Review of Richard Sennett's new book Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Co-operation.
At the end of his life, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) inserted a question into an essay written many years before: "When I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me?" The question summed up Montaigne's long-held conviction that we can never really plumb the inner life of others, be they cats or human beings. Montaigne's cat can serve as an emblem for co-operation. My premise about co-operation is that we frequently don't understand what's passing in the hearts and minds of people with whom we have to work. Yet just as Montaigne kept playing with his enigmatic cat, so too a lack of mutual understanding shouldn't keep us from engaging with others; we want to get something done together.
Montaigne's emblematic, enigmatic cat lay at the heart of this project. What passes in the minds of those with whom we co-operate? Around this question Montaigne associated other aspects of practising co-operation: dialogic practices which are skilled, informal and empathic. Blaise Pascal singled out Montaigne as "the incomparable author of 'the art of conversation'". The "art" of conversing for Montaigne is in fact the skill of being a good listener; in one essay he likens the skilled listener to a detective. He detested what the philosopher Bernard Williams called the "fetish of assertion" on a speaker's part. Fierce assertion directly suppresses the listener, Montaigne says; the debater demands only assent. In his essay, he observes that, in society more largely, the declaration of a speaker's superior knowledge and authority arouses doubt in a listener about his or her own powers of judgment; the evil of passive submission follows from feeling cowed.
My favorite book from last year was How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Backwell and my confirmation bias from the book...
"Perhaps some of the credit for Montaigne's last answer should therefore go to his cat - a specific sixteenth century individual, who had a rather pleasant life on a country estate with a doting master and not to much competition for his attention. She was the one who, by wanting to play with Montaigne at an inconvenient moment, reminded him what what is was to be alive. They looked at each other, and just for moment, he leaped across the gap in order to see himself through her eyes. Out of that moment - and countless others like it - came his whole philosophy."
At the end of his life, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) inserted a question into an essay written many years before: "When I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me?" The question summed up Montaigne's long-held conviction that we can never really plumb the inner life of others, be they cats or human beings. Montaigne's cat can serve as an emblem for co-operation. My premise about co-operation is that we frequently don't understand what's passing in the hearts and minds of people with whom we have to work. Yet just as Montaigne kept playing with his enigmatic cat, so too a lack of mutual understanding shouldn't keep us from engaging with others; we want to get something done together.
Montaigne's emblematic, enigmatic cat lay at the heart of this project. What passes in the minds of those with whom we co-operate? Around this question Montaigne associated other aspects of practising co-operation: dialogic practices which are skilled, informal and empathic. Blaise Pascal singled out Montaigne as "the incomparable author of 'the art of conversation'". The "art" of conversing for Montaigne is in fact the skill of being a good listener; in one essay he likens the skilled listener to a detective. He detested what the philosopher Bernard Williams called the "fetish of assertion" on a speaker's part. Fierce assertion directly suppresses the listener, Montaigne says; the debater demands only assent. In his essay, he observes that, in society more largely, the declaration of a speaker's superior knowledge and authority arouses doubt in a listener about his or her own powers of judgment; the evil of passive submission follows from feeling cowed.
My favorite book from last year was How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Backwell and my confirmation bias from the book...
"Perhaps some of the credit for Montaigne's last answer should therefore go to his cat - a specific sixteenth century individual, who had a rather pleasant life on a country estate with a doting master and not to much competition for his attention. She was the one who, by wanting to play with Montaigne at an inconvenient moment, reminded him what what is was to be alive. They looked at each other, and just for moment, he leaped across the gap in order to see himself through her eyes. Out of that moment - and countless others like it - came his whole philosophy."
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