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From Montaigne to Comenius: Philosophical and Pedagogical Issues at the Dawn of Modern Thought

100%

Llinas Begon J. L.

Acta Comeniana (International review of Comenius studies and early modern intellectual history)

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2007

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vol. 20-21

133-151

EN

The aim of this article is to establish a relationship between the philosophical and pedagogical ideas of Montaigne and Comenius in the context of the origins of modern thought. The article is divided into six parts. The first part is about Montaigne, who criticises the pedantry and schools of his time. Schools cannot educate men such as the great men of the past because they have lost the understanding that the most important aim of education is to inform judgment and understanding, To form sages and not only savants, Montaigne proposes an education based on three main axes. First, the comprehensive education of both the body and the mind; second, the rationalisation of the educational process; third, experience and history as resources to achieve this. The purpose is to form a man with a developed sense of judgment who knows how well to live and well to die. For this reason, we must pay attention to men and things, and not only to books and words. The second part is about Comenius. The final objective of education is to partake of divine beatitude to the extent that in knowing the world, we will find reflected in it the image of God. Comenius also criticizes the schools of his time. His purpose is to create schools based in nature, that is, in the work of God. The third part is about the differences between Montaigne and Comenius. For Montaigne education should be individual and private; for Comenius, all should be educated together in a school. For Montaigne, the result of education is the happiness of man in his terrestrial life; for Comenius, it is eternal life. In the former the misery of man stands out; in the latter, his dignity. To sum up, they are separated by their different concepts of religion. The fourth part aims to fill the gap between Montaigne and Comenius and focuses on the role of education in works by Pierre Charron, Tommaso Campanella, Francis Bacon, Johann Heinrich Alsted and Wolfgang Ratke. Comenius follows the similar route as these authors. He defends experience and scientific knowledge; the focus on things; the use of reason to guide our life; the need to reform the educational system and the language learning; the integration of manual arts into the system of knowledge; and, finally, the unity of knowledge. The fifth part is again a comparison between Montaigne and Comenius. They coincide in two aspects. The first is the vindication of things over words. They propose an open attitude towards the world, in opposition to a sad, fruitless and painful education. Experience plays a fundamental role, since things can only be learned by doing them. For both authors, nature is a guide. The other common aspect is self-reformation. For Comenius, education implies three degrees: self-knowledge, self-control, and an inclination towards God. Montaigne coincides at least with self-knowledge and self-control. Comenian wisdom is based on piety, on the fact that God is a model of perfection. For Montaigne, instead, man with his own abilities has to establish a criterion of goodness. Both authors, beyond their coincidences and differences, belong to one of the currents of modern thought that hopes to integrate man into the cosmos, that does not see the world as estranged from the self, that does not split body and soul. In a way, both authors are separated from the Cartesian current, which disassociates the human being in the interest of the mathematising nature. The last part continues with a comparison, but in the area of language teaching. For both authors, language is a tool for reason. Montaigne does not work on a method of teaching, but shares with Comenius the necessity for words to be linked with comprehension and judgement. Both authors represent two moments in the early era of modern thinking and share one of the basic ways of criticizing the excess of verbalization, and defending the idea that man is a being in the world. According to Montaigne, the defence of reason and human experience is to open one’s attitude towards the world and to have an education focusing on the formation and freedom of judgement. This implies a systematization of education starting from the natural order. Comenius comes closer to the scientific spirit of modernity; Montaigne to the independence of human action.

2

Myśl Michela de Montaigne’a a idea tolerancji

87%

Kwak J.

Kultura i Wartości

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2016

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issue 19

DE

Der Artikel beschäftigt sich mit dem Problem der Toleranz und deren Bedeutung in der sozialen Welt. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet der Versuch, auf den Entwurf von Michel Montaigne zurückzugreifen, einem der Wegbereiter der neuzeitlichen Wahrnehmung einschlägiger Problematik in der europäischen Kultur. Berücksichtigt wurde der historische Hintergrund, besonders die Zeit der religiösen Kriege im Frankreich des 16. Jahrhunderts und ihre sozial-politischen Folgen. Es wurde auch kurz die Genese des Toleranzbegriffs auf unserem Kontinent dargestellt, zusammen mit den Schlüsselmomenten ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zum 16. Jahrhundert.

EN

The article takes up the issue of tolerance and its importance in the social world. Reference is made first to the ideas voiced by Michel de Montaigne, one of the forerunners of modern perception of that issue in European culture. Account is taken of the historical background, notably of the religious wars in 16th century France and their social and political consequences. Presented in brief is the genesis of the concept of tolerance on our continent, including key highlights in its development from antiquity to the 16th century.

PL

Artykuł podejmuje problem tolerancji i jej znaczenie w świecie społecznym. Punktem wyjścia jest próba odwołania się do koncepcji Michela de Montaigne’a jako jednego z prekursorów nowożytnego postrzegania wspomnianej problematyki w kulturze europejskiej. Uwzględnione zostało tło historyczne, szczególnie okres wojen religijnych we Francji XVII wieku oraz ich konsekwencje społeczno-polityczne. Pokrótce zaprezentowana została również geneza pojęcia tolerancji na naszym kontynencie wraz z kluczowymi momentami jej formowania od czasów starożytnych do XVI stulecia.

3

Oligarchie: wymienianie, wyliczanie, obliczanie

87%

Derrida J.

Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka

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2010

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issue 17

151-177

EN

The following text is the first chapter of Jacques Derrida’s book Politiques de l’amitié [The Politics of Friendship], being the exemplary and standard case of deconstruction, in this particular case, of philosophical texts (Cicero, Plato and, notably, Aristotle). The starting point for the discussion is the performative contradiction inscribed in the wellknown fragment On friendship from Essays by Michel de Montaigne: “O mes amis, il n’y a nul amy” (O my friends, there is no friend). Apparently, everything here is well-known and obvious, even the very notion of friendship, but as we proceed in the argument provided by Derrida, the obvious becomes less obvious to us and takes on new shades and hues in meaning, acquires new values. What is objective mixes in this fascinating argument with what is subjective. What is friendship? What is friendship today? Is friendship limited to just private sphere of interpersonal relations? The answer to the latter question is, according to Derrida, clearly negative. In the course of his argument he states: “There is no democracy without a community of friends”. This argument provides clues to understand a particular archeology of the notion, revealing oblique senses and contexts of the word “friendship”, its istory shown from the antiquity to the present day.

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Absents et absences dans les Essais de Montaigne

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Bjaï D.

Quêtes littéraires

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2011

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issue 1

11-22

EN

Except for Étienne de la Boétie, the friend for ever gone but whose presence pervades the Essais so vividly, the reader can notice the nearly total – and therefore puzzling – absence of Montaigne’s mother, Antoinette de Louppes, contrasting with the recurrent mentions to his father, Pierre Eyquem. He will also encounter strange omissions, such as Montaigne’s silence on St-Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and telling lapses, for instance on the answers given to young King Charles IX by the cannibals from Brazil. Do the Essais really “tell everything” (On vanity, III, 9), as Montaigne claims they do?

5

Becoming Animal in Michel de Montaigne Views. Toward an Animal Community

63%

Skonieczny K.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2014

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issue 1

87-102

EN

It is a recent tendency to read certain pre- and early-modern thinkers as “anticipatory critics” of modernity; the name of Michel de Montaigne often comes up in this context. Most of the critical approaches treat Montaigne like a pre-Rousseau proto-romantic which is indeed is an important part of Montaigne’s thinking. However, as I show in this paper, his Essays also allow for a different interpretation. Namely, I demonstrate that 1) Montaigne’s appraisal of Nature is far from a romantic-idyllic one; 2) his understanding of the interspecies division is more subtle than it is often thought; 3) his thought thus interpreted includes an ethics of becoming-animal that is based on a radically anti-Platonic (and thus anti-Cartesian) body-mind economy.

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Cervantes a tolerance

62%

Sánchez J. A.

Slovo a smysl - Word & Sense

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2019

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vol. 16

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issue 31

25-39

EN

The treatment of the morisco theme in Don Quixote could be understood as an index — a proof — of the philosophical and spiritual differences between Cervantes and the official ideology of his time. In his discourse, Ricote (the morisco character in Don Quixote II, 1615) names the ‘freedom of conscience’, an important theme in European religious discourse of the 16th and 17th centuries. This article deals with the interpretation of that expression in the literary and ideological context of Cervantesʼ novel and Cervantesʼ world. It seems that the expression refers to the Peace of Augsburg, and it could be interpreted as an appeal for tolerance, in this case regarding the morisco question (the moriscos were banned in 1609, before the publication of the second volume of Don Quixote). Yet this is a problematic interpretation: in Spain, the expression was commonly associated with heresy. It is in this sense that Lope de Vega uses the expression. This in turn is what allows us to characterize Lope de Vegaʼs literary work as conservative and Cervantesʼ as liberal.

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1 Acta Comeniana (International review of Comenius studies and early modern intellectual history)

1 Dialogue and Universalism

1 Kultura i Wartości

1 Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka

1 Quêtes littéraires

1 Slovo a smysl - Word & Sense

1 Bjaï D.

1 Derrida J.

1 Kwak J.

1 Llinas Begon J. L.

1 Skonieczny K.

1 Sánchez J. A.

1 2019

1 2016

1 2014

1 2011