«L’essai de soi », en tant que méthode littéraire, crée dans l’œuvre de Woolf, Les Vagues, une nouvelle façon de faire littérature, ainsi qu’une nouvelle pensée philosophique. À fin de comprendre comment l’essai exerce une influence sur le travail de Woolf, J’ai analysé Les Essais de Michel de Montaigne, comme une méthode, comme l’exegium, dans ses multiples connotations ainsi que comme processus qui donne naissance à l’essai en tant que genre littéraire, dans son acception moderne. À travers « l’essai de soi » Montaigne et Woolf élaborent leurs propres autoportraits avec des mots. Pour une meilleure compréhension de ce processus j’ai établi des échos avec des philosophes contemporains et avec l’analyse des spécialistes. Pour une meilleure compréhension de « l’essai de soi » par rapport au travail de Woolf, je propose la définition des principes qui définissent la méthode de Montaigne. Ces principes ont été développés comme des axes de « l’essai de soi » sa définition et son interaction à chaque moment de son écriture. Dans le sens d’un « jeu d’abymes », j’ai visé le centre d’un entrecroisement d’hommages. Celui que Montaigne rend à Etienne de la Boétie, et la relation littéraire que Woolf établit avec Montaigne. Les deux auteurs développent son écriture comme une sorte d’autobiographie, mais ils vont au-delà de ce genre, par le registre du passage du temps et les transformations qui s’opèrent au moment de l’écriture. Les personnages de Woolf sont construits à partir de la variété de multiplicités que chacun en soi, celle que les autres et le regard des autres lui apportent. Les Vagues est une radiographie de l’esprit humain qui est au même temps approche philosophique, l’écriture suit ce que Montaigne décrit comme une forme elliptique de création. Les deux auteurs se basent sur l’expérience humaine, celle qui est commune à tous, là au chacun se rencontre avec l’autre. À travers ce processus, Woolf traduit la philosophie de Montaigne en style narratif. / This work deals on how the “essai de soi” as literary method creates in Virginia Woolf’s work in particular in The Waves, not only a new form of writing in the literary sense but also a new form of thinking. For being able to understand how the essay is such an important incidence in the cited work of Virginia Woolf, I looked into The Essays by Michel de Montaigne, not only to analyze him as a philosopher with a specific esthetics and ethics but furthermore, as a method, as exegium in its multiple connotations and as a procedure that allowed the essay to be born as a literary form. By using the “essai de soi” Montaigne and Woolf make their self-portraits in words. For the comprehension of the procedure I established an echo with contemporary philosophers and the specialist analysis of self portrait work. For a better comprehension of the “essai de soi” that allows a latter approach to Woolf´s work. I propose the definition of specific principles in Montaigne´s method. They will be developed in separate ways as axes of the “essai de soi” with the characteristic and parallel interactions in each moment of his writing. In a sort of “jeu d’abîmes” I gaze into a cross homage. That of Montaigne to Etienne de La Boétie and the literary relation that Woolf establishes with Montaigne. Both authors use their writing as a form of autobiography but go beyond that by registering the daily transformation of the present. In Woolf´s characters, she uses a multiplicity of biographies of the same person, seen by different people in which she finds a source to build the others in her own mirror. The Waves is a radiography of the human spirit used as a philosophical subject, her writing has what Montaigne describes as an elliptical form of creation. Both authors dwell on the human experience, that is common to us all, that which communicates and identifies itself in the other. By doing so Woolf allows herself to translate Montaigne’s philosophy in a narrative style.

Depuis le Moyen Âge, l’intérêt philosophique pour le péché originel, la chute d’Ève et d’Adam, ainsi que le châtiment divin, a produit de nombreuses interprétations du récit de la Genèse. La question la plus importante était celle de comprendre la responsabilité de l’homme dans le mal et de disculper Dieu. Comment un Dieu tout puissant et tout bon pourrait-il accepter que ses créatures tombent dans l’abîme du péché ? Contrairement à ce qu’on pourrait s’attendre, cet intérêt ne perd pas en vigueur au début de la Renaissance : il se voit même renforcer à travers les divergences naissantes de la Réforme. C’est pourquoi il est intéressant d’interroger la pensée de Montaigne et de Descartes, deux penseurs à première vue sans rapport avec une quelconque controverse religieuse (ou en tout cas officiellement non engagés dans des débats de nature théologique). Considèrent-ils le péché dans sa compréhension théologique et religieuse ? Ou le concept de péché se présente-t-il sous une nouvelle forme, qu’on pourrait alors appeler humaniste ou encore naturaliste ? Ni Montaigne ni Descartes n’emploient le terme de péché originel, ce qui marque leur originalité par rapport aux autres penseurs de leurs époques. L’intérêt est donc de savoir si l’absence de ce terme signifie un désintérêt pour la religion chrétienne dans leurs morales, ou si elle marque le début d’une pensée qui essaie de donner une interprétation laïque et sécularisant du mal et du péché. Montaigne et Descartes séparent-ils leurs morales avec la tradition chrétienne ? / Since the Middle Ages, philosophers’ interest in the original sin, in the fall of Eve and Adam and in divine retribution has produced many interpretations of Genesis. The most important question was to understand the responsibility of man in evil and to exculpate God. How could almighty and merciful God accept that his creatures fall into the abyss of sin? Contrary to what one might expect, this interest does not lose its force at the beginning of the Renaissance: it is even strengthened through the emerging differences of the Reformation. This is why it is interesting to analyze the thought of Montaigne and Descartes, two thinkers who seem at first sight unrelated to any religious controversy (or, at least, officially non-engaged in debates of a theological nature). Do they consider sin in his theological and religious understanding? Or, does the concept of sin face a new form of understanding which could then be called humanist or naturalist? Neither Montaigne nor Descartes uses the term original sin, a choice which marks their originality compared to other thinkers of their times. Therefore, we must examine if the absence of this term means a disinterest in the Christian religion in their morals, or if it marks the beginning of a thought which tries to propose a laic and secularized interpretation of the evil and the sin. Do Montaigne and Descartes distance their moral thoughts from the Christian tradition?

Force est de remarquer que les pratiques philosophiques, notamment à l'école primaire, mobilisent les enseignants et les chercheurs dans le but d'asseoir leur légitimité. Pour fonder cette légitimité, une mise en lien avec l'éducation à la citoyenneté a été esquissée, mais cette mise en lien porte davantage sur le protocole utilisé lors des ateliers de philosophie qu'à la philosophicité même des discussions. D'où la problématique que nous avons choisi de traiter : quelle éducation à la citoyenneté promeut cette philosophicité de la réflexion à laquelle on souhaite initier les enfants dès l'école primaire et quel fondement philosophique ce lien, entre apprentissage du philosopher et éducation à la citoyenneté, nous permet-il d'apporter à ces pratiques philosophiques ? Pour répondre à cette problématique, nous sommes allée puiser dans les Essais de Montaigne quelques pistes de réflexion pour montrer que l'apprentissage du philosopher concourt à une éducation à la citoyenneté dans le sens où il constitue une éducation à la tolérance.

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

Registra y fundamenta el proceso de la disputa de América sobre la naturaleza del hombre americano y dentro de ella, el protagonismo intelectual de Michel de Montaigne, así como las concepciones filosóficas helenísticas que le sirvieron para la temprana culminación de la controversia. Para ello analiza la obra Ensayos en la que sostiene, frente a quienes afirmaban que el americano era un ser bárbaro, salvaje, inferior, prematuro o degenerado, que aquel era un ser humano distinto, con otra cultura y costumbres. / Tesis

Identificar as características fundamentais da Educação em Michel de Montaigne (França, 1533-1592), levantando e relacionando influências e contribuições marcantes do ceticismo em sua filosofia e reflexão pedagógica e educacional é a preocupação primeira do presente texto. Para tanto, o itinerário percorrido procura compreender, inicialmente, as condicionantes históricas às quais o pensamento montaigneano estava inserido, pensando separadamente as transformações paradigmáticas fundamentais ocorridas em diversas ambiências entre o final do Medievo e o Renascimento. O destaque se dá a dois pontos cruciais: às transformações filosófico-pedagógicas e às principais características do ceticismo antigo que são retomadas no cenário de crise renascentista, procurando criar espaço para refletirmos o quanto o contexto e o cenário pré-moderno de instabilidades e incertezas são cruciais para compreendermos o lugar e o papel da retomada da corrente cética, especialmente do ceticismo pirrônico, e suas influências no pensamento do filósofo francês. Em seguida, nos enveredamos pela aventura de ensaiar a exploração das ideias centrais de Montaigne sobre a Educação, inserindo-as sob o lume de suas condicionantes históricas e as prerrogativas ensaísticas do seu pensamento, levantando reflexões acerca de alguns sinais e presenças do ceticismo em seus ensaios educacionais. Por fim, em um terceiro momento, nos atentamos ao trato mais específico da relação entre ceticismo e educação em Montaigne, pensando o lugar da equipolência e da suspensão do juízo, elementos fundamentais do ceticismo pirrônico, na nova maneira pedagógica instaurada pelo autor dos Ensaios, fundamentando o cerne da crítica montaigneana ao papel antipedagógico do dogmatismo e revalidando o papel educacional da dúvida no constante processo de formação de sujeitos independentes/autônomos. / Identify the main characteristics of Education on Michel de Montaigne’s thought (France, 1533-1592), analyzing and relating influences and marking contributions of Skepticism on his philosophy and on his pedagogical and educational reflection is the first intention of this paper. For so, the itinerary built here intends to comprehend, initially, the historical conditions on which Montaigne’s thought was inserted, examining separately the most important modifications that happened in diverse atmospheres between the end of Middle Ages and Renaissance. The prominence is given for two decisive points: the philosophical-pedagogical modifications and the main characteristics of the Ancient Skepticism, which are recovered at the crisis’ environment of Renaissance, searching to create a space to think how the pre-Modern context of instability and uncertainness is decisive to comprehend the place and the function of Skepticism’s retaking, specially of Pyrrho’s Skepticism and its influences on Montaigne’s thought.In the following, it goes toward Montaigne’s essential ideas about Education, inserting them under historical conditions and essayistic prerogative of his thought, making reflections about some signs and presences of Skepticism on his educational essays. In the end, on a third moment, it turns attention to the most specific theme of relation between Skepticism and Education on Montaigne’s philosophy, analyzing the paper of equipollency and judge suspension (fundamental elements of Pyrrho’s Skepticism) at the new pedagogical manner initiated by Essais author, laying foundations for the heart of Montaigne’s critic on dogmatism and its anti-educational paper, and restoring validity of doubt’s educational paper at the constant process of independent/autonomous subjects formation.

Submitted by Fabricia Fialho Reginato (fabriciar) on 2015-07-16T23:16:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 JaneteBonfanti.pdf: 943505 bytes, checksum: 86753931ca9b8833e22583aac72c496c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-16T23:16:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 JaneteBonfanti.pdf: 943505 bytes, checksum: 86753931ca9b8833e22583aac72c496c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / UNISINOS - Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos / A tese objetiva mostrar nos Ensaios, de Michel de Montaigne, uma concepção original de felicidade, como experiência ética do homem - um ser finito e imperfeito. A finitude será identificada a partir de algumas de suas formas: a morte, a corporeidade, a dor, o prazer e a contingência (Fortuna). Malgrado o vazio e a finitude que marca o homem e sua condição, há a possibilidade de lhe restituir a plenitude na experiência de ser humano (comum e não deus), portanto. Na sabedoria da existência concreta e fugidia, atrelada à capacidade de julgar de cada um, reside a possibilidade de uma vida feliz apesar e mediante a passagem do/no tempo e a morte. O que significa dizer que a felicidade em Montaigne é uma questão de opinião e representação, mas também de experiência de união de corpo e alma a um só tempo coadunando prazer e virtude. A análise do tema será feita a partir da interpretação de capítulos escolhidos dos Ensaios: Apologia de Raymond Sebond (II, 12), Que o gosto dos bens e dos males depende em boa parte da opinião que temos deles (I, 14) e Da Experiência (III, 13) em diálogo com alguns dos seus intérpretes. / This thesis aims at showing, in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, an original conception of happiness as an ethical experience of humans - finite and imperfect beings. Finiteness can be identified in different forms: death, corporeality, pain, pleasure and the contingency (fortune). Despite the emptiness and finiteness which define humans and their condition, there is a possibility to fill this existential void through the human experience itself (by simply being a regular human, not divine). Humans find a possibility of being happy while passing through time and death with the wisdom of concrete and ephemeral existence, together with one’s individual ability of judgment. This means that happiness, for Montaigne, is a matter of opinion and representation, but also the experience of union of body and soul in one time combining pleasure and virtue. This analysis will be made from the interpretation of selected chapters of the Essays: Apology for Raymond Sebond (II, 12), That the taste of goods or evils doth greatly depend on the opinion we have of them (I, 14) and Of experience (III, 13) in dialogue with some previous reflections by other authors.

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.

This dissertation engages French-language films in the 'moraliste' tradition. The French word 'moraliste' has no exact English equivalent. It does not evoke the didactic sense of “moralist;” rather a 'moraliste' is someone who explores the inner workings of the mind, rather than the outer actions of a character. Beginning with the publication of Montaigne’s Essays in 1580, 'moralistes' including Descartes, La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, and La Bruyère created moral literature – literature concerned with personal reflections and the feelings of an individual over the dogma of good society. The emergence of film in the late nineteenth century provided a new medium for raising questions in the 'moraliste' tradition. Éric Rohmer, for example, described his Six Moral Tales as “films in which a particular feeling is analyzed and where even the characters themselves analyze their feelings and are very introspective. That’s what 'conte moral' (moral tale) means.” I argue that the films of Bresson, Rohmer, and the Dardennes are narratively, thematically, and stylistically interrelated in their connection to the specifically French 'moraliste' tradition. I contend that these films surfaced in post-World War II France – growing out of the deep ambiguities that existed in French society in the aftermath of occupation and liberation – and continue to appear in the increasingly transnational landscape of contemporary European cinema. This new approach to film history offers a counterweight to the narrative of French New Wave cinema, which privileges the work of more explicitly political and experimental filmmakers such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

La plupart des lectures contemporaines des Essais ignore la pensée morale de Montaigne. Ici, je maintiens que Montaigne épouse ‘une éthique de la modestie’ en même temps qu’il rejette toute éthique normative. En particulier, je cherche à aborder comment Montaigne suggère que nous connaissons la vertu et agissons si deux individus ne partagent pas le même perspective et on ne peut pas être le même sujet éthique deux fois. Je vais commencer par discuter la position épistémique de Montaigne par rapport aux universels pour illustrer comment Montaigne met en question l’universalité des lois éthiques et un bien connu a priori comme certains nominalistes et comment la notion de la contingence qui accompagne cette attitude a des implications pour le sujet. Ensuite, je vais explorer comment Montaigne partage et part des penseurs anciens, surtout les sceptiques, afin de façonner une méthode empirique qui a son point de départ dans l’individu. En fouillant sa méthode, qui a son modèle dans le chapitre « De l’expérience », je vais démontrer comment cet aspect de la pensée de Montaigne empêche sa morale de succomber au nihilisme, parce qu’il affirme qu’il reste des phénomènes qu’on peut connaître à posteriori. Je voudrais montrer comment la méthode des Essais aide les individus à exercer leur jugement pratique et former leur intention face aux circonstances changeantes indépendamment des croyances. English Translation : [Most contemporary readings of the Essays ignore Montaigne’s moral thought. In this paper, I assert that Montaigne espouses ‘a modest ethics’ at the same time that he rejects all normative ethical systems. Specifically, I seek to address how Montaigne suggests that we can know virtue and act if no two individuals share the same epistemological position and an individual can never be the same ethical subject twice. I will argue that Montaigne denies human knowledge of metaphysical universals and in this regard resembles medieval nominalists, who held that humans only know individuals and particular instances a posteriori. I will demonstrate that Montaigne’s epistemological modesty influences his ethical position, as he repudiates our capacity to identify an a priori good or a télos to which we should all strive. Because I think that this negative aspect of the Essays does not lead to moral nihilism, I will explore how Montaigne draws and departs from classical thinkers, specifically the Skeptics, in order to fashion an empirical method with the individual ethical subject at its center. I will show how the study of experience outlined in the Essays helps the moral subject to make practical judgments and form intentions with regard to particular circumstances, independently of belief.]