The Discussion as Joust: Parrhesia and Friendly Antagonism in Plutarch and Montaigne

Abstract

No single word in English language fully reflects polysemy of Greek term agon, which denotes entire gamut of struggles from combat to athletic contests. Antagonism, then, is defined less by origin or nature of its conflict than by mutual resistance implied by its etymology and its prefix. The term may thus be used to describe opposition not only between enemies, but between friends. It is just such a friendly antagonism that Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) describes in eighth chapter of Book Three of his Essays, Of art of (De l'art de conferer), proposing a markedly agonistic conception of discussion as a heated and even violent struggle between two parties (Pesty 119). This chapter and vigorous, yet well-intentioned and introspective give-andtake it prescribes have typically been regarded as a rejection of scholastic disputation and as a model for conversation in classical era in keeping with Pascal's description of Montaigne in l'esprit geometrique (Of Geometrical Mind) as the incomparable author of art of (357; trans. mine). (1) A number of critics, especially Vivien Thweatt, Richard Regosin, and Jules Brody, have noted Montaigne's frequent use of martial vocabulary and related it to chapter's central metaphor of discussion as a joust as well as to essayist's philosophical skepticism (Thweatt 110-12; Regosin 113-15; Brody 82). Yet, when considered in context of its preceding chapter, Of disadvantage of greatness (De l'incommodite de la grandeur; bk. 3, ch. 7), Of art of reveals its preoccupation with both friendship and politics, a preoccupation Montaigne shares with one of his principal ancient sources, Plutarch (46-120 CE). Along with Seneca, Plutarch ranks first and foremost among authors from which Montaigne learns to renger [ses] humeurs et [ses] conditions (arrange [his] humors and [his] ways; 413a; bk. 2, ch. 32; Frame 300). (2) Montaigne, unable to read Greek, read Plutarch in French translation of Jacques Amyot, to whom he gives palm over all other French writers (363a; bk. 2, ch. 4; Frame 262). He had a particular predilection for Plutarch's Moralia, mining them time and time again for exempla: Pierre Villey counts some 258 references to them in Essays (LXVII, n. 1). Nowhere is Montaigne's dialogue with Plutarch more palpable than in chapters 7-8 of Book Three, which may be read as a response to one of Moralia, How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend. Aside from Montaigne, this treatise enjoyed quite a prominent readership in Renaissance. Erasmus, for example, makes Flattery and Self-Love into twin handmaidens of Folly (18). The treatise's political relevance was not lost on Dutch humanist, either, as he produced a Latin translation of it in 1514 that would be included in edition of his Education of a Christian Prince two years later. In all, How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, while perhaps not as widely read as Cicero's De amicitia, constituted a locus classicus for friendship and flattery: in addition to Erasmus, both Bacon and Castiglione used it extensively (Achilleos 660). When considered as a source, Plutarch's treatise makes clear thematic unity of Montaigne's two chapters: Of disadvantage of greatness details how susceptible powerful men are to flattery and how rarely they benefit from sort of parrhesia (frankness/frank speech) prescribed in Of art of discussion. Parrhesia serves to define respective antagonisms of Plutarch and Montaigne, as well as to connect friendship with political discourse. By tracing parrhesia, antagonistic friendship, and metaphors used to convey them in Plutarch and Montaigne, present study will show how both authors arrive at what may be termed an ethics of antagonism with repercussions for both friendship and politics. It will also show how Montaigne translates Plutarch culturally in same way that Amyot translates him linguistically by adapting his friendly antagonism to political context of late sixteenth-century France. …