Humanism and Knowledge: Milton and Montaigne
Re-formulated Humanism and Knowledge:
John Milton and Michel de Montaigne
The optimism of the Florentine Renaissance pervaded both the artistic and the intellectual spirit of the time, and the celebration of human achievement that grew out of this optimism fostered the flowering of scholarship that we associate with the Renaissance. In opposition to Renaissance Humanism and its intellectual confidence, however, some thinkers and artists cast some doubt or ambivalence over the celebration of human achievement—they question the abilities of humankind, they place limits on man and his faculties. One of the elements of human achievement that falls under scrutiny is the field of human knowledge. What are the abilities of human reason? From whence comes reason? Does it enjoy unlimited range, or are there bounds to its accomplishment?
We see two approaches to the question of humanism and knowledge in Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) and John Milton (1608-1674). Neither writer shares all of the intellectual confidence of the Renaissance humanists, for they each believe human knowledge to be subject to definite limits. They both engage in an epistemological paradox, however, in that they are each driven by a deep intellectual curiosity that persists despite any limitations to knowledge that they might acknowledge. Montaigne's and Milton's speculations on knowledge share this in common despite the different character of limitations that they perceive.
Montaigne reflects on the possibilities and limitations of human knowledge, as he sees them, in his essays. Montaigne's essays are at once philosophical and deeply personal documents, and they reveal the skepticism that is the keynote of his epistemology. The foundation of Montaigne's skepticism is his questioning of the reliability of the senses. All that we know about the world, says Montaigne, comes into the body through the senses: "knowledge begins through them and is resolved into them (II.12.443)." If our knowledge of the world comes entirely through the senses, however, if truly "the senses are the beginning and the end of human knowledge (II.12.444)," our knowledge is woefully limited. If our senses yielded absolute knowledge of the world, Montaigne suggests, "wine would be the same in the mouth of a sick man as in the mouth of a healthy man; he who has chapped or numb fingers would find the same hardness in the wood or iron he handles as does another (II.12.422)." This subjective variability of sense constitutes what Montaigne calls "the greatest foundation and proof of our ignorance (II.12.443)," it proves that our knowledge of the world, limited by the weaknesses of our faculties of learning, can hardly be considered absolute.
This uncertainty, which questions such a fundamental part of the way we learn, causes Montaigne to question what we as humans can, in fact, know. Given this strict limitation, one may conclude that we can know nothing at all. This conclusion, however, does not satisfy Montaigne. To be a perfect skeptic, he says in effect, one must question his own skepticism (Wood 1997). This type of circular argument does not provide a reasonable answer to Montaigne's epistemological question: what can we know?
Montaigne affirms the universality of human curiosity: "there is no desire," he says, "more natural than the desire for knowledge," and "truth is so great a thing that we must not disdain any medium that will lead us to it (III.13.815)." Thus because of the powerful drive of human curiosity, and the attractiveness of true knowledge, Montaigne is compelled to proceed in scholarship despite the obstacles he has found to learning. It is only logical to confess and to accept the epistemological inadequacy of the senses, but, Montaigne says, "we cannot conceive of an absurdity more extreme" than to conclude that the human faculties are completely useless in the drive to satisfy our natural curiosity (II.12.444). Convinced that "all that is known is doubtless known through the faculty of the knower (II.12.443)," Montaigne affirms man's ability first to know himself, and from thence to know the world.
Montaigne asserts that knowledge is possible in a subjective manner, and this subjective knowledge is the goal of the scholar. Against strict skeptics who thought knowledge impossible, and truth beyond the grasp of the human mind, Montaigne argues that even they "admitted that some things were more probable than others, and allowed their judgments the faculty of inclining (II.12.422)" toward one idea or another. This fundamental ability of the mind to judge, suggests Montaigne, as subjective and personal as it is, is the basis of knowledge—we can allow this inclination to teach us about the world.
Thus Montaigne seeks to learn not through others' perceptions, or from ancient texts, but primarily from his own experience. "I would rather be an authority on myself," he says, "than on Cicero. In the experience I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar (III.13.822)." By analysing our past mistakes and failures, and observing the world—ever mindful of the subjective nature of what we know—we can learn enough to better our lives. "Let us only listen," he says, "we tell ourselves all we most need (III.13.822)." According to Montaigne, if I "give great authority to my desires and inclinations (III.13.832)," if I remember that my knowledge is by nature subjective and subject to error (II.12.424), I can pursue that philosophy that is "most human and most our own (III.13.855)."
John Milton's position on human knowledge is revealed in Paradise Lost, within the spiritual context of man's fall from Paradise and his ongoing life in the postlapsarian world. Milton's epistemology focuses on the relationship of man's knowledge to the divine ordering of knowledge by God. Writing the epic in the Christian tradition, Milton celebrates man's position in a creation whose purpose is to glorify God, and man's intellectual life is a facet of this his role. Milton's solution to the question of Renaissance Humanism is thus a sort of theocentric humanism.
Milton, like Montaigne, acknowledges the curiosity that is such a part of human intellect. The limits that Milton perceives to the satisfaction of curiosity, however, are different from those faced by Montaigne. The limits that confront Milton are imposed not by human weakness but by God, who chooses to limit the ways that knowledge is revealed to man, and what knowledge he can attain. In Paradise Lost, Milton shows us two ways in which man can receive knowledge: by direct revelation from God, and by derivation from study of nature and the world.
Milton is careful throughout his poem to affirm the importance of knowledge in terms of its righteous end: God's revelation of knowledge to man is symbolised in Paradise Lost by the angel Raphael's lessons to Adam. Adam serves as a representative for the human race (not a foreign idea in Christian theology)as he expresses the righteous end of human knowledge: humanity in him wishes "the more / To magnify [God's] works, the more we know (VII.96-7)." Furthermore, Raphael relates Satan's prideful fall so that Adam might learn "by terrible example (VI.910)" and remain obedient to God. "Thus measuring things in heav'n by things on earth (VI.893)" God reveals knowledge to man, to the end of man's spiritual encouragement, and God's own greater glory.
Besides the knowledge he directly reveals to man, God also gives man the ability to study and to learn from the world itself. Acting as a mediator between God and man, Raphael tells Adam, "to ask or search I blame thee not, for heav'n / Is as the book of God before thee set, / Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn" about the created world (VIII.66-8).
Here the real limits to man's learning, however, are most evident. Raphael reminds Adam that God "hath suppressed in night" some things that he does not intend for man to know—or perhaps things that remain beyond man's ability to understand (VII.123). As he considers this theme in his consideration of knowledge, Milton faces an interesting irony. How are his epistemological reflections affected by the presence in his epic, and the importance in man's fall, of the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" (Wood 1997)? Milton solves this irony by contrasting Satan's unholy use of knowledge and curiosity with the righteous pursuit of knowledge from various sources that Raphael affirms.
Whereas God reveals knowledge to man to satisfy man's curiosity—as symbolised by Adam's discourse with Raphael—Satan abuses man's natural curiosity, using it to tempt Eve to disobey God's commands (IV.513 ff.). As Eve relates her unpleasant dream to her mate, we see how Satan used Eve's curiosity about the night and its beauty to disturb her dreams and begin to tempt her (V.38 ff.). "Apt the mind or fancy is to rove / Unchecked," says Milton, "and of her roving is no end (VIII.188-9)," and the Adversary exploits this weakness of the mind to wreak destruction on the human race. To Eve, Satan's words seemed truthful (IX.736 ff.), but they served not to glorify God and encourage man, but to alienate man from God and dishonour God's creation. The end of Satan's deceit, however, does not destroy the nobility of knowledge, or even of man's curiosity. Milton makes it clear to us that disobedience, not curiosity, is punished—only when man's curiosity is a symptom of pride and unrighteous ambition is his curiosity sinful and destructive.
In the end of Milton's analysis of knowledge, "enough is left besides to search and know (VII.125)," and God's advice to man, according to Milton, is "govern well thy appetite (VII.546)" for learning. Milton suggests that if we "observe the rule of not too much (XI.531)," and remember that "to know / That which before us lies in daily life / Is the best wisdom (VIII.192-4)," our search for knowledge will be fruitful, and the end of our learning will be the noblest end we can achieve—we will glorify God with our knowledge.
In these two writers we see a re-evaluation of Renaissance Humanism as it applies to human knowledge. Montaigne shows us a moderate, self-checking human progress that allows us to live and to learn despite the inherent limits of our minds, whereas we see in Milton a consideration of the divine purpose of learning and its place in our spiritual lives.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York: WW Norton & Co. 1993.
References listed by Book and Line numbers
Montaigne. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Stanford University Press. 1989
References from the following Essays:
II.12 Apology for Raymond Sebond
III.13 On Experience
Wood, Robert. Lectures given at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Unpublished. 1997
8 June, 1998