Mark Lilla On Escaping Online Politics – by Andrew Sullivan

To get a sense of the conversation, the following passage on Montaigne s vision of private integrity and political hope is from Sarah Bakewell s biography of the French thinker:

Those who take Montaigne as a hero, or as a supportive companion, would argue that he did not advocate a do-as-thou-wilt approach to social duty. Instead, he thought that the solution to a world out of joint was for each person to get themselves back in joint: to learn how to live, beginning with the art of keeping your feet on the ground.

You can indeed find a message of inactivity, laziness, and disengagement in Montaigne, and probably also a justification for doing nothing when tyranny takes over, rather than resisting it. But many passages in the Essays seem rather to suggest that you should engage with the future; specifically, you should not turn your back on the real historical world in order to dream of paradise and religious transcendence. & As Flaubert told his friends, Read Montaigne … He will calm you. But, as he also added: Read him in order to live.

via andrewsullivan.substack.com

OTOH there’s always fear, uncertainty and doubt resulting in panic and despair, but that’s not very philosophical. I like Montaigne quite a bit; I should read him again. And you know who’s underrated? Joseph de Maistre, that’s who. Vilified by Isaiah Berlin as a proto-fascist, but I don’t think so. But anyway, preserving one’s private integrity in times like these is easier said than done. As the above suggests.