The list of freedoms

 The most startling passage in Stefan Zweig’s book on Montaigne is a list of freedoms.

Montaigne was a seeker, and he sought to understand the things that stood in his way, slowed him down, kept him from being the person he wanted to be. “One might be tempted to draw up a list,” Zweig says, and he does. The list is in the form of “freedom from” or “to be free of.” It reads like a UN document.

I was not surprised to see freedom from pride at the top of the list, and freedom from presumption, ambition and greed nearby.

But I began to wonder when I got to freedom from fear and hope, belief and superstition. I can see what Zweig is saying: Montaigne doubted everything. But he also was a believer.

I was surprised when I got to freedom from family and familial surroundings. Montaigne liked his privacy and spent time alone in his tower. But he strikes me as a person who was part of a place. His homestead — and the many people in it — were part of him.

The most interesting item is freedom from custom. Custom — the countless small agreements we make when we live in a community — holds societies together. Montaigne was, in a way, a traditionalist. But Zweig is right. Montaigne was brutally frank about the costs. Here’s the opening of his essay “On the custom of wearing clothing”:

 

Whichever way I want to go I find myself obliged to break through some barrier of custom, so thoroughly has she blocked all our approaches.”

 

He argued that we must find the difference between natural laws and rules we contrive. He picks up the same in “On ancient customs”: 

 

I am prepared to forgive our own people for having no other model or rule of perfection but their own manners and behavior, for it is a common failing not only of the mob but of virtually all men to set their sights within the limitations of the customs into which we were born.

 

• Sources: Stefan Zweig, Montaigne, translated by Will Stone; London: Pushkin Press, 2015. The list of freedoms is on pp. 112-13.

Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, translated by M.A. Screech; London: Penguin Books, 1993. The quotations are on pp. 253 and 331.