Richard Scholar

Montaigne et la « vanité » des utopies

RésuméCet article étudie la contribution de Montaigne au débat qui a lieu au xvie siècle sur l’utopie comme forme de réflexion en sciences politiques. Nous montrons qu’il s’agit d’un apport à la fois important et marginal, dans la mesure où l’auteur des Essais reste visiblement en retrait du débat, ainsi que d’autres controverses politiques. C’est précisément le lieu de retrait qu’il invente qui nous intéressera surtout ici. Notre hypothèse est qu’il s’agit d’un lieu textuel dont l’auteur espère qu’il sera capable d’abriter une communauté virtuelle de personnes qui ont en commun une culture de la dispute comme « exercice de notre esprit ». Or, cet exercice met Montaigne aussi souvent en désaccord avec lui-même qu’avec les autres, d’où l’ambivalence dont il témoigne à l’égard des utopies dans les Essais.AbstractThis article examines Montaigne’s contribution to the sixteenth-century European debate about the utopia as a form of political thinking concerned with the creation of a better society. It argues that Montaigne participates in that debate, as he does in others, by retreating to the margins. It explores the form this retreat takes in book III of the Essais. The suggestion is that, by retreating to the margins of political debate, the author creates a textual space open to a virtual community of friends, among them the author and the reader, who have in common a mode of free and frank discussion as a truth-seeking and quarrelsome “exercise of minds”. Montaigne is thus able to conduct an unresolved quarrel with others, and with himself, as he weighs in the balance the value–and vanity–of utopias.RiassuntoQuest’articolo studia il contributo di Montaigne al dibattito che si svolge nel 16esimo secolo sull’utopia come forma di riflessione in scienze politiche. Vogliamo mostrare che si tratta di un contributo allo stesso tempo importante e marginale, nella misura in cui l’autore degli Saggi sembra restare ostensibilmente fuori sia da questo dibattito che da altre controverse politiche. E’ precisamente da questa posizione arretrata che Montaigne inventa ció chè ci interesserà qui. La nostra ipotesi è che si tratti di un luogo testuale pensato dall’autore comme luogo per accogliere una comunità virtuale di persone che hanno in comune la cultura della discussione in quanto « esercizio del nostro spirito ». Ora, quest’esercizio piazza spesso Montaigne in disaccordo sia con se stesso che con gli altri; nei Saggi infatti, si evidenzia questo disaccordo, fonte di ambivalenza verso le utopie.

Epilogue: Co-operations

Abstract This response to the foregoing essays argues that the essays establish a useful critical distance from which to view the Écrits and that they do so by placing the text in a series of contexts: biographical, textual, doctrinal, sacramental, and institutional. It goes on to suggest that a different kind of context — the intentional context — remains relatively understudied here and to sketch various possibilities and problems that would attend any study of that context for the Écrits.