[HN Gopher] Michel de Montaigne
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Michel de Montaigne
Author : perihelions
Score : 44 points
Date : 2023-05-23 12:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _I have gathered a posy of other men 's flowers, and nothing
| but the thread that binds them is mine own._ - MdM
|
| Montaigne knew how to play _The Glass Bead Game_.
|
| (and anticipated the Memex' associative trails with a low-tech
| implementation)
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Can you expand on this?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| http://worrydream.com/refs/Bush%20-%20As%20We%20May%20Think%.
| .. p.123
|
| > _The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the
| origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he
| is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior
| to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He
| has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his
| memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an
| interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next,
| in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the
| two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items.
| Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking
| it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a
| particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic
| properties of available materials had a great deal to do with
| the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him
| through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical
| constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own.
| Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of
| materials available to him._
|
| Montaigne incorporates classical material (by reference) into
| the personal trails of his essays. Like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millefiori beads, Glass Bead
| Game (Hesse) players incorporate old material into new
| contexts of their own devising...
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| It's illegal to do that in _The Glass Bead Game_ however, isn't
| it? If I remember correctly - it's been a decade since I read
| the book - that's one of the thing the magister ponders for a
| long time while a student at the monastery, how his own memory
| and experience colours his perception and how that's lost to
| the game. That's a part which stayed with me.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Huh... I'll have to re-read. (it's been 3+ decades for me)
|
| I had been recalling that the raw materiel (the "beads", see
| millefiori in neighbouring thread) was shared, part of the
| "extant literature" if you will, but that plays were supposed
| to be novel as well as good. (a bit like an LZ decompressor,
| where each additional bit of input both recalls something in
| the dictionary _and_ adds a new entry)
|
| I have been assuming it was the players' personal styles that
| provided the novelty, but upon reflection that could easily
| be my US background more than the source text speaking!
|
| Edit: come to think of it, maybe that's a valid criticism of
| the game _as played in Castalia_ -- that the castalians had
| become _too_ conventional, losing the playfulness of their
| play?
|
| (in possible relation, I was watching a national championship
| final over a decade ago with the mother of one of the
| contestants: she was very critical of her daughter, and
| correctly predicted the other would become champion. Why, I
| asked during the match? Her response: her daughter always
| came up with the classical textbook plays, whereas the the
| eventual champion knew how to exploit gambits: plays that
| were, on paper, weaker, but in practice, strong due to the
| element of surprise)
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Links have to be interesting but based on intrinsic quality
| of the linked elements and not the player experience as far
| as I remember but the rules are kept deliberately fuzzy in
| the book anyway. I don't think the game is ever played
| outside of Castalia. I'm not entirely sure to be honest
| with you.
|
| I do remember that Hesse description of how the past
| colours our experience of the present and his thoughts on
| both the nature of subjectivity and the place of
| spirituality made a strong impression on the young me at
| the time.
|
| I probably should read this book again. It seems like the
| time is right.
| melvinmelih wrote:
| His essay on "To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die" is probably one
| of my most favorite pieces of philosophical work, I think about
| it every other day: https://hyperessays.net/essays/to-
| philosophize-is-to-learn-t...
|
| > A friend of mine the other day turning over my tablets, found
| therein a memorandum of something I would have done after my
| decease, whereupon I told him, as it was really true, that though
| I was no more than a league's distance only from my own house,
| and merry and well, yet when that thing came into my head, I made
| haste to write it down there, because I was not certain to live
| till I came home. As a man that am eternally brooding over my own
| thoughts, and confine them to my own particular concerns, I am at
| all hours as well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death,
| whenever he shall come, can bring nothing along with him I did
| not expect long before. We should always, as near as we can, be
| booted and spurred, and ready to go, and, above all things, take
| care, at that time, to have no business with any one but one's
| self.
| ealhad wrote:
| Being French, I studied Montaigne in middle school (or high
| school, can't remember) - I did not expect to bump into him here.
| _Quelle bonne surprise !_
| bzhang255 wrote:
| I think his direct influence on English speakers has definitely
| dropped off a lot. I first learned about him from an essay
| Virginia Woolf wrote on him.
| ealhad wrote:
| Well I had never heard of Woolf before the age of 25, so
| there's that.
| dang wrote:
| Hmm - I found only one small previous thread about Montaigne:
|
| _Montaigne Fled the Plague, and Found Himself_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25261727 - Dec 2020 (4
| comments)
|
| maybe there were others?
| sherilm wrote:
| "Kings and philosophers shit--and so do ladies."
|
| "On the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon
| our arses."
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34365663
| francoismassot wrote:
| I'm very happy to see Montaigne on HN, there must be some
| affinities with the community here and I like that :)
|
| This is my favorite philosopher by far (I'm not saying that
| because I'm french!). Partly because his essays are not too
| "abstract" and this allows me to truly understand it, partly also
| because I found his essays still valid today.
|
| One little and unimportant anecdote I liked: his parents forced
| themselves and his tutor to speak only in latin when he was a
| child. Later, Montaigne thanked his parents a lot when he saw how
| others were struggling with this language.
| phronesis wrote:
| David Runciman did a great podcast about Montaigne last week:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/history-of-ideas-monta...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Montaigne is one of my favorites. Essays old enough that
| Shakespeare read them, but still totally approachable today (or,
| at least the translation I read was).
| pinewurst wrote:
| As an intro to Montaigne and his world, try the excellent "How to
| Live" by Sarah Bakewell
| ksenzee wrote:
| Interestingly, there still is no complete scholarly edition of
| the Essays, because he published three different versions during
| his lifetime (to stay ahead of copyright expiration), and he made
| so many additions and changes between editions that it's
| practically impossible to represent them all on paper. What we
| need is an online digital edition, and nobody's done that yet
| AFAIK.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > to stay ahead of copyright expiration
|
| Could you elaborate on that? I thought copyright was a much
| more recent idea.
| wazoox wrote:
| There is a "last edition", the so-called Bordeaux exemplary,
| with annotations from Montaigne's hand; then there is a later,
| posthumous edition which is the basis for most modern ones, but
| has been modified by his family on some important points (in
| particular politically or religiously sensitive ones).
|
| Arguably this "last edition" is the best one:
| https://www.puf.com/content/Les_Essais_Livres_I-III
|
| You can also go with "La Pleiade" version, however it's based
| upon the posthumous version, and in typical Pleiade's fashion,
| punctuation is altered/modernised from the ancient versions.
|
| I've read both and my advice is to go with the first, cheaper
| one :)
| efficax wrote:
| it's true that the Essays was published in three versions by
| Montaigne over his life but they did not have copyright
| regulations until much later (in the 18th century) and there
| are a number of critical and scholarly editions the Essays...
| briga wrote:
| My complete Penguin edition notes all the different changes
| between versions. It's rather ungainly to read though. The
| changes between versions are rarely that extensive, usually
| just some different phrasing here and there
| adasdasdas wrote:
| One of the OG skeptics, love Montaigne
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