plagiarism,” then, is that Montaigne used the words of others so that he would not forget them. While this is surely part of it, his essay “Of the Education of Children” outlines some other reasons. As opposed to institutionalization, Montaigne desires a “drawing out” that constitutes true education in the Socratic tradition of leading students to discover the truth for themselves. In the same way that Montaigne draws his readers into his autobiographical works so that they might discover themselves, so too should the ideal tutor encourage his student to sift through everything in order to appropriate it for himself. A lesson should not be learned by rote (after all, this was not Montaigne’s strong point), but rather by relating it to one’s life. In this way, Montaigne teaches us as Socrates did; for just as Socrates required his disciples to speak first before being addressed by the teacher, so too do we bring our initial thoughts and background knowledge to bear on Montaigne’s essays before setting out to read them.
Montaigne wants his students to internalize their lessons, and thus he advocates experiential education. Like Freire’s circle of praxis, which emphasizes action as the crucial, final component of education, the philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan posits a similar three-step structure to human knowing: experience, understanding, and judgment. For Lonergan, the final step, judging, is acting, and “to pass judgment independently of all experience is to set fact aside.” Thus Montaigne’s student must compare the lessons of his experience with the teachings of the classical authors he has learned. Seen in this light, Montaigne’s use of others’ words reflects the way in which he reconciles what they say with his own life. He can apply Lucan, Virgil, and Lucretius to the trivialities of existence because he recognizes that philosophy must be grounded in nature and thus that it must be able to account both for our highest experiences and our lowest bodily functions.
Of course, to Montaigne, books are a part of life. In writing his Essays, Montaigne understands the way that the experiences he has had with books have shaped him just as much as interactions with living people. The angst-ridden teenage protagonist of the now-notorious (and notoriously fictional) modern diary Go Ask Alice feels similarly, claiming, “Even now I’m not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I’ve gotten from books.” Montaigne shares with Alice, and with all human beings, the challenge of being oneself; yet for him, what we get from books becomes just as real as any other part of our lives. The things that happen to us, like the things we read, do not affect us unless we let them. They only become parts of ourselves when we react to them, process them, distill them in memory or in words. Experience alone is no teacher; we must create our own lessons from it.
Even with today’s hyper-concern for citing sources, there is an occasion in which we do not have to point to a source—namely, when we state a fact that everyone knows. Stating that the Civil War began in 1861 does not require a footnote; citing a renegade historian who believes that it began in 1860 does. While Montaigne expresses opinions that he expects everyone to recognize (again, causing us endless shame in our less [or at least differently] educated world), he never writes something off by claiming that, say, Horace believed it. While Montaigne’s use of the word perhaps, as Woolf notes, helps him “muffle up opinions which it would be highly impolitic to speak outright,” Montaigne uses others’ words outright without such a qualifier. And this is, quite simply, because Montaigne himself believes them. He never quotes to illustrate a point that he disagrees with; quotations are instead integrated seamlessly into his own words, expressing points in his argument that are perfectly continuous with what precedes and follows. The quotes are not just used to illustrate a point; they become an essential part of the point.
Such a concept is what makes the conclusion of his last essay, “Of Experience,” so powerful. The last words he writes are Horace’s—a prayer for health, soundness of mind, and the pleasure of music in his old age. The words become the time-spanning connection of the two writers: Montaigne becomes Horace and Horace becomes Montaigne, as the latter reincarnates his Latin counterpart’s words even as he himself prays that the words incarnate. The quote expresses Montaigne’s humility in the twilight of his life, but also a sense of triumph at assimilating Horace’s genius. He does not aspire inauthentically to imitate his intellectual hero, but rather to draw him into his own life, to weave him sagely into the fabric of his existence. In so mastering the ideas of the ancients, Montaigne’s own words freely follow. The trick is to make the words successful not just in composing a paper but also in the hazardous enterprise of composing one’s own life.
Robert Kubala is a sophomore in the school of Arts and Sciences majoring in Philosophy and Psychology. He is particularly interested in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and the meaning of humanities in the 21st century. Robert hopes to continue on to graduate school to study Philosophy.