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"Neither the presence of absolute disagreement over fundamental moral values nor the existence of universal agreement concerning fundamental moral values (the existence of what Montaigne calls “natural laws”) has any implications with respect to the existence of an objective moral order. After all, there is nothing about the notion of an objective moral order that suggests that people cannot disagree about its nature. If an objective moral order exists, that means that there is something for people to disagree about, and perhaps, get wrong. In fact, it is the possibility of being wrong about what is truly “good” that fundamentally distinguishes metaphysical moral objectivism from metaphysical moral relativism. Moreover, while the presence of universal agreement concerning moral values might initially seem to suggest an objective moral order, Montaigne reminds us that such an inference from intersubjectivity to objectivity is invalid." (p.34)
"What is meant by an “objective moral order” ? Philosophers have of course appealed to this notion in various ways. Whereas Plato talked of “Forms” as the objective standards against which we measure moral beliefs, Aristotle referred to “nature” as his objective standard for how humans ought to order themselves morally and politically. In the medieval era, Christian philosophers commonly identified the objective moral order with God, while in the modern age it was sometimes identified with “reason.” In each case, whether the objective moral order is conceived of in terms of “Forms,” “nature,” “God,” or “reason,” the essential feature of the proposed order is its thoroughly objective nature, which entails that human beings can be and often are wrong about what the order amounts to, since its existence and nature remain independent of human beings’ conceptions of it.
Yet for Montaigne, the thoroughly objective nature of such an order is precisely what prevents us from determining its existence and content.
This comes out in the “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” where Montaigne discusses criticism of Sebond’s natural theology. Sebond believes that he can demonstrate the truth of the articles of the Catholic faith, while his secular critics distinguish themselves from their Christian counterparts on the grounds that their own beliefs are justified by reason rather than faith. Using the standard skeptical tropes found in Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Montaigne uncovers the presumption in the positions of both Sebond and his critics. He shows that Sebond fails to recognize that even if his arguments are valid, he cannot know that they are sound, that is, that his first principles accurately represent ultimate reality. Sebond’s secular critics, on the other hand, fail to recognize that in appealing to “reason,” they, like Sebond, are simply appealing to that which is self-evident to them. To treat one’s conception of “reason” as an objective standard for judgment, moral or otherwise, is to fail to be sufficiently self-critical according to Montaigne, who, in reply to those who take “reason” to be an objective standard for judgment, remarks: “I always call reason that semblance of intellect that each man fabricates in himself . . . of which, by its condition, there can be a hundred different contradictory ones about one and the same subject . . . an instrument of lead and of wax, stretchable, pliable, and adaptable to all biases and measures”." (pp.34-35)
"Reflection, on the other hand, counteracts the effects of habituation by making the familiar appear strange. That is, reflection allows us to take a step back from our habitual attitudes and judgments in order to gain critical distance from that which we take for granted. In the passage just cited, Montaigne suggests that one way of achieving this is by comparing what is customary in one’s own culture with different practices from other cultures, so that what seemed to be necessary and natural is now revealed as contingent." (p.37)
"Montaigne is reminding us that we are taught in childhood to judge things in particular ways, and when these judgments become habitual for us, we forget the fact that we are judging at all; it seems that the world “presents itself” to us, as though it were simply given rather than interpreted through the lens of these judgments. Such judgments are rightly called prejudices, insofar as they are based upon preconceived and unexamined beliefs. These judgments of custom lead us to believe that whatever is “off the hinges” of custom, whatever seems at odds with the “common notions we find in credit around us,” is “off the hinges of reason.”
Here, then, we find Montaigne clearly making a distinction between “custom” and “reason.” The question is how we are to characterize this distinction. We may be tempted to take the distinction to be between two normative standards. “Custom” would then denote culturally-specific standards of behavior, and “reason” would denote an objective or universal standard for behavior that somehow remains unconditioned by local customs. Yet it is exactly this sort of understanding of “reason” as a faculty that provides us with a standard of judgment unconditioned by custom or subjectivity that Montaigne attacks as confused in the “Apology.”." (p.38)
"It seems to me that Montaigne’s distinction between custom and reason is not between a standard that is culturally conditioned and a standard unconditioned by cultural prejudices, but between two modes of making judgments. On the one hand, there are what we might call “judgments of custom” or unreflective judgments made on the basis of habit alone, while, on the other hand, there are “judgments of reason” or self-conscious judgments made on the basis of thoughtful consideration and reflection, with recognition of the fact that they are not made from a perspective totally unconditioned by prejudice or presupposition. So, for example, when confronted with the cannibals of the “Apology,” the judgment of custom is that these are strange and immoral people, whereas the judgment of reason is that these are people to whom we appear strange, and whose cannibalism may in fact be the expression of a moral value that they share with us, though one which itself cannot be justified in any non-circular way." (pp.38-39)
"To refer things to “truth and reason” is to essay them, to question them and so become self-conscious of our relation to them." (pp.39-40)
"Montaigne’s moral judgment of the cannibals is not based upon his initial reaction to what is different about them, namely, their practice of eating human flesh, but rather it is based upon his recognition that they are guilty of something quite familiar to him: cruelty. Thus in this case the difference between judging “in respect to ourselves” and judging “in respect to the rules of reason” is the difference between judging according to the simple prejudice of “popular say” versus judging after having penetrated such prejudice in order to recognize the familiar that underlies a veneer of difference. Judgments of reason, then, are not distinguished from judgments of custom on the basis of their foundations—they are not founded upon principles that are themselves unconditioned by custom—but rather by the degree of self-consciousness and reflection that enter into them." (p.42)
"Whether or not the cannibals actually share the same fundamental values as the French, what the cannibals do is wrong. Such moral condemnation presupposes the existence of an objective moral order according to which both the cannibals and the French can be judged. Second, Montaigne talks of categorical duties. In “Of cruelty,” for example, he writes: “There is a certain respect, and a general duty of humanity, that attaches us not only to animals, who have life and feeling, but even to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and mercy and kindness to other creatures that may be capable of receiving it” (2.11.318, VS435). Such categorical obligations presuppose, again, the existence of an objective moral order that requires certain behaviors from human beings regardless of how those behaviors square with their own interests or beliefs. Third, Montaigne distinguishes between relative and absolute values, and criticizes others for failing to make that distinction. For instance, in “Of some verses of Virgil” he writes, “You are not afraid to offend the universal (universelles) and indubitable laws, and are proudly intent on your own laws, which are partial and fanciful ; and the more particular, uncertain, and contradicted they are, the more you devote your effort to them. The positive rules of your own invention possess and bind you, and the rules of your parish ; those of God and the world leave you untouched” (3.5.671, VS879). Again, in “Of the useful and the honorable,” he writes: “Justice in itself (La justice en soy), natural and universal, is regulated otherwise and more nobly than that other, special, national justice, constrained to the need of our governments” (3.1.604, VS796). Montaigne clearly believes, then, that there is an objective moral order and that he has some conception of what that order entails. Yet, we might ask, on what grounds does he hold such beliefs ?" (p.42)
"Montaigne rejects the notion that we can determine the nature of ultimate reality, which means that we cannot determine whether or not there in fact is an objective moral order, nor, if there is such an order, in what it consists. But then it seems that he has deprived himself of any grounds for his particular moral judgments and his belief in the very existence of moral truth, leaving himself open to the charge that his moral judgments, and their underlying commitment to the existence of an objective moral order, are what we might be tempted to call irrational beliefs or arbitrary personal commitments." (pp.42-43)
"There are at least two senses in which moral judgments can be considered irrational and two senses in which they can be considered arbitrary. First, a belief that has no justification might be considered irrational. Such is the case with Montaigne’s belief in an objective moral order. He cannot give any reasons for believing that there is such an order; for the nature of the order is such as to preclude the possibility of any such justification. When it comes to ultimate reality, Montaigne argues that we have no reasons for believing that our beliefs are true. Since we cannot claim to know anything about the object of our judgment, we cannot appeal to any objective evidence for making one judgment rather than another. Thus we cannot offer any justification or reasons for our beliefs about the existence of such an order. Were we forced to choose between objectivism and relativism, then, we would have no reason to choose objectivism over relativism or vice-versa. In this sense, our choice would be logically arbitrary. But of course we do not find ourselves in a position to choose between objectivism and relativism. Instead, we find ourselves with commitments one way or the other, none of which can be justified. Thus our commitments begin to appear to be brute facts about us as individuals rather than the products of rational investigation into the nature of reality. And consequently, they seem to be the merely fortuitous results of when we were born or how we were raised." (pp.43)
"Yet of course this does not mean that they are unequivocally irrational and arbitrary. For while from what we might call the “objective perspective,” no beliefs about moral truth are rational or non-arbitrary, when considering things from a subjective perspective, we can distinguish between moral beliefs that are irrational and/or arbitrary and those that are rational and non-arbitrary. For now we are looking at the relation between a belief and the person who holds that belief, rather than at the relation between the belief and its object. A belief is irrational in relation to its subject, that is, subjectively irrational, when it is inconsistent with the webs of belief that make that subject who he or she is. A subjectively irrational belief is one that, upon reflection, we realize we cannot hold in conjunction with the rest of our beliefs, and so we reject it. A subjectively arbitrary belief is one that, upon reflection, appears not only fortuitous, but adventitious. In other words, while it seems to me that all my moral beliefs may be fortuitous, some of them, upon reflection, come to appear adventitious, as though they have been merely inherited or imposed on me from without. I find that I cannot take ownership of these beliefs, and I begin to view them as though they do not really belong to me. Thus, through reflection, I come to recognize that I do not actually hold such beliefs after all." (p.44)
"In the Essais, Montaigne identifies the faculty of judgment as the faculty responsible for all thought and interpretation, both discursive and intuitive. Moreover, he identifies his thoughts with his very self, and so in a sense we can say that Montaigne’s Essais are the essays of himself. To essay oneself is to critically study oneself." (p.45)
"In the Discourse on Method, Descartes finds himself following a similar path to Montaigne, recognizing the great diversity of human customs and discovering that he is unable to demonstrate the truth of his own set of moral values. But whereas this does not seem to Montaigne to be any reason to give up those values, to Descartes, it would be irrational to maintain his belief in his pre-reflective values now that he knows that he cannot justify them. According to Descartes, “reason oblige[s] me to be irresolute in my beliefs.” And this is perfectly understandable, since Descartes is committed to his methodological principle “never to accept anything as true unless I recognized it to be certainly and evidently such: that is, carefully to avoid all precipitation and prejudgment, and to include nothing in my conclusions unless it presented itself so clearly and distinctly to my mind that there was no reason or occasion to doubt it.”16 But Montaigne is not committed to this principle, and so it is not inconsistent with his beliefs to maintain a belief in an objective moral order." (p.46)
-Christopher Edelman, "Montaigne's Moral Objectivism", Philosophy and Literature, Volume 35, Number 1, April 2011, pp. 32-50.
“Chez Montaigne, il n’y a pas de relativisme moral, la seule morale qu’il reconnaisse dépend des règles de la raison, universelle et naturelle ” -Nicola Panichi, Liens à renouer. Scepticisme, possibilité, imagination politique chez Montaigne, trans. Jean-Pierre Fauquier (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008, p. 465).
