In the 16th century Montaigne observed the ethnocentrism of his compatriots:
Once out of their villages, they feel like fish out of water. Wherever they go they cling to their ways and curse foreign ones. If they come across a fellow-countryman… they celebrate the event… With a morose and taciturn prudence they travel about wrapped up in their cloaks and protecting themselves from the contagion of an unknown clime.
Commenting on perceptions of indigenous peoples in South America, he remarked:
Every man calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to; we have no other criterion of truth or right-reason than the example and form of the opinions and customs of our own country. There we always find the perfect religion, the perfect polity, the most developed and perfect way of doing anything!
Montaigne approved of Socrates’ response who, when asked where he came from, “did not say ‘From Athens’, but ‘From the world.’”
Montaigne also had 57 inscriptions painted on the beams of his library ceiling. One was a citation from Terence:
Homo sum, humani a me nihil alienum puto.
I am a man, nothing human is foreign to me.
Source: Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy, 132, 135, 142, 145.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-CJ-YmDU9I&feature=related
Posted April 15, 2011
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December 19th, 2011 at 4:17 pm
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