Custom as the foundation of politics and laws in Montaigne
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1517-0128.v40i1p74-85Keywords:
Michel de Montaigne, nature, custom, politic, lawsAbstract
The "customs" – coustume – play a central role in The Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Not only because the essayist extracts the most varied examples from them in his texts – the leçons –, but especially because Montaigne understands that moral rules, laws, civil order, and every social convention are based on the sedimentation of habits over the years. What at a first sight seems trivial is, in fact, a turning point concerning the political-philosophical tradition: Montaigne moves the foundation of politics, morality, the laws from nature itself, and the conception of God – in the way they were conceived by the ancient and Christian philosophers – to the terrain of customs, an eminently human terrain. This article will dwell on the chapter "De la Coustume et de ne Changer Aisément une Loy Receue" found in the Essays to demonstrate how Montaigne operates this displacement of laws and politics from the natural foundation to customs: mos maiorum.
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