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Download File Bodies of Wisdom: Philosophy as Medicine in Montaigne and Pascal Johanna C. Magin Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Johanna C. Magin All rights reserved ABSTRACT Bodies of Wisdom: Philosophy as Medicine in Montaigne and Pascal Johanna C. Magin In “Bodies of Wisdom,” I reassert the primacy of the body in the philosophical practices of two early modern French authors, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) and Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), whose writings have been associated with the ancient tradition of “philosophy as a way of life.” Harkening back to the Classical understanding of philosophy as a form of medicine, these authors’ works rely a good deal on somatic and/or medical terminology to describe states of the soul and philosophical practices more generally. While there exists a wide body of literature that addresses the medical analogy in Hellenistic philosophers, few commentators have ventured to read the analogy literally, and none thus far have done so for authors of the early modern period. In this dissertation, I reclaim the literal relationship between medicine and philosophy by examining instances in both authors where descriptions of health and illness can be read both metaphorically (“spiritually”) and literally (“somatically”). Philosophy is not just like medicine in that it seeks to bring about individual well-being; it is medicine in the fullest sense, because the exercises intended to bring about well-being must pass through the body in order to give lasting shape to the life of the practitioner. Many scholars have acknowledged Pascal’s inheritance of Montaigne’s moderate skepticism, and as one of history’s most astute – and sometimes acerbic – readers of Montaigne, Pascal was uniquely poised to highlight those aspects of Montaigne’s philosophy that attenuated the reader’s belief in the power of human reason. This meant that for both authors, there had to be some more reliable alternative to the reasoning mind to arrive at an understanding of truth. The body, it turns out, served just such a purpose. Although Montaigne and Pascal had very different purposes in writing the Essais and the Pensées, respectively, I show how a mutual concern for empirical certainty amidst the tenuousness of philosophical and religious opinion precipitated a return to bodily experience, as the most viable means of knowing the self and the world. Despite the widespread conception of the early modern period as one of “thoroughgoing” – and one might say, Cartesian – dualism between body and mind, I argue that Montaigne and Pascal are evidence of a countertrend: their writings suggest that we cannot think our way to philosophical virtue; we must enact that virtue through our bodies, using them as tools for interpretation and modification of our internal states. I thereby call into question a distinction that is commonly made between somatic techniques, on the one hand, and spiritual exercises, on the other, in much of the literature on philosophy as a way of life. The implications of this are far-reaching: if the suffering that philosophy purports to treat is at once spiritual and somatic, then the “spiritual” exercises designed to address this suffering also borrow a great deal from the soma, and should be advertised as such. Further, if spiritual health is indeed contingent on our relationship to the soma, then the classic definition of philosophy as a “spiritual” practice (namely, one associated with the logos) needs to be expanded to include the material and/or somatic dimensions of the discipline. Although I try to provide a clear roadmap for how these authors go about spiritual healing, I recognize that the trajectory to spiritual health is seldom very direct. Surely, we can find examples of somatic exercises that appear to have a predictable effect on the mind and, inversely, spiritual exercises that yield positive physical results. However, the process of effecting change and training for virtue is almost never unidirectional. The constant trafficking between body and mind, evidenced most abundantly by the passions, belies a much less tidy relationship between the two faculties. To describe this relationship, I rely both on early modern medical therapeutics and on Pierre Bourdieu’s twentieth-century conception of habitus. Viewed through the lens of habitus, the practice of philosophy can be conceived as a process of embodiment, wherein the practitioner appropriates and accommodates in a bodily way the virtues traditionally aligned with the good life—before realizing that, as habitus, he or she is always, already well-adapted to the good and thus endowed with a certain form of health from the beginning. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 1 For a Medico-philosophical Understanding of Experience 29 2 Dis-ease and the Somatic Metaphor 99 3 Habits of Healing: Spiritual Health and the Soma 168 4 Philosophy as an Embodied Way of Life 237 CONCLUSION 309 BIBLIOGRAPHY 322 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe much gratitude to Pierre Force, whose course “Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal” planted the first seed for this project back in 2009. A rare example of an advisor who models both magnanimity and steadfast rigor, he has been an exemplary guide to scholarly integrity these last seven years. A warm thanks to Bachir Diagne, who exuded the sort of compassion that helped to keep this project rolling, and whose philosophical sensibility enlivened my interest in this topic. And many thanks to Antoine Compagnon, who, perhaps more than anyone, demonstrated the value of close reading and technical precision up until the very end of this project. Thanks as well to Kathy Eden and Matt Jones for generously offering to sit on the committee; their work in the respective fields of rhetorical hermeneutics and the history of science has proven invaluable to me. Another key player has been Jean-Charles Darmon (Paris-CNRS), who helped me to navigate some of the disciplinary and temporal divides of this project while I was in Paris on the Lurcy Fellowship in 2013-2014. I would also like to acknowledge the professors I had years ago at the University of Chicago – Robert Morrissey, Philippe Desan, and Thomas Pavel – for having provided the first laboratory for thinking about many of these issues. In addition, the digital humanities project ARTFL, developed at Chicago, continues to enrich the possibilities of Montaigne scholarship as we know it and early modern scholarship more broadly. Heather Ohaneson, the dearest of dear friends, has been both a lively intellectual companion these last few years and a levelheaded source of support. I am deeply grateful to my parents for fearlessly showing interest in whatever I pursue—and for setting the bar very high. And a special thanks to a certain Berber from mid-Atlas Morocco, Omar, who ii has made my life large enough and loving enough to genuinely enjoy these last few years ..شكرا :of dissertation writing Finally, if it were not for the many other outlets I’ve had for “embodied” practice, this dissertation simply would not have been feasible. Much gratitude to the Zen Center of New York City/Fire Lotus Temple, where I spent over two years in residency at the outset of this dissertation. Limitless gratitude goes to my teacher, Shugen Sensei, and to all the monks and laypeople who, everyday, are putting to practice the ancient discipline of meditation. The 5Rhythms dance community, of which I’ve been a part for six years, has (literally) allowed me to move and test the ideas that are central to this thesis. And I am deeply grateful to my Alexander Technique teacher, Hope Martin, for creating a space in which embodiment is possible. iii For my parents and all the lives unlived, and habibi, the finest embodiment of wisdom I know iv Introduction Genesis of the project. In a somewhat surprising close to the final book of the Essais, Montaigne invokes the Greek god Apollo, protector of two closely allied virtues, health and wisdom. This comes just after Montaigne has extolled the wonders of being fully human, rejoicing in the fact that even on the world’s highest throne we are still left sitting on our own rump. “Les plus belles vies,” he pronounces, “sont à mon gré celles, qui se rangent au modelle commun et humain avec ordre : mais sans miracle, sans extravagance.”1 There is nothing special required to live a full human life—and yet, without the twin fruits of health and wisdom, we are left in a rather sorry condition in old age. Perhaps this is why Montaigne, nearing the end of his own life, took refuge in a mythological god-figure who was Antiquity’s championed protector of these two virtues: “Recommandons la [vieillesse] à ce Dieu [Apollon], protecteur de santé et de sagesse : mais gaye et sociale.” Montaigne probably did not have in mind the fierce young warrior-god who brought death and destruction at the single shot of an arrow. In evoking joy and sociability (“mais gaye et sociale”), he was more likely conceiving of Apollo in his effeminate guise, strumming his lyre in a leisurely setting. To further illustrate his wishes for old age, Montaigne goes on to cite four verses of Horace that act as a prayer for a fruitful end to one’s life: “Frui paratis et ualido mihi / Latoe dones, et precor integra / Cum mente, nec turpem senetam / Degere, nec Cythara carentem.” [“Accorde-moi, fils de Latone, de jouir des biens qui me sont acquis, à la fois en pleine santé et l’esprit intact, je t’en supplie, et de ne pas trainer une vieillesse honteuse, privée de la cithare.” --Horace, Odes, I, XXXI, 17-20] (III:13, 1 Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais, ed.
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