The Distance Between God and Humans: Montaigne and Academic Circumspection
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1517-0128.v45i2p70-90Keywords:
Montaigne, Plutarch, Academic Skepticism, Eulabeia, Fideism, Apology for Raymond SebondAbstract
This article examines Montaigne's borrowing of Plutarch's treatise On the E at Delphi, which concludes the Apology for Raymond Sebond, and argues that it reveals a conceptual convergence between the two authors in their understanding of the human condition and the relationship between human beings and God. Plutarch and Montaigne maintain an ontological distinction between the human and the divine, contrasting the contingency, instability, and mutability inherent in the human condition with God's permanence and immutability. I argue that this distinction is decisive for understanding the articulation between skepticism and religious practice in the Apology. Rather than leading to a fideistic position, it grounds a form of Academic skepticism in which the suspension of judgment coexists with an attitude of circumspection toward the divine, pointing to the notion of eulabeia.
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