Who then is the .
enforcer, "him who performs"? It could either mean a police force commanded by the .
authority, or it could mean any person under the rule of the authority who obeys the law. .
I favour the latter interpretation. Police forces exist only in a state, and Montaigne's quote .
does not only refer to laws in a state. A general, for example, may order his troops to go .
into battle, and in this situation it is everyone under the general's authority who enforce .
the general's "law". I interpret "enforcer" to mean the people themselves. .
.
The word "impute" often has negative connotations, that of naming someone .
responsible for something that has gone wrong, but I would argue that Montaigne meant .
this word to be interpreted both negatively and positively, since good laws may also be .
"enforced by command". "Perform" should not be interpreted by its literal definition .
because many laws and commands are imposed to prevent actions from being performed. .
Rather, this should be interpreted to mean "to comply with". Now that the sentence has .
been so reduced, its meaning as I interpret it is: responsibility for any law (and whatever .
results from the enforcement of that law) is given more to the authority who sets down the .
law and commands obedience than to the people who follow its commands. .
.
This quote is a comment on the way in which people perceive not only the law, .
but history itself. The laws of a nation determine a large part of its history. It is not meant .
to say that the authority which created the law is responsible for it, but that responsibility .
for the law is attributed to the authority by the people, and this suggests to me that .
Montaigne considered this common perception to be false. This is indeed the way people .
today perceive both negative and positive historical events. For example, who do we .
usually blame today for the atrocities which occurred in Nazi Germany during WWII? In .
It is rare that an author write an entire novel about himself the way that Michel de Montaigne wrote "The Essays: A Selection." ... This is the "defining feature of Montaigne's philosophy." ... Montaigne states, "The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live yourself," (Montaigne, 102). This belief comes from Montaigne's essay on solitude. ... "For every foot its proper shoe," (Montaigne, 366). ...
"They chose one general characteristic, and go and arrange and interpret all a man's actions to fit their picture: and if they cannot twist them enough, they go and set them down to dissimulation." (1943) A quote from the essay: "Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions", where Michel DE Montaigne argument that man attempts to label one another on a single action or attribute and that we are not that simple and yet more complex. ... Montaigne expresses this idea quite clearly with his opening statement: "Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when t...
This, however, in the age of Christian humanist thought, was challenged by two writers in particular, Francois Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne. ... Many will misinterpret Rabelais' and Montaigne's reference to authorities by calling them hypocritical. ... This is so because they both make an attempt to de-emphasize the role that authority has played in Europe in the sixteenth century. ... However, according to Montaigne, this knowledge must be specifically be critical knowledge. ... For both Montaigne and for Rabelais, avoiding blind acceptance of authority is of utmost importa...
Throughout the text, "Of Cannibals,"" by Michel de Montaigne, he suggests that the cannibals of South America take part in acts that are considered barbaric, but we must take into consideration the culture that considers these acts barbaric. Barbaric (adj) meaning cruel or extremely brutal and uncivilized or unsophisticated when compared to high developed citizens; may seem like the appropriate word to use when talking about "cannibals however," I'd argue along with Montaigne that "we may then call these people barbarous, in respect to the rules of reason: but not in respect to ourselves,...
Pope Leo X, whose true name was Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was born in Florence as the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici. ... Important Renaissance authors were Andrea Alciato, Ludovico Ariosto, Leonardo Bruni, Giovanni Boccaccio, Erasmus, Michel de Montaigne, Petrarch, Baldassare Castiglione, Coluccio Salutati, Francois Rabelais. ... Michel de Montaigne, who was French, wrote Essais, and studied law. ...
Nearly 70 years after Erasmus wrote about the importance of studying the classics and the Latin language, Erasmus" ideas were challenged by Michel de Montaigne, a French essayist and politician. In Montaigne's essay "Of Presumption," he criticized the educational system because it focused on becoming learned, rather than becoming "good and wise." ...
Therefore, the world of that time was characterized by great people who gave a great contribution to humanity, as Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, Thomas Moor, Miguel de Cervantes, Michel de Montaigne, Johannes Kleper, Niccolo Machiavelli to name a few. ... Shakespeare had not ceased to grow their readings among the most stressed of Montaigne. ...
"I take thee to be my lawful wedded [husband], to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto me, until death do us part." Traditional wedding vows are held sacred not only to the ones who pronounce them b...
