A Harmonized Synthesis of Spirituality and Reason and the Birth of Modern Individualism Manifested in Montaigne’s Essays

Abstract

This article attempts to shed light on Montaigne as a voyant who can see through the problematics in transition period between the Renaissance and the Modern or between Realism and Nominalism. Apparently he sticks to the Orthodoxy of Roman Catholics, however, a closer reading of his Essays will reveal the hidden agenda of the Enlightenment project based on reason in lieu of spirituality. The modernity of Montaigne thus rests on 1)Pyrrhonism based on critical reason; 2)an existentialist understanding of man as particular being based on Nominalism; 3)an attempt to draw human psychology topographically, and finally 4)an existentialist or rational approach to the phenomenon of death.BR For Enlightenment thinkers, reason is a blessing as well as a curse. Early Enlightenment thinkers imbued in Roman Catholicism tend to view reason, when coupled with hubris, as a curse doomed to damn humanity. The gist of Montaigne‘s project of harmonizing reason and spirituality lies in his wise division of realms of human concerns and activity. In other words, spirituality or soul concerns religious affairs, while reason is in charge of social ethos concerning human affairs.BR In a broader perspective, Montaigne is one of those intellectual giants who have endeavored to change the philosophical current flowing from Realism characterized by communal concept of human abstractness manifested in the Great Chain of Being to Nominalism characterized by Existentialism with emphasis on human Eigentlichkeit. In a nutshell, Montaigne‘s project of modernity is to synthesize Christian spirituality and Socratic or Stoic reason: the former for Divine Sanctification for the life to come and the latter for ataraxia during the Earthly sojourn by virtue of reason and temperance.