A review by rogankeira
How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing by Michel de Montaigne

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

This is a collection of six essays by Michel de Montaigne, five only a few pages each and one considerably longer. Although some were more interesting to me personally than others, all were masterfully written and the sheer number of highlights and tabs that litter my copy require me to give this 5 stars (considering that I was reading this for no reason beyond my own pleasure and therefore in no way required to make such efforts to mark so very many passages). Please bear with my long review, I wanted to take the time to talk about each essay individually - something I will be unable to do with the longer collection of his essays that I will hopefully be getting to in the near future.

How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing

The titular essay explores how multiple feelings can exist about the same thing within the same person without either being false or invalid. 

Although diverse emotions may shake [our souls], there is one which must remain in possession of the field; nevertheless, its victory is not so complete but that the weaker ones do not sometimes regain lost ground... No one characteristic clasps us purely and universally in its embrace.

This essay also includes perhaps the most relatable and funniest passage in the whole book:

If only talking to oneself did not look mad, no day would go by without my being heard growling to myself, against myself, 'You silly shit!' Yet I do not intend that to be a definition of me. 

I do, in fact, talk to myself, although I try to treat myself with a bit more care. Still, perhaps it's the 12-year-old humour that lives deep inside me (which of course finds swearing in an otherwise serious classic hilarious) or the intense relatability across 500 years of time, but this passage sold me on the book, the author and boosted it to 5 stars (barring egregious faults in later pages and helped by the general excellence of the writing).

On conscience

Montaigne's thoughts on conscience as a 'sense of our individual consciousness of right and wrong or of our own guilt or rectitude' (from the translator's note). This essay was particularly interesting as a kind of study of 'hot' issues of Montaigne's time, as it is linked to discussions of the justifiability (or lack thereof) of torture as a method of investigation, advocates of which argued that "conscience can fill us with fear, but she can also fill us with assurance and confidence", thereby allowing an innocent man to withstand torture. 

As Montaigne rightfully points out,

"The man who can endure [torture] hides the truth: so does he who cannot."

Torture can easily lead to false confessions, for:

"If a man who has not done what he is accused of is able to support such torment, why should a man who has done it be unable to support it, when so beautiful a reward as life itself is offered him?

Fortune is often found in Reason's train

Apparently, Montaigne was very interested in the concept of 'fortune' as separate from 'providence', which the translator tells us was not popular with the Roman censor despite being an age-old concept. Although this was one of my less-preferred essays (still a solid 3.5/4) as it was quite short and did not seem to provide much food for thought - although this may just be because of my own reference for the concept being in line with Montaigne's already. 

On punishing cowardice

In truth it is reasonable that we should make a difference between defects due to our weakness and those due to our wickedness.

Another interesting essay from a social-historical perspective, as it deals with an issue that would have been of great relevance during periods of war at the time: the punishment of 'cowards', whether individual soldiers or great commanders who surrendered or fled a battle. Montaigne presents a nuanced argument and I also enjoyed how he connected it with ideas of conscience and the punishment of 'heretics'.

Wherever there is a case of ignorance so crass and of cowardice so flagrant as to surpass any norm, that should be an adequate reason for accepting them as proof of wickedness and malice, to be punished as such.

On the vanity of words

Despite being a master of language himself, Montaigne 'despised words and admired deeds or "matter"' (translator's note). In this regard, and in many others actually as well, Montaigne reminds me a bit of ancient Chinese philosophers, in this case, particularly of Daoists such as Laozi who bemoaned the shortcomings of the word whilst producing writings to last millennia. 

This essay also contains interesting and relevant arguments for our day on the use of rhetoric to stir up and deceive the public; the appearance of great orators is concurrent with times of chaos. There were also some interesting comments on the types of political systems where this occurs (democracies being more susceptible than monarchies, although perhaps not for the kind of pious reasons you might expect). 

Montaigne's complaint about the assignment of titles and accolades to great compared to the roles and deeds of those who hold them in compared to what they meant in times gone by also reminded me a lot of Confucian idealism of the Zhou dynasty and the concept of the 'rectification of names'. 

To philosophize is to learn how to die

Death does not concern you, dead or alive; alive, because you are: dead, because you are no more.

By far the longest essay, Montaigne offers his defence for how to deal with the concept of death. It is not only a philosophical essay but also quite practical in its approach and in its concerns. I was pleasantly surprised at his argument (parts of which I deeply agree with) and I will not spoil it here as I truly think it worth a read. If I am to give one hint at his thoughts, I will leave you with the following quote:

We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere.

To understand how such a belief and practice would not necessitate a downward spiral into paranoia and mental ill-health, read the essay.