Michel de Montaigne was the most significant figure in the sixteenth-century revival of ancient scepticism. Not only was he the best writer and thinker of those who were interested in the ideas of the Academics and Pyrrhonians, but he was also the one who felt most fully the impact of the Pyrrhonian arguments of complete doubt and its relevance to the religious debates of the time. Montaigne was simultaneously a creature of the Renaissance and the Reformation. He was a thoroughgoing humanist, with a vast interest in, and concern with, the ideas and values of Greece and Rome and their application to the lives of men in the rapidly changing world of sixteenth-century France. He was alive, perhaps as no other contemporary, to the vital significance of the rediscovery and exploration of the “glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” as well as to the discovery and exploration of the New World. In both of these newly found worlds Montaigne discerned the relativity of man’s intellectual, cultural, and social achievements, a relativity that was to undermine the whole concept of the nature of man and his place in the moral cosmos.
Montaigne’s personal life was a microcosm of the religious macrocosm of his time, for he came from a family that was severely affected by the religious conflicts. He was educated in schools that were also greatly affected by these religious disagreements and the social-political world in which he functioned was undergoing enormous stresses because of the religious wars of the time between Catholics and Protestants.
Montaigne’s father, Pierre Eyquem de Montaigne, was a Catholic. His mother, Antoinette de Louppes, was a New Christian who had converted to Protestantism early in her life;1 she came from a prominent Spanish Jewish family that had fled in the late fifteenth century to southern France. Her great-grandfather was burned at the stake for his part in the assassination of the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain. The family settled in and around Toulouse, where Antoinette was born. Members of her family prospered in Toulouse and Bordeaux, and one of them became the business partner of Montaigne’s father in overseas commercial developments. Among his close maternal relatives was one Marco Lopez, who, we are told, was the person who introduced Lutheranism into the Netherlands. Another close cousin was Martin del Rio, an early French Jesuit.2
Pierre Eyquem was a man interested in the varying religious and theological currents of the age. He spent much time conversing with such figures as Pierre Bunel; he studied the writings of Raimond Sebond in his search for religious understanding and peace. He was very concerned to give his son Michel the best education. Starting from birth, he had him cared for by Latin-speaking attendants so that his native language would be Latin. Montaigne was sent to the Collège de Guyenne in 1539 when he was six years old and was there for the next seven years. The college had been founded a few years earlier by rich merchants of Bordeaux, including his father and some of the Portuguese New Christians who were developing overseas trade in the French port.3 The college reflected the religious tensions of the time. Two of its leaders were André de Gouvea and George Buchanan. The Gouvea family were Portuguese New Christians who fled Portugal after the 1506 riots when the Jewish quarter of Lisbon was destroyed. They settled in France and became leaders of the Collège de Sainte-Barbe in Paris. They hired George Buchanan, the Scottish Latin poet, as one of their principle teachers. (The college was a center for Iberian students as well as many others. Buchanan had among his students there Ignatius Loyola and the other early Jesuits, as well as John Calvin.)4 Gouvea and Buchanan were induced to move to the Collège de Guyenne, partly, perhaps, because of its freer intellectual atmosphere. Early Protestant ideas were being worked out there. The college also was a center for the children of Portuguese New Christians. Gouvea, who became its director, fitted in with this ambience, as did his friend Buchanan.5 A decade later they were induced by the king of Portugal to move on to the university at Coimbra, where the king hoped to develop a great international university with such illustrious stars from France.
In 1548 or 1549, shortly after the Portuguese Inquisition had begun seeking out backsliding heretics, especially among the New Christians, André de Gouvea and George Buchanan were arrested and charged with, among others things, “judaizing.” The Inquisition documents relating to Buchanan’s case were published over a century ago and provide some insight into the world in which this learned poet was operating. He had been accused of judaizing as a young man in Scotland because he was seen eating paschal lamb during Lent. People who knew him and Gouvea in Paris attested that they ate meat in Lent, that they knew how to get doctors to prescribe this diet as a treatment for illness, that they mocked Catholic ceremonies like the Eucharist and confession, and that they were associated with early Protestant movements. In the Inquisitional interrogation of Buchanan he was specifically asked if he had celebrated any Jewish observances and answered no.6 The charge of judaizing seems to have rested only on his eating meat during Lent and his negative views about Catholicism and Catholic practices. He and his cohorts were convicted of a series of Protestant crimes, which covered the initial charges of eating meat as well as everything else, and had to spend some time repenting in monasteries before they could get away from the Inquisition.7 It is not clear who instigated the charges against Buchanan and the others, but the suspicion then and thereafter is that it was the Jesuits, who had a deep antagonism toward Buchanan and Gouvea. After their conviction, the Jesuits managed to take over the University of Coimbra and made it into the bastion of Scholasticism for the next hundred years. Its renown was for the Coimbra Commentaries on Aristotle rather than the humanistic projects that might have originated from the original plan for the school. Buchanan left for France and Scotland and later became the teacher of James VI (who later became James I of England).
We can only speculate about what influence Montaigne’s teachers might have had on him. Montaigne makes a couple of mentions about Buchanan in his Essais and possessed some of Buchanan’s writings, which he thought very important.8 It is not clear whether they ever met after Montaigne left the school and Buchanan left for Portugal.9 They both lived and worked in the world in which Protestantism developed in France. Bordeaux was one of the centers of early Protestant thought, as was Toulouse, where Montaigne next studied. The university there was in ferment during this period. Heretical professors and students were being arrested and punished. The university was actually closed for a period to stop the dissemination of heresies, and many of the faculty members were dismissed, as well as a large body of the students. Among those present when Montaigne was there were Étienne Dolet and Miguel Servetus, the anti-Trinitarian. Montaigne studied law and then returned to Bordeaux. He was active in legal and political service, being a councilor to the king, an important advisor to the House of Navarre—the Protestant part of the Bourbon family—and to the parlement of Bordeaux. He was elected mayor of Bordeaux and served until he retired in the 1570s. He then settled in the family estate to contemplate and write his reflections on the turbulent world around him and on his own inner life. He wrote impressionistic and learned digressions, which he styled essays, on a very wide range of topics.
Montaigne and his father remained Catholic, while the rest of the immediate family were drawn into the early Protestant churches. At his father’s urging, he translated Raimond Sebond’s suspect work on natural theology.10 He also discussed theological developments with the great Jesuit Counter-Reformer Juan Maldonado, who was the first Jesuit to teach in Paris. During his journeys, Montaigne often stopped to talk with adherents of various religions and showed an eager interest in their views and practices,11 although, curiously, given his mother’s background, he showed very little interest in Judaism. He had personal connections and involvements with personages active in the warring religious camps. Whether he sided with one group or another we do not know, but he did become an apostle of toleration and was influential finally in the settlement made by Henri de Navarre when he became Henri IV and issued the Edict of Nantes, guaranteeing toleration to the Protestants.12
Many sides of Montaigne meet in his longest and most philosophical essay, “Apologie de Raimond Sebond,” that amazing product of his own personal crise pyrrhonienne. Although, as Frame has pointed out, Montaigne’s Pyrrhonism predates and postdates this essay,13 it serves as the logical focus of our attention. Villey, in his study of the sources and development of Montaigne’s Essais, has shown that a large part of the “Apologie” was written in 1575–76, when Montaigne, through studying the writings of Sextus Empiricus, was experiencing the extreme trauma of seeing his entire intellectual world dissolve into complete doubt.14 Slogans and phrases from Sextus were carved into the rafter beams of his study so that he could brood on them as he composed his “Apologie.”15 It was in this period that his motto, “Que sais-je?” was adopted.
The “Apologie” unfolds in Montaigne’s inimitable rambling style as a series of waves of scepticism, with occasional pauses to consider and digest various levels of doubt but with the overriding theme an advocacy of a new form of fideism—Catholic Pyrrhonism. The essay begins with a probably inaccurate account of how Montaigne came to read and translate the audacious work of the fifteenth-century theologian Raimond Sebond.16 Montaigne’s father had been given a copy of the Theologia naturalis by Pierre Bunel, who said it had saved him from Lutheranism, a malady, Montaigne added, which “would easily degenerate into an execrable atheism.”17 Years later the elder Montaigne found the book and asked his son to translate it into French. (Montaigne jokingly claimed the original was in Spanish with Latin endings.) Thus, Montaigne’s translation came into being.18
Thereafter, we are told, some of the readers of Sebond, especially the ladies, required some assistance in making out and accepting the message of the work, that all the articles of the Christian religion can be proven by natural reason. Two main sorts of objections had been raised, one that the Christian religion ought to be based on faith and not reason, and the other that Sebond’s reasons were not very sound or good. The first point allows Montaigne to develop his fideistic theme, and the second his scepticism. He first alleges to “defend” Sebond by expounding a theory of Christianity based exclusively on faith; second by showing, à la Pyrrho, that since all reasoning is unsound, Sebond should not be blamed for his errors.19
The initial statement of the fideistic message is peculiarly presented. In a rather backhanded manner, Montaigne excuses Sebond’s theological rationalism by saying that although he, Montaigne, is not versed in theology, it is his view that religion is based solely on faith given to us by the grace of God. Nevertheless, there is nothing wrong in using reason to buttress the faith, “but always with this reservation, not to think that it is on us that faith depends, or that our efforts and arguments can attain a knowledge so supernatural and divine.”20 This leads Montaigne to assert more forcefully that true religion can only be based on faith and that any human foundation for religion is too weak to support divine knowledge. This, in turn, leads to a digression on the weakness of present-day religion because it is based on human factors like custom and geographical location. “We are Christians by the same title that we are Perigordians or Germans.”21 But if we had the real light of faith, then human means, like the arguments of Sebond, might be of use. Thus, in order to “defend” Sebond’s thesis that the truths of faith can be demonstrated rationally, Montaigne first made pure faith the cornerstone of religion; then allowed Sebond’s efforts second-class status as aids after, but not before, the acceptance of God.
To answer the second charge, that Sebond’s arguments are so weak they can easily be overturned, Montaigne offered a variety of sceptical arguments.
The means I take to beat down this frenzy, and which seems fittest to me, is to crush and trample underfoot human arrogance and pride; to make them feel the inanity, the vanity and nothingness, of man; to wrest from their hands the puny weapons of their reason; to make them bow their heads and bite the ground beneath the authority and reverence of divine majesty. It is to this alone that knowledge and wisdom belong; it alone that can have some self-esteem, and from which we steal what we account and prize ourselves for.22
In order to excuse the weakness of Sebond’s reasoning, Montaigne set out to show that nobody else’s reasoning is any better and that no one can achieve any certainty by rational means.
After offering a few antirational sentiments from St. Paul, Montaigne began in earnest. Man thinks that he, unaided by Divine Light, can comprehend the cosmos. But he is only a vain, puny creature, whose ego makes him believe that he, and he alone, understands the world and that it was made and is run for his benefit. However, when we compare man with animals, we find he has no wonderful faculties that they lack and that his so-called rationality is just a form of animal behavior. To illustrate this, Montaigne chooses examples from Sextus Empiricus, such as that of the logical dog who, supposedly, worked out a disjunctive syllogism. Even religion, Montaigne says, is not exclusively a human possession but seems to exist among elephants, who appear to pray.23
The lengthy, demoralizing comparison of man and beasts was intended to create a sceptical attitude toward human intellectual pretensions. The glories of the animal kingdom are contrasted with the vanity, stupidity, and immorality of the human world. Montaigne says that our alleged achievements of reason have helped us to find not a better world than the animals have but a worse one. Our learning does not prevent us from being ruled by bodily functions and passions.
Our so-called wisdom is a snare and a presumption that accomplishes nothing for us. When we look at the entire biological kingdom and examine the lives of the animals and of man and then compare them with the boasts of the philosophers about man’s mental abilities, we cannot avoid being overwhelmed by the “comedy of the higher lunacy.” “The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.”24
Up to this point, Montaigne’s sceptical attack has been little more than the anti-intellectualism of Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly. The point is now made in terms of the rather disastrous (for the reader) comparison of men and beasts. (Anyone reading all of Montaigne’s evidence on this point is bound to be shaken, even if the efficacy of human reason has not actually been disproven.) Later the more philosophical development of his scepticism will follow a brief panegyric on ignorance and another advocacy of complete fideism. Wisdom (says Montaigne) has never been of any benefit to anyone, whereas Nature’s noblemen, the recently discovered residents of Brazil, “spent their life in admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without religion of any kind.”25 The Christian message is, according to Montaigne, to cultivate a similar ignorance in order to believe by faith alone.
The participation that we have in the knowledge of truth, whatever it may be, has not been acquired by our own powers. God has taught us that clearly enough by the witnesses that he has chosen from the common people, simple and ignorant, to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring, it is a pure present of another’s liberality. It is not by reasoning or by our understanding that we have received our religion; it is by external authority and command. The weakness of our judgment helps us more in this than its strength, and our blindness more than our clearsightedness. It is by the mediation of our ignorance more than of our knowledge that we are learned with that divine learning. It is no wonder if our natural and earthly powers cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge; let us bring to it nothing of our own but obedience and submission.26
In support of this complete fideism, Montaigne gave what was to be the favorite Scriptural text of the nouveaux pyrrhoniens, St. Paul’s declamation in 1 Corinthians 1:19–21: “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
Montaigne presented the text of St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians as a summary of the scepticism he was developing. Up until the point where St. Paul’s text is introduced, Montaigne primarily offered arguments and observations from Sextus Empiricus, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, and Lucretius as reasons for doubting. After the Pauline passage he went on presenting some of the most forceful parts of the ancient sceptical attack on human knowledge. Frédéric Brahami has offered an interpretation of Montaigne’s scepticism that centers on the Pauline text. He sees Montaigne as advancing scepticism about human knowledge based on divine omnipotence and the inability of man to know God directly.27 (Another approach to evaluating the scepticism of Montaigne, as well as Pascal and La Mothe Le Vayer, appears in a book just published by Sylvia Giocanti. She takes a quite different approach from my own and is less interested in the historical setting of the people who write on scepticism than in examining the concept itself and measuring people accordingly. I have not had time to study her work; it may be another productive way of looking at the material.)28
Montaigne definitely made the Pauline text a central theme for modern sceptics for the next couple of centuries. But, at the same time, for Montaigne and his followers, it was always the massive weight of Pyrrhonian and Academic arguments and observations that led one to appreciate and understand what St. Paul had said. I think one has to carefully differentiate the kind of scepticism that did in fact generate from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth by theologians exploring the paradoxes that flow from trying to understand divine omnipotence, to the very mundane scepticism that results from revitalizing the arguments in Sextus and Cicero, starting with Jean de Miracourt and some Scotists at Oxford, who explored what would ensue if God, who is all powerful, could be a deceiver. This tradition was carried on in the late Middle Ages by Gabriel Biel and Gregory of Rimini. The sceptical outcome of this exploration of divine omnipotence resulted from the logic of the concepts involved and not from an appeal to the weakness of human senses or intellect. This is a scepticism based on the highest reaches of heaven and not on the lowest, meanest conditions of human nature. In a paper I gave in 1996 at the memorial conference for Amos Funkenstein I sought to delineate these two types of scepticism—theological and Pyrrhonian.29 Funkenstein, who was a great expert on the consequences of the paradoxes of divine omnipotence, traced one kind of scepticism from medieval times into the seventeenth century. I sought to show that this was completely different from what resulted from taking ancient Greek and Roman scepticism seriously: namely, exposing the frailty of human capacity to gain any unquestionable knowledge, either through the senses or through reason.
I think Montaigne did not really go into the camp of those basing their scepticism on divine omnipotence but just saw the passage in St. Paul as bearing some resemblance to the outcome of what complete scepticism would lead to. Montaigne does not cite any of the medieval or late medieval theologians and does not seem to have known about them. They are mentioned by Father Marin Mersenne in his comments on Descartes, but Montaigne and his followers do not cite any of the exciting medieval theological texts. I think that Montaigne’s use of St. Paul is of some significance in that he is putting the outcome of Pyrrhonian criticism in a biblical mode. This was sufficiently exciting so that one can say that a kind of Christian Pyrrhonism emerged that was to recur in European thinkers at least up to the time of Kierkegaard. But all of them, including Kierkegaard, made their main appeal to the weakness of human nature and not to theological properties of God.
Montaigne raised his second group of sceptical arguments, which comprise a description and a defense of Pyrrhonism with an explanation of its value for religion. Pyrrhonism is first distinguished from the negative dogmatism of Academic scepticism: The Pyrrhonists doubt and suspend judgment on all propositions, even that all is doubt. They oppose any assertion whatsoever, and their opposition, if successful, shows the opponent’s ignorance; if unsuccessful, their own ignorance. In this state of complete doubt, the Pyrrhonists live according to nature and custom.30 This attitude Montaigne found to be both the finest of human achievements and the most compatible with religion.
There is nothing in man’s invention that has so much verisimilitude and usefulness. It presents man naked and empty, acknowledging his natural weakness, fit to receive from above some outside power; stripped of human knowledge, and all the more apt to lodge divine knowledge in himself, annihilating his judgment to make more room for faith; neither disbelieving nor setting up any doctrine against the common observances; humble, obedient, teachable, zealous; a sworn enemy of heresy, and consequently free from the vain and irreligious opinions introduced by the false sects. He is a blank tablet prepared to take from the finger of God such forms as he shall be pleased to engrave on it.31
Not only had these ancient Pyrrhonists found the summit of human wisdom but also, as Montaigne and his disciples were to claim for the next century, they had supplied the best defense against the Reformation. Since the complete sceptic had no positive views, he could not have the wrong views. And since the Pyrrhonist accepted the laws and customs of his community, he would accept Catholicism. Finally, the complete sceptic was in the ideal state for receiving the Revelation, if God so willed. The marriage of the Cross of Christ and the doubts of Pyrrho was the perfect combination to provide the ideology of the French Counter-Reformation.
Montaigne then contrasted the magnificence of Pyrrhonism with the endless quarrels and irreligious views of the dogmatic philosophers of antiquity. In every field of intellectual inquiry, he found, philosophers have finally had to confess their ignorance, or inability to come to any definite and definitive conclusion. Even in logic, paradoxes like that of “The Liar” undermine our confidence.32 Still worse, even the Pyrrhonists become lost in the morass of human intellectual undertakings, for if they assert, as the conclusion of this survey of opinions, that they doubt, they have asserted something positive that conflicts with their doubts. (The fault, Montaigne suggested, lies in the character of our language, which is assertive. What the Pyrrhonists need is a negative language in which to state their doubts, without overstating them.)33
When one looks over the sad history of the efforts of the philosophers in all the various areas of their interests, one can only conclude, says Montaigne, that “indeed philosophy is but sophisticated poetry.”34 All that philosophers present in their theories are human inventions. Nobody ever discovers what actually happens in nature. Instead, some traditional opinions are accepted as explanations of various events and accepted as authoritative, unquestionable principles. If one asks about the principles themselves, one is told there is no arguing with people who deny first principles. But, Montaigne insists, “now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest—beginning, middle, and end—is nothing but dreams and smoke.”35
At this point, Montaigne is now ready for the philosophical heart of the matter, the Pyrrhonian evidence that all is in doubt. Those who contend that human reason is able to know and to understand things will have to show us how this is possible. If they appeal to our experience they will have to show what it is we experience, and also that we actually experience the things we think we experience.36 But these dogmatists cannot tell us, for example, what heat or any other quality is and in what its real nature consists. And, most crucial of all, they cannot determine what the essence of our rational faculty may be. The experts all disagree on this matter, as to both what it is and where it is.37 “By this variety and instability of opinions they lead us as by the hand, tacitly, to this conclusion of their inconclusiveness…. They do not want openly to profess ignorance and the imbecility of human reason, so as not to frighten the children; but they reveal it to us clearly enough under the guise of a muddled and inconsistent knowledge.”38 Our sole basis for understanding ourselves is through God’s Revelation, “all that we see without the lamp of his grace, is only vanity and folly.”39 We are surely not the measures of ourselves nor anything else.
The Academics, in the face of this, try to maintain that although we cannot know the truth about ourselves or other things, we can assert that some judgments are more probable than others. Here, Montaigne insists, “the position of the Pyrrhonians is bolder and at the same time more plausible.”40 If we could even recognize the appearance of truth, or the greater probability of one judgment than another, then we should be able to reach some general agreement about what a particular thing is like, or probably like. But with each change in ourselves, we change our judgments, and there is always disagreement either with ourselves or each other. Montaigne appeals, in the style of the tropes of Sextus, to the endless variations in judgments, adding in his fideistic leitmotif: “The things that come to us from heaven have alone the right and authority for persuasion, alone the stamp of truth; which also we do not see with our own eyes, or receive by our own means.”41 Our own powers, Montaigne shows, change with our bodily and emotional conditions, so that what we judge true at one moment we see as false or dubious at another. In light of this, all we can do is accept the Pyrrhonian conservatism; that is, live with the laws and customs of our own society. “And since I am not capable of choosing, I accept other people’s choice and stay in the position where God put me. Otherwise I could not keep myself from rolling about incessantly. Thus I have, by the grace of God, kept myself intact, without agitation or disturbance of conscience, in the ancient beliefs of our religion, in the midst of so many sects and divisions that our century has produced.”42 When we look at the scientific achievements of man, we see the same diversity of opinions, the same inability to discover any truth. The Ptolemaic astronomers believed the heavens moved around the Earth, but Cleanthes or Nicetas, and now Copernicus, claim the Earth moves. How can we tell who is right? And, perhaps, a millennium hence, another theory will be offered that will overthrow these.43 Before Aristotle’s principles were accepted, other theories were found satisfactory. Why should we then accept Aristotle as the final word on scientific matters? In medicine, Paracelsus argues that previous medical practitioners were actually killing people, but he may be just as bad. Even geometry, the allegedly certain science, has its difficulties, since we can produce geometrical demonstrations (apparently like those of Zeno) that conflict with experience.44 Recently the discoveries in the New World shake our faith in the laws offered about human behavior.
From this Montaigne went on to dwell on the theme of Sextus’ tenth trope, the variations in moral, legal, and religious behavior. Armed with evidence about the savages of America, the cases in ancient literature, and the mores of contemporary Europe, Montaigne drove home the message of ethical relativism.45
Then he drifted into a more theoretical aspect of the Pyrrhonian argument, the critique of sense knowledge, “the greatest foundation and proof of our ignorance.”46 All knowledge comes from the senses, which give us our most assured information, such as “fire warms.” But at the same time, there are certain fundamental difficulties in sense knowledge that can only cast us into complete doubt.
First, Montaigne asks, do we have all the requisite senses for obtaining true knowledge? We have no way of telling, and for all we know we are as far removed from accurately perceiving Nature as a blind man is from seeing colors. “We have formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five senses; but perhaps we needed the agreement of eight or ten senses, and their contribution, to perceive it certainly and in its essence.”47
But even if we happen to possess all the needed senses, there is a greater difficulty in that our senses are deceptive and uncertain in their operation. The various occurrences of illusions give us reason to distrust our senses. The effects of sense qualities on the passions indicate that we are too easily led to false or dubious opinions by the “force and vivacity” of sense experiences. Besides, our sense experience and our dream experience are so much alike that we can hardly tell which is which.48 Montaigne, then, rapidly presents the traditional Pyrrhonian case, that our sense experience differs from that of animals, that each individual’s experiences differ under different conditions, our senses differ with each other and with those of other people, and so on. Thus “it is no longer a miracle if we are told that we can admit that snow appears white to us, but that we cannot be responsible for proving that it is so of its essence and in truth; and with this starting point shaken, all the knowledge in the world necessarily goes by the board.”49
We find that by means of various instruments we can distort our sense experiences. Perhaps our senses also do this, and the qualities that we perceive are imposed upon objects, rather than really being in them. Our various states of health, waking, sleeping, and so on, seem to condition our experiences, so we have no way of telling which set corresponds to the real nature of things.
Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know what things are in truth; for nothing comes to us except falsified and altered by our senses. When the compass, the square, and the ruler are off, all the proportions drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are also necessarily imperfect and defective. The uncertainty of our senses makes everything they produce uncertain.50
The critique of sense knowledge leads to the crescendo of this symphony of doubt, the problem of the criterion. If our sense experiences vary so much, by what standards shall we judge which are veridical? We need some objective basis for judging, but how shall we determine objectivity? “To judge the appearances that we receive of objects, we would need a judicatory instrument; to verify this instrument, we need a demonstration; to verify the demonstration, an instrument: there we are in a circle.”51 Besides this circular problem of having to judge the judging instrument by what it judges, there is also a difficulty that will generate an infinite regress, in the search for a basis for knowledge. “Since the senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, it must be reason that does so. No reason can be established without another reason: there we go retreating back to infinity.”52
Thus, we can conclude that our ideas derive from our sense experience. Our sense experience does not show us what objects are like but only how they seem to us. To judge of objects by our ideas is a most dubious procedure. We can never tell if our ideas, or sense impressions, do or do not correspond to real objects. It is like trying to tell whether a portrait of Socrates constitutes a good likeness if we have never seen Socrates.
These successive waves of sceptical arguing lead, finally, to the realization that trying to know real being is like trying to clutch water. All that we can do in our present state is to go on in this uncertain world of appearances, unless God chooses to enlighten and help us. Only through the grace of God, and not through human effort, can we achieve any contact with Reality.53
In the course of all these wanderings, traversing so many levels and currents of doubt, Montaigne manages to introduce most of the major epistemological arguments of the ancient Pyrrhonists, albeit in a rather unsystematic fashion. Except for the critique of signs and inferences, practically all the gambits and analyses of Sextus Empiricus are touched on. Although most of the “Apologie” dwells on the foibles of mankind, their disagreements and variations, and the superiority of beasts to men, the culmination of the essay is the uncovering of the bottomless pit of complete doubt. The analysis of sense experience, the basis for any knowledge we might have, leads to the problem of the criterion, which leads in turn to a vicious circle or to an infinite regress. So that, finally, we realize that none of our views has any certain or reliable foundation and that our only course is to follow the ancient Pyrrhonists and suspend judgment. But, coupled with this rambling yet forceful unfolding of la crise pyrrhonienne, Montaigne constantly introduces his fideistic theme—complete doubt on the rational level, joined with a religion based on faith alone, given to us not by our own capacities but solely by God’s grace.54
The “Apologie” treats the three forms of the sceptical crisis that were to trouble the intellectuals of the early seventeenth century, finally extending the crisis from theology to all other areas of human endeavor. First Montaigne dwells on the theological crisis, pressing the problem of the rule of faith. Because of our rational inability to discover, or justify, a criterion of religious knowledge, he offers total scepticism as a “defense” of the Catholic rule of faith. Since we cannot tell by rational means which standard is the true one, we therefore remain in complete doubt and accept tradition; that is, we accept the Catholic rule of faith.
Second, Montaigne extends the humanistic crisis of knowledge, that type of doubt engendered by the rediscovery of the great variety of points of view of ancient thinkers. In light of this vast diversity of opinion, how can we possibly tell which theory is true? This sort of learned scepticism is made more persuasive by Montaigne not only by quoting ancient authors, as previous sceptics had done, but also by coupling the impact of the rediscovery of the ancient world with the discovery of the New World. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean another cultural universe existed, with different standards and ideals. On what basis could we ever judge whether the outlook of the noble savages was better or worse than our own? The message that the merits of all human opinions are relative to the cultures in which they have been produced was put forth by Montaigne as a new type of sceptical realization, one that was to have far-reaching effects even four centuries later.
The third, and most significant, sceptical crisis precipitated by Montaigne was the crisis of scientific knowledge. In an age when the whole scientific outlook of Aristotle was under attack, the extension of the religious and humanistic crises to the scientific world threatened to destroy the very possibility of any knowledge whatsoever. Montaigne’s last series of doubts, the most philosophical level of his Pyrrhonism, raised a whole series of problems, about the reliability of sense knowledge, the truth of first principles, the criterion of rational knowledge, our inability to know anything except appearances, and our lack of any certain evidence of the existence or nature of the real world. These problems, when seriously considered, undermined confidence in man’s ability to discover any science in Aristotle’s sense—truths about the world that are certain.
In spite of Busson’s claim that Montaigne’s total scepticism was not new but was just a repetition of his sixteenth-century predecessors,55 there is a crucial novelty in Montaigne’s presentation that makes it radically different from, and more important, than that of any other sixteenth-century sceptic. Unlike anti-intellectuals like Erasmus, Montaigne developed his doubts through reasoning. Unlike his sceptical predecessors, who presented mainly a series of reports on the variety of human opinions, Montaigne worked out his complete Pyrrhonism through a sequence of levels of doubt, culminating in some crucial philosophical difficulties. The rambling musings of the “Apologie” have a method in their madness, a method of increasing the fever of doubt until it destroys every possible stronghold of rational activity.56
The occurrence of Montaigne’s revitalization of the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, coming at a time when the intellectual world of the sixteenth century was collapsing, made the nouveau pyrrhonisme of Montaigne not the blind alley that historians like Copleston and Weber have portrayed it as being,57 but one of the crucial forces in the formation of modern thought. By extending the implicit sceptical tendencies of the Reformation crisis, the humanistic crisis, and the scientific crisis, into a total crise pyrrhonienne, Montaigne’s genial “Apologie” became the coup de grâce to an entire intellectual world. It was also to be the womb of modern thought, in that it led to the attempt either to refute the new Pyrrhonism or to find a way of living with it. Thus, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Montaigne was seen not as a transitional figure, or a man off the main roads of thought, but as the founder of an important intellectual movement that continued to plague philosophers in their quest for certainty.58
Before leaving Montaigne, a word must be said on the vexing problem of his intentions. In the course of the centuries in which he has played so major a role in the intellectual life of the modern world, probably second only to that of Erasmus, Montaigne has been read both as a total sceptic, doubting everything, even the religious tenets he pretended to defend, and more recently as a serious defender of the faith. (“Montaigne not a Christian! Is it possible that this has ever been said!”)59 It is not possible here to evaluate the evidence offered on both sides, but a few observations can be made that will be developed later in this study.
The fideism of Montaigne is compatible with either interpretation. Whether Montaigne was trying to undermine Christianity or defend it, he could have made the same non sequitur that he did—namely, because all is doubt, therefore one ought to accept Christianity on faith alone. Such a claim was made by Hume and Voltaire, apparently in bad faith, and by Pascal and Kierkegaard, apparently in good faith.60 The type of Christian Pyrrhonism presented by Montaigne and his disciples was taken by some Church leaders as the best of theology and by others as rank atheism.61
I believe that all we can do, in evaluating the alleged fideists, is to make a probable guess, based on their character and activities, as to their sincerity. The present-day scholars who find the Christian Pyrrhonism of the seventeenth-century libertins fraudulent, while accepting Montaigne’s as authentic, have a difficult problem. The views of all concerned are almost identical. The personalities, as well as one can fathom them at this range, seem capable of both a religious and nonreligious interpretation. My own view is that, at best, Montaigne was probably mildly religious. His attitude appears to be more that of indifference or unexcited acceptance, without any serious religious experience or involvement. He was opposed to fanaticism, primarily as displayed by the French Reformers, but at the same time he certainly seems to have lacked the spiritual qualities that characterized such great French Counter-Reformers as St. François de Sales, Cardinal Bérulle, or St. Vincent de Paul.62
Regardless of what personal convictions Montaigne may or may not have had, his writings were to play an enormous role in the intellectual world of the seventeenth century. The impact of Montaigne’s Pyrrhonism occurred both directly, through the influence of the Essais, which were very widely read and reprinted in the years immediately after their initial publication,63 and also through the more didactic presentations of Montaigne’s disciples Father Pierre Charron and Jean-Pierre Camus, bishop of Bellay.
Pierre Charron is a neglected figure in the development of modern philosophy, neglected because neither his thought nor his style rose to the heights of that of his mentor, Montaigne, and because of his reputation for libertinism. But in his day, and in the half century after his death, Charron had an influence at least as great as his master’s in furthering the break with tradition and in forming the ideology of both the libertinage érudit and the French Counter-Reformation. Because he was a professional theologian, Charron was able to connect the scepticism of Montaigne more systematically with the main antirational currents in Christian thought, thereby providing a more thoroughgoing Christian Pyrrhonism by uniting the doubts of Pyrrho with the negative theology of the mystics. Also, since Charron was a learned doctor, he could present the case for the new Pyrrhonism in a way in which it could be studied by those trained in the Schools, rather than in the more rambling and, for its day, more esoteric method of the French Socrates.
Pierre Charron was born in Paris in 1541, one of twenty-five children. Somehow, he managed to attend the University of Paris, where he studied Greek, Latin, and philosophy. After this, he went to Orléans and Bourges to study law, and received the degree of doctor of law. He practiced in Paris for a few years, apparently unsuccessfully, since he had no connections at court. He then turned to theology and became most renowned as a preacher and as a theologian. Queen Marguerite chose him to be her predicateur ordinaire, and Henri IV, even before his conversion to Catholicism, often attended his sermons. Charron’s career consisted of his being théogal of Bazas, Acqs, Leictoure, Agen, Cahors, and Condom and chanoine and écolâtre of the church of Bordeaux. In spite of his immense success, he wished to give up worldly pursuits and retire to a cloister. However, being fortyeight, he was turned down by two orders because of his age and was advised to remain in the secular world. In 1589, for better or for worse, after his failure to gain admittance to a cloister, the most important event of Charron’s life occurred, his meeting with Michel de Montaigne.64 During the remaining three years of Montaigne’s life, Charron studied and conversed with him, adopting the sceptical insights of the French Socrates as his own. Montaigne found in the preacher an ideal intellectual heir and left him a large worldly and spiritual legacy, as well as adopting him as his son. (While Montaigne was alive, the sole gift that we know he gave to Charron was a heretical work, the catechism of the extremely liberal Reformer, Ochino.) After Montaigne’s death, Charron revealed the actual extent of his legacy by showing in his writings the magnificent union of scepticism and Catholicism.65
The principal source for the biographical information regarding Charron and his relations with Montaigne is the “Eloge” to his works published in 1606 after his death by Gabriel Michel de la Rochemaillet. Alfred Soman has raised serious questions about the accuracy of this account, in large measure because it cannot be checked. Montaigne never mentioned Charron in any document that survives, and Montaigne’s friends did not seem to know Charron. Besides the book Montaigne gave him, the only other solid evidence is that Charron left Montaigne’s sister and her husband a lot of money in his will. From reexamining the data, Soman argues that Charron was actually a middling theologian with no serious place in the world of letters. He could only get protection from an offbeat bishop, Claude Dormy, and his works only became significant in the 1620s. More data might help determine if the official version is correct or if Soman’s suggested revision is.66
Charron undertook two vast works after Montaigne had passed away. In 1594, at Bordeaux, his theological opus, Les Trois Véritez, appeared; it was an attack on atheists, pagans, Jews, Mohammedans, and, most of all, Calvinists. The bulk of it is an answer to the Reformer Duplessis-Mornay. The following year, after a rejoinder had come out, Charron published a much-expanded edition. The other work, his philosophical opus, La Sagesse, appeared in 1601; this book derives in great measure from Montaigne’s Essais. Charron died in 1603 while preparing a revised and slightly more moderate version of La Sagesse. A bitter battle was put up by his theological and philosophical opponents to prevent its being reissued, but nonetheless, in 1604, the enlarged edition appeared, to be followed by a great many printings in the early part of the seventeenth century.67
The Trois Véritez was intended primarily as a Counter-Reformation tract against Calvinism, but in order to set the stage for the main scene, Charron discussed the first truth, that God exists. Here, he presented a “Discourse on knowledge of God,” in which he linked Montaigne’s fideism to the tradition of the negative theologians. He argued that God’s nature and existence were unknowable because of “our weakness and the greatness of God.”68 The infinitude of God surpasses all possibility of knowledge, since to know is to define, to limit, and God is beyond all limitations. The greatest theologians and philosophers know neither more nor less concerning God than the humblest artisan.69 And, even if God were not infinite, the feebleness of man is such that we still could not know him. Very briefly, Charron mentioned some of the standard reasons, mainly drawn from the changing history of human opinions, that cast doubt on our ability to know anything natural or supernatural, and then declared: “O sorry and paltry that is man and all his knowledge, O foolish and mad presumption to think of knowing God.”70 The only possible way of knowing God is to know him negatively, knowing what he is not.71 Positively, “True knowledge of God is a complete ignorance of Him. To approach God is to be aware of the inaccessible light and to be absorbed by it.”72
Once having joined the negative theologian’s contention that God is unknowable because he is infinite to the sceptic’s claim that God is unknowable because of man’s inability to know anything, Charron employed this double-barreled fideism to attack the atheists.73 Their evidence that God does not exist rests on definitions of God, from which absurd conclusions are drawn. But their definitions are simply examples of human presumption, measuring God in human terms. Their conclusions are worthless, since the atheists cannot, and do not, know what they are talking about.74
The rest of the Trois Véritez is a typical Counter-Reformation tract in which Charron in his tedious fashion tried to show that one has to believe that God exists, that Christianity is the true religion, and that the Catholic Church is the true church. The argument is primarily negative, showing the unreasonableness of other views in light of historical evidence, such as miracles and prophecies. The chief negative attack is presented against the Calvinists, arguing that outside the Church no religious truth can be found, no reading of Scripture validated, and that only in accepting the Church’s authority can any unique rule of faith be found. The proposed alternatives of inner light and Scripture are denied; the former because it is private, unclear, and uncertain and the latter because the sense of Scripture is indefinite unless interpreted by the Church. Scripture is solely a set of words, whose true meaning can only be divined by a true judge, the Church.75 Charron concluded with an exhortation to the Schismatics, in which they were accused of “insupportable pride” and “too great presumption” for judging that the religious tradition of so many centuries is wrong and that another ought to replace it.76 In casting doubt on Catholicism, the Calvinists have the effrontery to make their own weak, miserable mental capacities the criterion of religious truth. Calvinism, according to Charron, is the most dangerous form of dogmatism in that it tries to make man the measure of the most important matters and insists that the human measuring rods must be preferred to all others. Man, without certitude supplied by the Church through its tradition and authority, will fall into complete doubt, because man’s own weaknesses, when unaided by other supports, naturally engender scepticism. Hence, by destroying the only solid foundation of religious truth that we have, the Calvinists make religion rest on human judgment, which is always dubious, and leave us with no certainty at all.77
The underlying theory of this Catholicism that is based only on complete scepticism is made much more explicit in Charron’s philosophical writing, La Sagesse, and his defense of it, le Petit Traicté de la Sagesse. The major theme here is that man is unable to discover any truth except by revelation, and in view of this, our moral life, except when guided by Divine Light, should be based on following nature. This treatise of Charron’s is little more than Montaigne’s “Apologie” in organized form. In so ordering it, Charron presented what was one of the first philosophical writings in a modern language. In addition, because it developed a theory of morality, apart from religious considerations, Charron’s work represents one of the important steps in the separation of ethics from religion as an independent philosophical discipline. Charron’s ethics was based on Stoic elements.
The argument of La Sagesse commences with the proposition that “the true knowledge and the true study of man is man”78 and that the understanding of man leads in a rather startling way to knowledge of God. Part of this type of selfknowledge comes from the examination of human capacities, first of all the senses, because the Schools teach that all knowledge comes to us by means of the senses. Charron, then, developed Montaigne’s critique of sense knowledge, showing that we may not have all the senses requisite for knowledge, that there are sense illusions, that our sense experiences vary with different conditions within us and in the external world. Hence we have no way of telling which sensations are veridical, and which are not; thus, we have no way of obtaining any certain information by means of the senses.79
Our rational faculties are also unreliable. (Most of Charron’s case is made out against Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, showing that if our reason has only sense information to work with, it is bound to be as unreliable as its source.) Also, even supposedly rational men disagree about everything; in fact, there is no judgment made by man that cannot be opposed by “good” reasons. We have no standards or criteria that enable us to distinguish truth from falsehood. We believe mainly by passion, or the force of majority pressure. In addition, the great rational minds have accomplished little besides justifying heretical opinions, or overthrowing previous views (as Copernicus and Paracelsus do). Thus, we might as well face the fact that for all our alleged rationality, we are just beasts, and not very impressive ones. Instead of looking for truth, we ought to accept Montaigne’s dictum, that “there are no first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them: all the rest is nothing but dreams and smoke.”80
In the second book of La Sagesse, Charron presented his discours de la méthode, the means for avoiding error and finding truth, if man’s mental capacities are so weak and unreliable. We should examine all questions freely and dispassionately; keep prejudice and emotions out of decisions; develop a universality of mind, and reject any and all solutions that are at all dubious.81 This sceptical attitude “is what gives more service to piety, religion and divine operation than anything else,”82 by teaching us to empty ourselves of all opinions, and to prepare our souls for God. When one applies the Charronian method of systematic doubt, until one has thoroughly cleansed the mind of all dubious opinions, then he can present himself “blank, naked and ready” before God.83 At this point the Revelation can be received to be accepted on faith alone. The advantage of this Pyrrhonian training is that “an Academic or a Pyrrhonian will never be a heretic.”84 Since the effect of the method of doubt is the removal of all opinions, the practitioner cannot have the wrong opinions. The only views he might have are those that God chooses to impose on him. (If someone suggests that besides having no unorthodox views, the Charronian Pyrrhonist might well have no views at all and end up an indifferent rather than a Christian, Charron answered that it was not a matter of choice; God, if he pleased, would force the decision.)85
The sceptical sage, having purged himself of all opinions, lives, apart from God’s commands, by a morale provisoire, by living according to nature. This natural morality makes one a noble savage but cannot make one a perfect human being. The grace of God is necessary to achieve complete virtue. But, short of this aid, the best we can do in our ignorance is to reject all supposed knowledge and follow nature. This program, though insufficient to give us salvation, at least prepares us for divine aid. And, until such assistance is given, we do the best we can by being sceptical and natural.86
Thus, according to Charron, Pyrrhonism provides the intellectual basis for fideism. The realization of the inability of man to know anything with certainty by the use of his own faculties rids one of any false or doubtful views. Then, unlike the Cartesian cogito, which is discovered in one’s mind and overturns all uncertainty, the act of grace provides the sole basis for assured knowledge. As long as God is active, supplying the revealed truth, man is safe in his total natural ignorance. One can toss away all rational supports in the quest for certainty and await those from heaven. If one accepts, as Charron apparently did, the view that God, through the Catholic Church, supplies a continuous revelation, one can undermine any evidence or standards employed to justify a rule of faith, and never lose the faith.87
Maryanne C. Horowitz has challenged my interpretation of Charron’s view of the source of wisdom.88 She has insisted that a careful textual analysis shows that Charron was a Neo-Stoic. I think we would agree that Charron was very eclectic. He borrowed in large measure from Montaigne, but also from Du Vair and other classical and contemporary Stoics. Many of the writers of this period, as the late Julien Eymard D’Angers89 pointed out, used Stoic ideas and materials. Nonetheless, what was taken as the message and meaning of Charron was the Christian Pyrrhonism. (The evidence of why he changed certain passages does not indicate that he was trying to alter his views but that he was trying to get his book approved.)90
Charron’s complete Christian Pyrrhonism was taken, as I shall demonstrate shortly, as a two-edged sword. Many French Counter-Reform leaders saw it as an ideal philosophical basis for their position vis-à-vis the Calvinists.91 Others perceived an insidious corrosion of all belief, natural or supernatural, in Charron’s argument. Once led to doubt, the sceptic would continue to the point where he doubted everything, even the Christian truths, until he became a libertin and, a generation later, a Spinozist. Thus, the anti-Charronians could see his work only as the “breviary of the libertines.”92 This interpretation has been offered by Tullio Gregory in his Genèse de la raison classique de Charron à Descartes, where he portrays Charron as being at the beginning of a tradition that culminates in the mid–eighteenth century with the Theophrastus redivivus.93 Charron, himself, may have been a sincere fideist rather than “a secret atheist.”94 At least his long theological career and his pious Discours Chrétien suggest this. But whatever his own personal views may have been, Charron was to have an influence, second only to Montaigne’s, on both the avant-garde of seventeenth-century French intellectuals and the orthodox theologians of the time. Those who tried to denounce him in the early seventeenth century were to find that a most strange alliance of powerful defenders stood guard over the memory of Father Pierre Charron.95
Another early disciple of Montaigne was Jean-Pierre Camus (1584–1654), who became a doctor of law at eighteen, a priest a few years later, and the bishop of Bellay at twenty-five. He became the secretary of St. François de Sales and spent much of his life writing pastoral novels and attacking the monastic orders. His most philosophical work, Essay Sceptique, was written prior to his religious life when he was only nineteen. Although he was later embarrassed by its light tone, it contained his basic fideistic point of view. Even though he later came to condemn Montaigne’s style and literary form, he never gave up Montaigne’s ideas, and even defended his mentor against the charge of atheism.96
The Essay was written when “I was then fresh from the shop of Sextus Empiricus.”97 It is an attempt of a rather novel sort to bring about Pyrrhonian suspense of judgment in order to prepare one for the true faith. As Pierre Villey has pointed out, “The fear of Protestant rationalism is at the base of the scepticism of Camus.”98 Hence, by undermining human rational pretensions, he advanced a fideistic defense of Catholicism.
The presentation of the case for scepticism by Camus is unique, though, as he was the first to admit, the content “has been only a pure abridgement of Sextus Empiricus,” and the style is an imitation of Montaigne’s.99 Rather than rambling through the various themes of Pyrrhonian philosophy, as Montaigne did, or welding them into a battery of arguments, primarily against Aristotelianism, as Charron did, Camus created a vast structure of Hegelian thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The thesis is Academic scepticism—nothing can be known; the antithesis is dogmatism—something can be known; and the synthesis—“sceptical indifference,” the Pyrrhonian suspense of judgment.
Most of the work, three hundred pages of it, is devoted to the thesis. After a general attack on the bases of human knowledge, especially sense knowledge, using the familiar arguments of Sextus and Montaigne, Camus bombarded the individual citadels of dogmatism, the various sciences. Taking each science in turn, Camus tried to show that there are theoretical difficulties that make it impossible to obtain any certain knowledge, that there are insoluble practical problems, and sufficient reasons, in each case, for doubting that the science in question has any value. This wide-ranging discussion covers astronomy, physics, mathematics, logic, jurisprudence, astrology, politics, economics, history, poetry, grammar, and music, among other disciplines. (Once again Copernicus is introduced to show that even the most accepted first principles are denied by some people.)100 The material employed varies from arguments of Sextus, and anecdotes of Montaigne, to various observations culled from the contemporary sciences.
After developing the thesis, a half-hearted attempt is made in fifty pages to defend the antithesis, that is, to show that there is scientific knowledge. The previous battery of objections is admitted to be correct but not decisive. Some effort is made to explicate Aristotle’s theory of knowledge and his account of sense errors and illusions. The general theme is that even if the sciences are full of questionable claims, there are scientific truths that no sane man doubts; that fire is hot, that there is a world, that 2 + 2 = 4, and so on.101
Then Camus turned to the synthesis, Pyrrhonism, supposed to result from the two previous parts of his Essay. In twenty-five pages, he briefly sketched the nature of complete scepticism, and the basic arguments on which it is based—the problem of the criterion, the uncertainty of our senses, and the disagreements of the dogmatists. He showed the Pyrrhonian view on various sciences, and then said that he was not going to repeat all the detail from the first part, suggesting if one were interested, he read Sextus Empiricus.102 (A reissue of the 1569 edition had just appeared.)103
Throughout the Essay, a fideistic note is constantly sounded, declaring that faith without reason is best, since it is not erected on some shaky foundation that some new Archimedes may easily overthrow. The only truths men know are those it has pleased God to reveal to us, “all the rest is nothing but dreams, wind, smoke, opinion.”104 We ought to suspend judgment and accept the Revelation with humility. “The ancient faith” is our only basis; it cannot mislead us, for it comes from God. Those who refuse to accept this Catholic fideism, and try to develop a rational road to faith, produce only errors, heresies, and Reform theories. These are the fruits of man’s vain claim that his reason can find the truth. The solution to man’s problems is to develop the Pyrrhonian suspense of judgment, which brings us to God in that, recognizing our weakness, we are content to believe what God tells us.105
Though Camus was an important figure in the seventeenth century and his works were printed often, he does not seem to have had a great influence on the rising tide of Pyrrhonism of the time. He represents the orthodox acceptance of Christian Pyrrhonism, but his work played little or no role in la crise pyrrhonienne of the era. For it was Montaigne, Charron, and Sextus who undermined the assurances of the philosophers, who served as the inspiration and source for the sceptics, and about whom the battles against the sceptical menace took place. Even Bayle, always on the lookout for sceptical heroes, remembered Camus for his sallies against the monks rather than for his presentation of Pyrrhonism in the form of the Dialectic.106
The new Pyrrhonism of Montaigne and his disciples, dressed up in fideistic clothing, was to have tremendous repercussions in the intellectual world, in theology, in the sciences, and in the pseudosciences. I shall turn next to the indications of these influences, before examining the nouveaux pyrrhoniens in their glory, as the intellectual avant-garde of France.