Montaigne’s equanimity

Posted on August 22, 2025 by Peter

Michel de Montaigne famously imagined that he could learn not to mind dying. After all, there is no rational reason to fear not existing, nor to regret that you won’t still be alive in 100 years, for you weren’t alive a century ago. But if we are not going to fear death when we meet it, then there is no reason to fear it now. By imagining that we will face death without fear and working back from our last day to the present, we can remove distress.

As Montaigne says, no soul is “at rest so long as it fears death,” but if the soul can remove that fear, “then it can boast something almost surpassing the human condition: anxiety, torment, fear, and displeasure can no longer lodge in it” [1.20, my translation].

In this early essay, “To Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die,” Montaigne canvasses many arguments against the fear of death. Nevertheless, the general air is of a person who is indeed anxious about dying, and whose everyday experience is colored by that fear. He seems to be clinging to logical arguments that are not really changing his state of mind.

Montaigne’s last essay, “Of Experience,” revisits the same topic in a spirit of greater equanimity, even though the author is old and close to his real death. Here he suggests that he has absorbed the arguments against fearing death and has made them part of his character:

Yet I am prepared to lose life without regret, as something that is losable by its very nature, not as something that is annoying and troublesome. Besides, only for those who delight in living is it appropriate to dislike dying.

There is a certain housekeeping involved involved in enjoying life; I enjoy it twice as much as others do, for the degree of enjoyment depends on the amount that we apply ourselves to it. Especially at this hour, when I perceive my life to be so brief, I want to extend its weight; I want to arrest the promptness of its flight by the promptness of my senses, and to compensate for the hastiness of its passing by the vigor of its use: since my possession of life is shorter, I must make it deeper and fuller.

Others feel the sweetness of contentment and prosperity; I feel the sweetness as they do, but not as something passing and slipping away. Also, we must study, savor, and ruminate on life to give appropriate thanks to the One who grants it to us.

Other people enjoy all pleasures as they do the pleasures of sleep, without knowing them. So that even sleep might not escape me so stupidly, I have sometimes found it good to have my sleep disturbed so that I can catch a glimpse of it.

I consult with myself about my own contentment, I do not skim over it. When I have become sorrowful and disgusted, I probe that state and bend my reason to meditate on it. Or do I find myself in some tranquil setting? Is there some pleasure that tickles me? I do not let myself be swindled by my senses, I associate my soul with it, not to engage in it, but to agree with it, not to lose myself in it, but to find myself there; and I let my soul see itself reflected in this state of thriving, to weigh and estimate its good fortune, and to amplify it. [Montaigne 3.12 (“Of experience”)]

If, as a young man, Montaigne had known that he would later achieve equanimity, then he would have known that he didn’t have to fear death in the present. Unfortunately for him, he could only advocate equanimity, not predict that he would achieve it until he actually did (or at least, so he claims).

If the sky were seen for the first time

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Peter

Now give us your true mind, turn to reason.
A new thing is trying to reach your ears 
To reveal itself to you in novel forms.
But nothing is so simple that it is not
At first hard to believe, nor any marvel 
So great that we don’t soon forget our wonder.

The sky’s clear and pure color, so restrained,
The stars shining everywhere, the moon,
And the splendid brightness of the sun’s light— 
If all this were suddenly, for the first time,
Unexpectedly revealed to mortals,
What could be called more miraculous than this,
Not less than what nations had dared to believe?

Nothing, I think; this scene would compel wonder.
We’re so tired of seeing, we don’t care to look up
To the resplendent temples of heaven.
Stop being terrified by this novelty
Stop spitting reason out of your mind.
Rather weigh it with sharp judgment, and if it seems true
Give it assent, or, if not, fight against it. 

For the mind seeks reason, and the highest place 
Is infinitely beyond the walls of this world. 
What is there beyond, where the mind wishes to look,
Where the free-thrown spirit itself can fly?

This is an excerpt from Lucretius (2.1023-46), which I found because Montaigne quotes the second part of it in his essay “It is Madness to Base True and False on our Self-Confidence” (1.27). My translation of this Latin text. Stephen Batchelor also discusses this passage (in his translation) in The Art of Solitude (Yale University Press, 2020), p. 42.

learning from the Great Salt March: on civil disobedience and breaking through to mass opinion

Posted on August 15, 2025 by Peter

Erica Chenoweth, Soha Hammam, Jeremy Pressman, and Christopher Wiley Shay estimate that the No Kings protests this June were among the largest in American history, and the number of protests is growing faster than in 2017 (see the graph above).

Protesting has several purposes, including advertising a movement and recruiting people to take other actions. But protests can also influence people to change their views or behavior. For example, they can convert people who disagree or motivate people who are passive (Bayard Rustin 1965).

Inevitably, the vast majority of any protest’s audience does not observe it directly. People see it through media of various kinds. That was even true during the French Revolution (Jones 2021), and more so in an era of mass communications. It is critical whether and how media organizations (and nowadays, social media users) describe protests (Wasow, 2020).

For those protesting against Trump, two current challenges are: 1) neglect and 2) backlash. Some prominent voices in the media seem not to notice that protests are happening, which may reduce their impact. And many powerful media outlets misrepresent protesters. For example, right-wing media obsessively presented Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests as violent, when data show that they were not, and this contributed to a very tangible backlash. BLM demanded reductions in police budgets, but the presence of BLM protests was associated with increases in police budgets (Ebbinghaus, Bailey & Rubel 2024).

The power of media can be discouraging, especially given the splintered and ideologically polarized media landscape and the prevalence of media outlets that are outright hostile to resistance.

However, protest events can break through if they are skillfully designed (and perhaps a bit lucky).

Consider the apex moment of Gandhi’s career as a protest leader, the Great Salt March of 1930.

Before he launched the March, the Indian independence movement was struggling, and Gandhi was struggling against rivals who included religious sectarians, Marxists, and violent revolutionaries. The media that mattered to him (Indian and foreign) was polarized by ideology, language, and ethnicity and was widely hostile to him.

Gandhi chose to march to the sea to harvest salt because that action would dramatize the evils of imperialism, provoke police action, acknowledge the needs of poor Indians for whom salt was expensive, and turn salt itself into a powerful symbol.

When Gandhi set off on foot with a rather small group, press reports were dismissive and patronizing. The Statesman newspaper of Calcutta called the march “a childishly futile business,” and the Times of India defended the government’s salt monopoly as good for the poor. In the USA, TIME Magazine mocked Gandhi’s “spindly frame” and called his wife Kasturba, “a shriveled, little middle-aged Hindu.” (I quote these and the following snippets from Guha 2018.)

But the scale of the march and the brutality of the police response at the shore broke through. TIME switched to describing Gandhi as a statesman and even as “St. Gandhi,” whose “movement for independence” uses “Christian acts as a weapon against men with Christian beliefs.” Perhaps not all the world’s coverage was favorable, but most of the media switched from viewing Gandhi as a bit of a joke to taking him very seriously indeed. He was back at the head of the Independence movement, which now had momentum.

I am not saying that we need a new Gandhi. Centralized leadership is overrated (even in the Indian independence movement). The way to achieve a breakthrough today is to try many tactics in a decentralized way until one or more of them work. But all of us can learn from the Great Salt March, particularly:

Innovation: We always need new forms of civil disobedience. Harvesting salt illegally on a public beach was an innovation in 1930. Protesting at Tesla showrooms was an innovation in 2025. What’s next? (Right now, I am wondering about a march of many religious congregations from the National Cathedral toward Lafayette Square.)
Grassroots support: Gandhi would have lost humiliatingly except that thousands of people joined him on his march. The cost of salt resonated with poor Indians (as did his leadership, of course). The question is not which issue is most important, but what gets many people involved.
A focus on the audience. It is always hard for social movements to think rigorously about how outsiders will receive their messages, because they disagree with the outsiders! Activists are not obliged to change their goals to cater to public opinion, but they must consider perceptions. What will “Normies” think about our protest? That may sometimes be an annoying question, yet victory depends on answering it well.

See also: the state of nonviolent grassroots resistance; features of effective boycotts; how to engage our universities in this crisis etc. Sources: Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement” Commentary (February, 1965); Colin Jones, The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris (Oxford University Press, 2021); Omar Wasow, “Agenda seeding: How 1960s black protests moved elites, public opinion and voting,” American Political Science Review 114.3 (2020): 638-659; Mathis Ebbinghaus, Nathan Bailey & Jacob Rubel, “The Effect of the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests on Police Budgets: How ‘Defund the Police’ Sparked Political Backlash, “ Social Problems, 2024, spae004, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spae004; Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The years that changed the world, 1914-1948 (Vintage, 2018).

Embracing Difficult Conversations

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Peter

This is a recording of the plenary session entitled Embracing Difficult Conversations: The Intersection of Ethics and Civics Education at the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) conference in June.

The panelists were: Sarah Stitzlein, University of Cincinnati; Winston C. Thompson, the Casto Professor at The Ohio State University; Jana Mohr Lone, PLATO; Allison Cohen, a teacher at Langley High School in McLean, VA; and me. Debi Talukdar moderated.

Sarah Stitzlein reported on conversations with conservative critics of controversial issues in schools. She suggested some responses to their concerns: Ground discussions in American principles, such as the tension between equality and liberty. Use historical rather than current examples. Delay the most contested discussions until students are older. Let students lead. And emphasize the purpose of living well together, finding common ground while respecting differences.

Winston Thompson discussed the common phenomenon of individuals being given too much or too little credibility or being misunderstood because of their perceived identity. (For instance, an immigrant from a given country could be treated as if her view of that country was definitive or else discounted on the assumption that she must be biased.) The practical steps that Winston recommended included setting norms for addressing identities, allowing people to opt out of “representing” a group, taking responsibility for imbalances in credibility, and teaching about such challenges as part of civics education.

Janna Mohr Lone described listening as an ethical orientation, not just a skill; it means giving full attention to another person. It requires receptivity, curiosity, and open-heartedeness. Among her practical tips: Allow long pauses so quieter voices emerge. Avoid the “ping-pong” when the teacher answers each student, and instead encourage students to respond o each other.

Alison Cohen spoke from extensive experience as a classroom teacher. She noted that reasons and arguments rarely change minds; fear and anger often underlie our positions. Instead of asking students what they’re angry about, she often asks “What are you concerned about?”—a question that helps uncover core values. She acknowledges students’ legitimate concerns without insincerely agreeing with them. She shifts discussions toward shared philosophical questions, often linked to Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity). Her background in ethics and political philosophy allows her to frame these concerns productively without formally teaching philosophy. She encourages listening for understanding first, rather than searching for flaws to attack, and helps clarify students’ points to reduce misunderstanding and fear of speaking.

Thanks to my co-panelists, it was a rich and insightful conversation with much relevance for practice.

Trump: personalist leader or representative of a right-wing movement?

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Peter

Here are two frameworks for analyzing Trump and MAGA. Although elements of both could be true, they are not fully compatible. More importantly, they suggest quite different responses.

MAGA is an ethnonationalist right-wing movement with considerable popular support (although less than a solid majority), a base of local organizations, and deep roots in American history (Smith 1999). Donald Trump is the current national leader of this movement, but it will outlast him. The movement uses many conventional methods, such as winning elections and passing legislation through the legislature. It also plays hardball and violates rules and norms, but that is not a definitive trait. In fact, the center-left has also used similar behavior at times. Ethnonationalist right-wing movements are common around the world today. Some are led by charismatic figures, but that is not especially true of AfD in Germany, for instance. Their common characteristic is their ideology.
Trump is a personalist or patrimonialist leader. Today’s personalists around the world include right-wing, left-wing, and technocratic leaders, and many are ideologically flexible. In essence, they are charismatic leaders whose followers owe their power to the leader and who trample rival power centers in the civil service, other branches and levels of government, the media, and civil society (Frantz et al.). In personalist parties, the grassroots is almost entirely passive; power is centralized. Insofar as today’s personalists share a philosophy, it is populist-authoritarianism, or perhaps Bonapartism–identifying the authentic people with a single “strong” leader.

If you apply the ideological framework, then your response to Trump will vary depending on your ideology. If you’re on the left, you’ll want to build a more popular and effective progressive alternative. You may welcome defectors from the right, but you will be suspicious of them if they remain conservative. If you’re conservative but not MAGA, you may see some value in some of Trump’s positions and suspect that liberal elites are biased against him. If your main concern is polarization, then you may recommend cross-partisan dialogue and favor a centrist response.

On the other hand, if you apply the personalist framework, then you may be attracted to the solution that seems to work in other countries–a broad-based coalition in defense of constitutional limits and against the charismatic leader. This coalition should have a modest economic and social agenda and focus instead on challenging the authoritarian leader.

I suppose my own view is that Trump is a personalist authoritarian who taps into a robust right-wing ethnonationalist movement, just as other personalists use locally popular ideologies (Hindtuva, Chavismo) in their respective countries. This means that I would endorse strategies that challenge Trump as a personalist as well as ideological opposition from the left and center-left. However, I am not sure the same people and organizations can do both at the same time.

See also: democracy’s crisis: a system map (a revised version to appear in Studies in Law, Politics and Society); what is the basis of a political judgment?. Citations: Smith, Rogers M. Civic ideals: Conflicting visions of citizenship in US history. Yale University Press, 1997; Frantz, E., Kendall-Taylor, A., Wright, “Why Trump’s control of the Republican Party is bad for democracy,” The Conversation, Jan 30, 2024.

Friends and Fellow Citizens podcast

Posted on August 4, 2025 by Peter

This is a recent conversation with host Sherman Tylawsky, a political science PhD student at the University of Alabama, my friend Harry Boyte, and me.

In the 1960s, Harry worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a field secretary with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and we have known each other since the late 1980s, workeing together on such efforts as the National Commission on Civic Renewal, the early years of CIRCLE, and the formation of Civic Studies.

In this podcast, Sherman interviews Harry and me about civic education and civic life.

what I’m reading

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Peter

I am blogging a bit lightly this month, partly because I have wanted to reserve time for relatively sustained reading, mostly in two areas.

First, I am planning a new course on the life and thought of Hannah Arendt. To that end, I have been rereading a lot of her own work and reading some of her articles for the first time. I also reviewed Elizabeth Young-Bruehl’s landmark biography (1982) and recent biographies by Samantha Rose Hill (2021) and Lyndsey Stonebridge (2024), plus many interpretive articles, old and new.

I really admire Young-Bruehl’s biography. She misses some information that has come to light in the 44 years since she published it, but she summarizes Arendt’s ideas and the work of other thinkers reliably and insightfully and paints a vivid portrait of her subject.

I am struggling to appreciate The Origins of Totalitarianism as much as I did when I first read it, notwithstanding my deep appreciation for Arendt’s political theory. At least on its face, this is a work of empirical, narrative history, and it includes many claims that don’t seem empirically right to me.

Just for example, Arendt views racism as basically a 19th century phenomenon and largely ignores transatlantic slavery. I can understand that racism took a new form in the 1800s, and I agree that it became more of an ideology then. (Arendt defines ideologies as “systems based upon a single opinion that proved strong enough to attract and persuade a majority of people and broad enough to lead them through the various experiences and situations of an average modern life.”) In his 2017 history of 19th century Britain, David Cannadine also emphasizes that racism hardened into an ideology in the later Victorian Era. Still, Arendt’s overall argument is distorted by a failure to address slavery.

I also wonder whether Arendt’s historical scholarship on European Jewry holds up. It is a little hard to tell, because Origins of Totalitarianism has been cited almost 30,000 times, and I haven’t found needles of historical scholarship in that haystack of political theory. Meanwhile, when I scan histories of Jewry, she does not appear as a source.

Second, I have collected my own writing about the inner life and personal ethics in an evolving collection called Cuttings: Ninety-Nine Essays About Happiness. Reviewing this collection when I prepared to present about happiness in Kyiv in June, I realized that Montaigne is really my model, and I interpret him as a kind of Skeptic in the tradition of the ancient Greek Skeptical School, except that Montaigne adds empathy for others’ suffering. I explored how this combination resembles Buddhism here.

My attraction to this way of thinking about ethics dates back to my 1998 book, Living Without Philosophy. With an eye to writing at least an article about Montaigne-style Skepticism, I have been reading and appreciating Richard Bett’s How to Be a Pyrrhonist (2019), Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne (2010), and some texts by Sextus, Plutarch and Montaigne himself.

what a Democrat could do with Trump’s power

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Peter

In the Atlantic, Paul Rosenzweig asks what a Democratic president could do with the unilateral executive powers that the Supreme Court seems willing to grant Trump–assuming that the “Court acts in good faith—that its views on presidential power are without partisan favor, and that it doesn’t arbitrarily invent carve-outs to rein in a Democratic president.”

As Rosenzweig notes, a Democrat would want to rebuild or build things, whereas Trump’s new powers mostly involve canceling or blocking things. Therefore, a Democrat would have a harder job than Trump has. Rosenzweig also notes that it will be a challenge to fill vacant positions that are authorized by statute. “Firing experts is much easier than hiring them. And given the uncertainties that Trump has created, our best and brightest might not willingly take positions in the federal government. Who wants a job that might last only four years?”

I would add that any president must refrain from crossing certain ethical lines, regardless of what the courts may rule. For example, selecting individuals to be prosecuted violates the rule of law; the government should only investigate alleged crimes, not choose people as targets for legal action. No politician should decide ex ante to prosecute Elon Musk or Steven Miller or any other individual.

But I think Rosenzweig somewhat underestimates the opportunities for the next administration. Here are four:

Rebuilding the civil service

Hiring federal workers will be a challenge, but a worthy one. Yes, the Trump cuts have unjustly ended careers and caused massive damage. At the same time, the federal civil service has long suffered from a severe problem of generational replacement, hiring far too few young people. This is one reason that some federal agencies and offices have been sclerotic and ineffective. To attract young and talented people into federal service will require leadership. We should expect that from our next president. The result could be a better executive branch.

(Yes, federal jobs are less secure, now that the president seems to have the right to lay off civil servants; but government positions are at least as secure as jobs in the private sector.)

Restoring accountability

Although the rule of law does not permit selecting individuals for prosecution, it requires accountability. The difference lies in process. The next administration could create commissions, offices, and/or tribunals that investigate corruption and illegality without fear or favor. Individuals and organizations that allege that they were abused by the Biden Administration or its predecessors could come forward, not just those with complaints against Trump and his people. The White House would have no say in the decisions.

It would be worth considering a Truth and Reconciliation model.
In addition to investigating crimes, the administration could investigate federal employees and contractors and terminate those who crossed ethical lines–with due process. Companies that gave things of value to Trump would also be at risk of bribery charges.
It would be worth trying to waive sovereign immunity so that aggrieved parties could sue the government for damages. There is no question that the Trump Administration has intentionally caused costly harms. (And possibly previous administration did so as well.) I am not sure whether courts would allow plaintiffs to sue without Congressional approval. But it would be worth testing a strategy of unilaterally waiving the sovereign immunity defense.

Judicious cuts

There are pieces of the federal government that a responsible center-left or progressive administration should cut by fiat, using the powers that Trump has accumulated. For example, I would consider zeroing out Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) within ICE. The benefits would far exceed any disadvantages.

Leverage

A responsible president of any party should not fire people or cut spending just to achieve political objectives. For example, a responsible president should not threaten to fire all the federal workers in a district unless its representative votes with the administration. That would harm innocent workers and clients.

However, leverage can be used more judiciously. Terminating all positions in Enforcement and Removal Operations would be a net benefit for the public; it could also be a bargaining chip in negotiations about immigration reform. A president could even threaten to relocate federal jobs of certain types out of specific districts. For example, there are nearly 1,000 Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), 50 federal Rural Development State Offices, and more than 360 IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs). Maybe a Member of Congress would like those to leave his district? Or would the Member prefer to vote “aye” on the president’s bill?

I am not sure I want this kind of president. There is a risk that playing hardball with the new presidential powers would further degrade constitutional norms. But perhaps such leverage would be ethical if the proposed legislation were valuable and the collateral damage were strictly limited.

Going beyond specific bills, I would consider proposing a grand bargain. We need a much stronger and more capable Congress, a more resilient civil service, and a more rule-bound presidency. Since the courts are responsible for unleashing the president, laws won’t suffice to change the balance; we probably need constitutional amendments. I could see a progressive or center-left president saying: “Pass these amendments and limit my discretion. Meanwhile, I will use my unilateral powers to the full.”

A raft of ambitious policies would be a success. A restored constitutional balance would be a success. And it might be possible to get one followed by the other.

The Day of My Life

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Peter

I wish I did not have that human wish,
The wish that today were a different day,
But the wish that pours forth in the song of a bird:
“May it be this same day, so may it be.”

No, a bird sings not to say but to be.
It grants a wish just by being heard.
I wish I didn’t want the day to stay
Or change. I should, like the bird, just be.

(Responding to Randall Jarrell’s “A Man Meets a Woman in the Street,” with Keats’ nightingale also in mind.)

what causes works to be used in college courses?

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Peter

I just read a valuable forthcoming article about bias in college syllabi. I don’t want to “scoop” that piece and won’t address its claims here. It did get me thinking more broadly about why some texts are widely assigned in college courses.

Fashion: When I was a humanities-oriented undergraduate in the 1980s, it seemed as if every professor assigned Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935). I don’t hear much about that book these days, and other texts are more fashionable. Such changes presumably reflect shifts among intellectuals as well as prominent developments in the world. For instance, Benjamin’s book seemed prescient when culture was first turning digital but may now seem dated.
Ideological proclivities: Individual professors tend to prefer to assign works that they agree with. I recognize that many of my colleagues intentionally choose texts that they would criticize, but I am asserting that there is some degree of bias in the whole population of professors, with variations by discipline. By the way, a proclivity is not a bias if it’s reflective, acknowledged, and open to change. The main concern is unconscious bias.
Genre and style: It is much easier to use a text that is addressed to a general reader and aims to interest people in the topic and influence their behavior, rather than a text that is written for academic colleagues and meant to contribute to a literature. One issue is jargon (specialized terminology), but some jargony works are widely assigned anyway. I think the main issue is the purpose of the work. If it aims to influence a public audience, it is more likely to be assigned.
Marketing, broadly defined: Like everyone else, academics are influenced by marketing. I am not thinking of the deliberate advertising and promotion of specific academic books, because those investments are very modest. I am thinking about the difference between any academic book and a mass-market paperback that is sold in bookstores and reviewed in The New York Times. The latter will be used in more courses. By the way, ideological bias could be relevant here, but it would be the bias of commercial publishers and mass-circulation journals, not academics.
Personal branding: Some authors, including some professors, turn themselves into recognizable personalities. Nowadays, that means that they are prominent on broadcast and social media, and they exemplify a particular position or perspective. Academics quickly think of their works when deciding what to assign.
Hedgehogs, not foxes: When you’re designing a syllabus, you often want texts that clearly and directly represent a particular view, even if you are also looking for contrary views. For instance, in teaching 20th century political philosophy last spring, I wanted to include fascist texts. This was certainly not an endorsement; I just thought that we should analyze their views. I went looking for clear expressions of fascism, not subtle or equivocal arguments. I assigned a speech by Mussolini (probably ghost-written by Gentile). I did not end up using Heidegger’s 1933 “Rector’s Address” because it’s too complicated and addresses too many things at once. Authors and individual texts are more attractive if they say one thing clearly (like the proverbial hedgehog) rather than many things with various qualifications and complexities (like the fox). Therefore, our syllabi fill up with works by “hedgehogs.”

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