individual and self in the late renaissance

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The Historical Journal , , (), pp. – Printed in the United Kingdom

# Cambridge University Press

I NDI VI DU A L A ND SELF I N T H E LA T E

RENA I SSA NC E

G E O F F B A L D W I N

Christ ’s College, Cambridge

. This article argues that many traditional historical narratives of individualism have

been reproduced in more recent discussions of the self and selfhood , and that attempts to discover a point

at which the ‘ modern ’ self came into existence have been hampered by such assumptions . To provide

an alternative to these approaches, discussions of the self in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth

centuries will be examined . Eschewing overarching narratives, the discussion will focus on how neo-

stoic sources were employed in the context of challenges to traditional forms of the humanist ethics of

office-holding. Such ideas, important in writers like Montaigne, Pierre Charron, and William

Cornwallis, have been associated with an idea of ‘ new humanism ’, but this article aims to discuss

with precision how they relate to early modern ethical discussion . Here an insight can be gained into

a particular philosophical development of the idea of the self . This can be more productive than some

recent ‘ new historicist ’, or sociological , approaches to the literature of this period , which tend to thedeconstruction of a particular set of sources through the use of the self as a theoretical heuristic .

I

Twentieth-century scholarship of the early modern, or Renaissance, period has

been dominated by a notion of individualism. After Max Weber posited a linkbetween Protestantism and capitalism at the beginning of the twentieth

century, individualism became the focus of much attention from those whowanted to explain what was distinctive about the modern social and politicalworld. The emergence of an individualist society was, for many social

historians, the process by which the modern, as opposed to the medieval, came

into being. Individualism was linked to capitalism, liberalism, and an incipientindustrial revolution, these three together breaking out of a medieval andreligious consensus. This trajectory fitted well with the stories that historians on

the right, and the followers of Marx, both wished to tell."

" Max Weber, The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism , trans. T. Parsons (London, ).R. H. Tawney followed similar lines, focusing on the retreat of theological influence uponeconomic affairs, where the impersonal market was the realm for individual enterprise; R. H.Tawney, Religion and the rise of capitalism (London, ). H. M. Robertsonquestioned the explicitlyProtestant nature of capitalism, focusing more clearly upon individualist tendencies within societywhich forced changes in both Catholic and Protestant theology and morals; H. M. Robertson,Aspects of the rise of economic individualism (Cambridge, ). Alan Macfarlane argued that Englishsociety, uniquely in Europe, had been individualist from at least the thirteenth century, creatingideal conditions for an industrial revolution; Alan Macfarlane, The origins of English individualism

(Oxford, ).



In literary and artistic criticism a similar trajectory was being forged, which

drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the unity of particular eras in historyand the emergence of a valuation of autonomy. Jacob Burckhardt argued thatindividuals only became aware of themselves separately from a general

category during the Italian Renaissance. His view has not gone unchallenged,but the lineaments of his arguments remain a powerful influence on

Renaissance scholarship.# Ernst Cassirer focused on the philosophical side tosuch a trajectory.$ Historians of philosophy and political theory often accepted

this picture, supplying histories of thought which showed how a developingindividualism shaped philosophy and ideas from the seventeenth centuryonwards.% Through their view of the early modern period, these writers

participated in the wider debates between liberalism and socialism thatdominated the twentieth century.

Latterly, the emphasis of historical debate has moved away from such issues.This is in part because social historians have focused more closely on questions

of community and the exercise of power which compromised the image of anew era of individual, or bourgeois, liberty coming into being. Historians of political thought have also moved toward an appreciation of the variety of

#Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (Basle, ), trans. S. G. Middlemore as

The civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (London, ). Burckhardt himself famously later becamesceptical of this aspect of his description of Renaissance culture, but this did not detract from itsinfluence. On Burckhardt see Felix Gilbert, History, politics or culture?: reflections on Ranke and

Burckhardt (Princeton, NJ, ); Lionel Gossman, ‘Cultural history and crisis: Burckhardt’sCivilization of the Renaissance in Italy ’, in Michael S. Roth, ed., Rediscovering history: culture, politics and

the psyche (Stanford, ), pp. – ; for earlier followers, see Norman Nelson, ‘Individual as acriterion of the Renaissance’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, (), pp. – ; onhisindebtedness to Hegel, see Ernst Gombrich, In search of cultural history (Oxford, ), pp. –.

$ Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der philosophie der Renaissance (Berlin, ), trans.M. Domandi as The individual and the cosmos in Renaissance philosophy (Oxford, ). On Cassirer, seeWalter Eggers, Ernst Cassirer: an annotated bibliography (New York, ); Cassirer’s position as aneo-Kantian makes one wonder to what extent Kant’s notion of autonomy has been written backinto an earlier period. Richard Tuck has argued that Kant’s rewriting of the history of ethics ledto the denigrating of Grotius and other natural law thinkers of the seventeenth century: Philosophy

and government (Cambridge, ), p. xv. A modern example is J. B. Schneewind, The invention of

autonomy: a history of modern moral philosophy (Cambridge, ), which rewrites the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moral thought as leading to Kantian ideas of autonomy. TheRenaissance, and certainly any late Renaissance developments, are eclipsed by the need toconform to this trajectory.

% C. B. Macpherson moulded seventeenth-century thinkers as diverse as the Levellers andHobbes into a schema which portrayed the seventeenth century as the time when politics adapteditself to, and eventually guaranteed, individualism; C. B. Macpherson, The political theory of

possessive individualism (Oxford, ). TheMarxist assumptions of hisapproachare more explicitlystated in C. B. Macpherson, Democratic theory: essays in retrieval (Oxford, ). J. A. W. Gunnargued that the idea of public interest served to capture state power for the individual; J. A. W.Gunn, Politics and the public interest in the seventeenth century (London, ). Albert Hirschmanregarded developments in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century philosophy andpsychology as validating the potential social worth of individual passion over abstract reason.Albert Hirschman, The passions and the interests (Princeton, NJ, ). Richard Tuck has arguedthat the development of a coherent idea of subjective natural rights was one of the most significantphilosophical achievements of the seventeenth century: Natural rights theories (Cambridge, ).



discourses that can exist within a society, and gained a greater awareness of the

dangers of following, in a necessarily anachronistic way, the development oremergence of an idea.& There has, however, been a development of a newsubject of inquiry closely analogous to individualism. This has been apparent

in literary studies, especially the more historicized parts thereof, as well as insocial histories of the early modern period.

This subject, the self , has the same chronological parameters, and coversmuch of the same ground as did individualism. Writers of both social and

cultural history have turned from the individual to the self while preservingmany of the structures of the former discussion. The heirs of Weber haveemployed the idea of the self as a way of investigating what was significant

about the literature or society of the past. Indeed, it is the starting point forsome of the most significant modern contributions to social analysis. Anthony

Giddens regards the reflexive creation of a self-identity as the subject to bestudied, and the post-traditional order of modernity to be the context in which

that endeavour changes its nature.' Roy Porter regards the self as an importantpart of any historical understanding of the nature and functioning of language.(

Charles Taylor, attempting a philosophical understanding of modernity from

another direction, argues that the modern sense of self is the most important

ethical achievement of Western thought.)The notion of a self or selves as aspects of a text, fictional or otherwise, has

become the focus for much attention from literary critics. Those who have

approached such questions have built on ideas of individualism, and have alsoappropriated sociological and historical approaches. Writing in , PatriciaMeyer Spacks examined the analogues between two emergent genres in the

eighteenth century: the autobiography and the novel, most often written in theform of autobiography.* Questions of authenticity, persuasion, and the nature

of selfhood were, she argues, common to both. More recently, MichaelMascuch has attempted to trace the development of an idea of self through

autobiographical writing from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century."!

& For instance, as a corrective to Macpherson, John Dunn has emphasized the theological

background to the thought of Locke: John Dunn, The political thought of John Locke (Cambridge,). John Pocock has resurrected those elements of the thought of the American revolution thatcould not be regarded as being beholden to Locke, or a caricature of his individualism, as aprogenitor: J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian moment (Princeton, NJ, ).

' Anthony Giddens, Modernity and self -identity: self and society in the late modern age (Cambridge,). Giddens of course is inspired by and builds upon the work of Durkheim and Weber, whoseindividualist thesis was so influential earlier in the century.

( Roy Porter, ‘Expressing yourself ill: the language of sickness in Georgian England’, in PeterBurke and Roy Porter, eds., Language, self and society (Cambridge, ), pp. –. Other essaysin this volume by Daniel Rosenburg and G. S. Rousseau are also of interest.

) Charles Taylor, The sources of the self: the making of modern identity (Cambridge, ).* Patrica Meyer Spacks, Imagining a self: autobiography and novel in eighteenth-century England

(Cambridge, MA, )."! Michael Mascuch, Origins of the individualist self: autobiography and self -identity in England ,

– (Cambridge, ). Mascuch attempts to occupy the difficult space between socialhistory and textual criticism. See also Paul Delany, British autobiography in the seventeenth century



His work is marked by a debt to modern social theory, and a reluctance to

designate anything as true autobiography until the terminus ad quem of hisstudy – James Lackington’s Memoirs of . The changes wrought by Ro-manticism obviously had a great effect upon the nature of literary reflexivity,

and may well be thought to have pushed the self to the centre of literaryinquiry, but it is in studiesconcerned with the centuries before this that the idea

of the self is used most consistently as a hermeneutic device.""

One of the most influential critics of Renaissance literature has been Stephen

Greenblatt, who saw a wide variety of texts, from More to Shakespeare, asbeing attempts to construct selves that could function in a literary and fictionalsphere."# Greenblatt’s methodological basis in twentieth-century critical

Marxism, such as that of Althusser, means that the conception of a developingindividualist, or bourgeois, consciousness dominates his criticism. He writes of

More and Shakespeare as Macpherson wrote of Hobbes and Locke, the self inliterary production replacing the individual in political writing. For him, the

literature of the period is characterized by the creation of literary selves.Earlier, Joan Webber had described the seventeenth century as one in whichthe consideration of self defined literary style."$ Paul Oppenheimer went so far

as to equate a certain sense of self with the modern mind, and to locate the

development of such in the thirteenth century, when Giacomo da Lentinoinvented the sonnet at the court of Frederick II."%

It seems that for scholars the inspiration for focusing on the self is very similar

to that for attempting to demonstrate the rise of somethingcalledindividualism.Both phenomena have their apotheosis after the French and Romanticrevolutions, and both are threatened by postmodernity or postindustrialism.

(London, ). Autobiography, as an essentially private form of writing, has received attentionfrom feminist critics: Shari Benstock,ed., The private self: theory and practice of women’s autobiographical

writings (London, ); Felicity A. Nussbaum, The autobiographical subject: gender and ideology in

eighteenth-century England (Baltimore, ). These titles are in themselves revealing, the self inquestion often being designated as private, as opposed to public, or linked with the individualism

that so exercised earlier writers."" Mascuch’s distinction between autobiography and autobiographical textuality becomes

somewhat strained by thestarkness of thearrival of true autobiography at theend of theeighteenthcentury. John Lyons goes to some lengths to argue that Montaigne could not count as expressinga sense of self, which could only come after the French Revolution had dissolved the constraints of the past. John O. Lyons, The invention of the self: the hinge of consciousness in the eighteenth century

(Carbondale, )."# Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance self - fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, ). Maus

has identified many critics in the New-Historicist mould who deny the possibility of a real inwardlife in the Renaissance period, instead regarding the individual as entirely constructed inter-subjectively; Katherine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness and theatre in the English Renaissance (Chicago,).

"$ Joan Webber, The eloquent ‘ I ’ : style and self in seventeenth-century prose (Madison, Milwaukee,).

"% Paul Oppenheimer, The birth of the modern mind: self , consciousness and the invention of the sonnet

(Oxford, ).



The ideological outlook of both sets of scholars is often similar. It may be

possible, however, to introduce some greater degree of subtlety into the grandliterary narratives that have dominated studies of the period, and at the sametime contribute to more historical debates on the nature of humanism.

For the historian of philosophy or political thought, it is somewhat difficultto know how to contribute to this inquiry into what seems to be a curiously

persistent way of looking at the early modern period. Methodologically, thereis a reluctance to employ the idea of the self as a tool to unlock the structure

either of texts, or of social practices, which do not themselves use such aconcept. To examine how languages and discourses themselves were employedand adapted, to make sense of and influence the world, should be the goal of the

intellectual historian. There is, however, a clear context for the employment of such techniques. At the end of the sixteenth century, some writers and political

thinkers began to approach problems of rhetoric and personal political actionin a corrupt world. The solutions they found often used the idea of something

called the self , which they sometimes rendered as a noun, something whichcould be spoken of as an object for the first time. Those developments that tookplace on the continent were quickly absorbed into English Renaissance writing

through translation and direct influence on native writers. It seems that there

was a ready audience for such ideas, and that they represented a developmentof which not sufficient account has been taken in Renaissance studies. It ispossible to identify a stage in thinking or writing about the self which is not

identifiable with the Renaissance as a whole, nor indeed with later eighteenth-century developments in thinking about autonomy and reflexivity.

Such an approach could help solve conceptual problems created by the

intrusion of eighteenth-century ideas into later approaches to the Renaissance,which still blurs distinctions important to an accurate story. This article aims

to examine the sources and structure of a different set of ideas, which do not lieprimarily in the realm of economics or literature, but in that of politics and

public service."& It is the ethical and political discussions of those in Britain and

"&Another obvious place to look for ideas about the individual and self is in religiousdiscourses,and one strand of thinking about the individual is focused upon the individual’s relationship with

the divine. However, it seems to me that the reflexivity encouraged by religious feeling is of adifferent order to that which I am discussing, as the self-examination was with specific reference todivine providence, and the possible place of that individual within the divine plan. On Protestantthought in this area, see William Haller, The rise of puritanism (New York, ); Herbert WallaceSchneider, The puritan mind (Ann Arbor, MI, ); Edmund S. Morgan, Visible saints: the history

of a puritan idea (New York, ). On the Catholic versions, Henri Bremmond, Histoire litteTraire du

sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin de la guerre de religion jusqu ’a Z nos jours ( vols., Paris, –),vols. – ; John Bossy, The English Catholic community, – (London, ), pp. – ; Rene !Taveneaux, Catholicisme dans la France Classique, – (Paris, ), pp. – ; LouisCha # tellier, The Europe of the devout , trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, ), pp. – ; JeanDelumeau, Rassurer et proteT ger: le sentiment de seTcuriteT dans l ’occident d ’autrefois (Paris, ); RobinBriggs, Communities of belief: cultural and social tensions in early -modern France (Oxford, ), pp. –. On Loyolan devotion,see Josephde Guibert, La spiritualiteT de la Compagnie de JeTsus (Rome,); Ignacio Iparraguirre, Historia de la praTctica de los ejercicios espirituales de San Ignacio de Loyola



France who reacted to their humanist inheritance, and the nature of politics as

they saw it, that form the focus of this article.By the end of the sixteenth century certain aspects of humanist, political and

social ideas had gained wide acceptance in both Britain and France, at a

national and also a local level. Those aspects were not republican constitutionssuch as those of ancient Rome or early modern Florence, but ethical arguments

about the duties of those who held public office. Humanism could be thoughtof as that part of the Renaissance which emphasized the rhetorical and ethical

achievements of ancient texts. It answered the need for a language to expressclearly ideas about public life that grew from the combination of an increasingsocial and political complexity and older practices and institutions. It was to

some extent a literary activity, concerned as it was with models of how to speakand write well. Humanists promoted themselves as secretaries and ambassadors

because they could write and speak convincingly and persuasively: commonamong their texts is the story of the Athenian ambassadors who so impressed

the Lacedemonians in negotiating a peace that they wished they had neverstarted the war in the first place. They also argued that ancient texts showedhow to do politics: so they should be appointed as tutors to those who would

have power thrust upon them. Their students would then learn the skills

necessary to be successful in public life.Texts such as Cicero’s De officiis offered ideals of behaviour appropriate for

those occupying roles in government, both local and national, whether

executive, advisory, or judicial. Thus the ethical ideas were centred aroundvirtue in the public sphere, and the approbation in the form of gloria that wouldfollow from recognition of such virtue. Virtues, such as constancy or justice,

could be expressed in the execution of the duties of some sort of office; anenumeration of different offices could be thought of as fully describing an

individual. Early humanists in northern Europe such as Erasmus, More, Elyot,or Bude ! discussed and adapted such ideas in the light of different political and

religious contexts. Humanism did not become a standard or stable set of values,but was constantly changing in the light of new circumstances.

I I

By the late sixteenth century, to discuss the functioning of politics was to engagewith the legacy of humanism, as it provided the guide to appropriate behaviour

for those who held public office. One of the fundamental political values of

(Bilbao, ) ; Terrence W. O ’Reilly, ‘The Spiritual exercises and the crisis of medieval piety’, The

Way, suppl. (), pp. – ; John W. O’Malley, The first Jesuits (Cambridge, MA, ),pp. –. Providence has some resemblance to stoic ideas of fate or destiny: contemporaries wereat some pains to distinguish the two – see especially Justus Lipsius, Two bookes of constancie, trans. John Stradling (London,), pp. –. I shall in any case attempt to argue that the ideas I amexamining went beyond a repetition of stoic commonplaces.



humanism, and one which became a commonplace during the Renaissance,

was that of the ability to convince, and convey the desired impression on anaudience. The ambiguities and possibilities for deceit in such a rhetorical ethicof self-presentation had been targets for criticism since the time of Aristotle, and

its Renaissance revival led to a similar set of responses.The direct relationship between the public exercise of virtue and the glory

due to the individual was challenged by those who argued that the verytechniques involved in the exercise of virtue – most especially the use of

rhetoric – tended to vitiate the reliability of that relationship. Virtue was in asense performed: in discussing office the metaphor of acting was commonplacefrom Cicero onwards. Whether or not that performance was a fake, it was

necessarily artificial. The creation of fictive personalities prompted by suchactivity is the focus for literary critics such as Greenblatt, who have identified

such traits in writers such as More and Shakespeare. The discovery andexamination of such processes amounts for these critics to a denial of

subjectivity: the performance is made the defining aspect of human nature.I would like to argue that there was, in the later Renaissance, a new

discussion pertaining to the self which served both to show how problems raised

by humanist ethics and politics could be limited, or at least circumvented, and

to demonstrate how the individual could best cope with living within such aculture. This involved strategies for understanding the world in whichappearance differed from reality, and truth differed from what was said, as well

as living with the psychological strains arising from the presentation of fictive

personae. These developments raise doubts about the unity of Renaissance ideasof self and personality, and to undermine readings based upon such

assumptions. The negotiation of the boundary between public persona andprivate self had become apparent as one of the criticisms of the functioning of

a traditional rhetorical humanism. Discussions of virtue and how to survive inthe public world increasingly appropriated arguments from the Greek and

Roman stoics which emphasized a sense of detachment from that which wassubject to fortune. The way in which this inheritance was employed wouldinvolve discussions of something some contemporaries called the self , a

construction that would enable individuals to deal with the vicissitudes of life.Such notions were strongly at variance with older humanist ideas of public

virtue and action. There has been some discussion of a ‘new humanism’,linked to stoicism, and to the rise of absolute monarchies, and the consequent

destruction of a context within which traditional humanist ideas could findtheir application. Focusing in more detail on ideas of individual action or theself may help to clarify its content of such a humanism."' Ideas of the self did

"' See for instance Tuck, Philosophy and government ; J. H. M. Salmon, ‘Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England’, in Linda Levy Peck, The mental world of the Jacobean court (Cambridge, ) ;Peter Burke, Tacitism, in T. A. Dorey, ed., Tacitus (London, ), p. ; Alan T. Bradford,‘Stuart absolutism and the utility of Tacitus’, Huntington Library Quarterly, (), pp. –.



not constitute an abandonment of such ‘old’ humanist ideals, but were an

attempt to make them attainable in circumstances that made their straight-forward application impossible. Such developments were highly significant inthat such themes would recur later in the century during the crisis of political

authority that began in , and be employed in a fashion that had a dramaticimpact on the way it was possible to think about politics and political

reasoning. Ideas about individual judgement and rationality would dominatediscussion at the foundation of the new state after the execution of Charles in

January , and in the work of writers such as Hobbes, Milton, andHarrington.

Criticisms of humanism and the functioning of politics were often made by

citing the mutability of opinion, which the orator or courtier was expected tomanipulate. Stoic ideas of constancy and independence from the world were

closely connected to the problem of opinion, both in terms of the individual’scapabilities and the possibly flawed judgements of the world in general upon

the individual’s actions and worth."( The revival of stoicism was a naturalstarting point for a discussion of such ideas, though the early modern writerswould go beyond their ancient forebears.

The earliest manifestation of stoic philosophy in Renaissance England was

Epictetus’ Enchridion, the only direct source for the original Greek stoic sect. Itwas translated into English in by John Sanford from a French translationof the Greek.") Epictetus’ central point is to make a distinction between those

things that are within our power, ‘Opinion, Endevour, Desire, Eschewing’,and those thingsthat are without, ‘Body, Possession, Honours, Sovereignties’."*

To worry about those things that cannot be controlled is foolish and only

destroys tranquillity. It is natural to enjoy such things, but one should notbecome attached to them. As one can ‘love a pot’ in the knowledge that it is

‘fragile and brittle’, and thus likely to break, so one should love everythingoutside one’s power, even wives and children.#! The same goes for both

‘honour’ and ‘place’, which one should not value but ask ‘Is it in thee to bearrule or to be bidden to a banquet?’#" Epictetus thus devalues the search forpublic acclamation, and so questions the humanist connection between virtue

"( The neo-stoic movement was especially strong in northern Europe. For a general survey, see Julien Angers, Reserches sur le stoicisme aux XVI et XVII sie Zcles (Hildesheim, Olms, ); JacquelineLagre !e, ed., Le stoicisme aux XVI et XVIIe sie Zcles – actes du colloque – Juin (Caen, ) ; Jaqueline Lagre !e, Juste Lipse et la restauration du stoicisme (Paris, ); Gilles D. Monsarrat, Light

from the porch: Stoicicm and English Renaissance literature (Paris, ); Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism

and the early modern state (Cambridge, ).") Epictetus was popular in France, appearing in both Latin and Greek editions from the s

onwards. The Enchridion was translated as Le manuel d ’EpicteTte by Antoine Moulin in , and asLa doctrine d’EpicteTte stoicie by Andre ! Rivandeau in . Many of themost significant texts that hadsome stoic inspiration were French, and they often gained rapid popularity in Europe.

"* Epictetus, Manuell of Epictetus translated out of Greeke into French, and now English, conferred with

two Latin translations, trans. John Sanford (London, ), sig. A, r. Thespelling in quotations hasbeen modernized where possible and appropriate, but titles have been left.

#! Ibid., sig. B, v. #" Ibid., sig. C, r. ‘ Banket’ means banquet.



and honour, along with the associated ideas of being able to help friends or

one’s country.The other ancient source of stoic ideas was Seneca, whose works were

translated by Thomas Lodge in . Apart from some plays, none of his works

was published in Latin in England before this, but there were numerouscontinental editions from the late fifteenth century onwards. In Of providence he

asks, as there is a divine, directing, providence, ‘why do adversities befall goodmen?’.## His answer is that God ‘loveth them strongly’, and so tests them in

order to reveal their virtue, rather as wrestlers engage stronger athletes toimprove themselves.#$ He quotes the stoic Demetrius, who states a centralparadox, ‘There is nothing, saith he, more unhappy then that man that hath

never been touched with adversity: for he hath not had the means to knowhimself.’#% As well as having shocking effect, this paradox shows the importance

of knowing that one can be constant in the face of adversity, especially as onemay be thrust into it at any moment. Seneca asks, ‘How can I know what

constancy thou hast against ignominy, infamy, and popular hate, if thou growold amidst the applauses of every man? ’#& To be pampered by fortune is to beunsure of one’s own virtues or abilities. To be constant, Seneca argues, one

must bear in mind the same distinction that was central to Epictetus’ thought,

‘that those things which the common people long after, and which they areafraid of, are neither good nor evil’.#'

One of the most immediate reactions to this inheritance was Guillaume du

Vair’s La philosophie morale du stoı W ques of , which was translated by Thomas James in .#( He argued that the ideal form of life ‘is not to be troubled withany passions or perturbations of the mind’, despite the fact that one is living in

a world which would naturally lead one to be so disturbed.#) The solution isEpictetus’ distinction between that which is within our power, and that which

is not, and the correct use of that which we can control. All circumstances canbe turned to our ‘joy and contentment’ through concentration upon the inner

realm, so that after a time even galley slaves sing ‘as merrily as birds’.#*

Justus Lipsius’s De constantia of was translated as Two bookes of constancieby John Stradling in . The immediate context for this work was the Dutch

civil wars of the late sixteenth century, which caused so much suffering and

## Lucius Annœus Seneca, Works, trans. Thomas Lodge (London, ), p. .#$ Ibid., p. . #% Ibid., p. . #& Ibid., p. . #' Ibid., p. .#( Guillaume du Vair ( –) was an advocate active in the Paris Parlement who

supportedHenri de Navarre from onwards. He wrote a treatise on constancyduring thesiegeof Paris in , and in became governor of Provence, where he was active in intellectual life.In , after findingfavour with Louis XIII, he wasmade bishop of Lisieux. On his life, see Rene !Radouant, Guillaume du Vair , L’homme et orateur jusqu’a Z la fin des troubles de la ligue, – (Paris,n.d.); also Paul Roques, ‘ Le philosophie morale des stoiques de Rene ! Radouant, Guillaume du Vair’,Archives de philosophie, n.s., (), pp. –.

#) Guillaume du Vair, The moral philosophie of the stoicks, trans. Thomas James (London, ),p. .

#* Ibid., pp. , . This example shows du Vair employing the stoic strategy of using ashocking paradox in order to arrest the reader and make the point all the more forceful.



danger, especially for those involved in public life.$! Lipsius advises constancy

in the face of these calamities, which he defines as ‘a right and immovablestrength of the minde, neither lifted up, nor pressed down with external orcasual accidents’.$" These external accidents are false goods and false evils,

which both ‘distemper the mind’.$# He echoes Seneca’s argument thatadversity is an important spur to virtue: ‘If all things succeed prosperously and

happily to a man, there is no place to make proof of his virtue: for the only truelevel to try withal, is affliction.’$$ Despite his praise of gardens as places of

retreat, Lipsius’s constancy is a virtue of active involvement with the world,rather than a wholesale rejection of worldly affairs. We cannot just ignore theworld, as ‘if it be Destiny that this weather-beaten ship of thy country shall be

saved from drowning, it is destiny withal that she shall be aided and defended’,so that there is a duty to ‘put to thy helping hand’.$%

One text often cited as dealing with stoic ideas and problems of individualityis the Essais of Michel de Montaigne, the third and last book of which appeared

in .$& John Florio’s translation of all three books in spread thepopularity of this work, which was referred to with admiration by Englishessayists. The impact of this work comes partly from generic innovation and

also the air of moral scepticism which pervades most of the essays. His Of

cannibals and the Apology for Raymond Sebond have long been regarded as classicexpressions of Pyrrhonian scepticism. With this background, he regardedconstancy, and the stoic inheritance in general, favourably but not uncritically.

Montaigne follows Epictetus in emphasizing the positive nature of illfortune. He argues that it is not a question of virtue making one happy despitesuffering, but through it, since difficulties ‘ ennoble, sharpen, animate and raise

that divine and perfect pleasure’.$' The problemof constancy is linked to moralscepticism, and the difficulty of comprehending motivation in such essays as Of

the inconstancie of our actions. An advocation of constancy can only ever be apartial answer to these problems. In his essay Of constancy Montaigne defined it

as ‘ firmly bearing the inconveniences, against which no remedy is to befound’.$( He does not aim at the complete serenity of the stoic sage, butpraises instead the ‘wise Peripatetic’, as he ‘doth not exempt him self from

perturbations of the mind, but doth moderate them’.$) Montaigne feared the

$! See Martin van Gelderen, The political thought of the Dutch revolt , – (Cambridge, ),pp. – et passim.

$" Justus Lipsius, Two bookes of constancie, trans. John Stradling (London, ), p. .$# Ibid., p. . $$ Ibid., p. .$% Ibid., p. . This contrasts with Richard Tuck’s view of Stoicism as a retreat from a corrupt

world; Tuck, Philosophy and government , pp. –.$& Montaigne’s fame is such that it would be pointless to attempt to list all works that discuss his

work. For a biography see Donald M. Frame, Montaigne: a biography (London, ); see also onhis works Pierre Villey, Les sources et l’eTvolution des Essaies de Montaigne (Paris, ); Donald M.Frame, Montaigne’s discovery of man (New York, ); R. A. Sayce, The Essays of Montaigne – a

critical exploration (London, ).$' Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, trans. John Florio (London, ), p. .$( Ibid., p. . $) Ibid., p. .



consequences of inconstancy, but was sanguine about the ability of human

beings entirely to overcome it.In On how one ought to govern the will , Montaigne shows how he feels this

detachment should affect how one lives one’s life. He declares ‘I am not

wedded unto many things, and by consequence, not passionate of them’, thusrejecting the ‘affections that distract me from my self’.$* It is an emotional

engagement with the public world that Montaigne is wary of, a public worldwhich is outside the individual’s control. He says of those involved in public life,

‘Their faculties are not their own, but theirs to whom they subject themselves’,the primary example of such a one being his own father, who as mayor of Bordeaux was ‘cruelly turmoiled with this public toil’.%! He does not advocate

a retreat from public life, but a different attitude towards it so that one may notbe destroyed by that which is inherently outside one’s control. Montaigne

advocates a particular way of becoming involved in public affairs, claiming ‘Iknow how to deal in public charges, without departing from my self the

breadth of my nail; and give my self to an other, without taking me from myself.’ Indeed, he that ‘employeth but his judgement and direction ’ is better atmanaging public affairs.%" His formulation is similar to stoic sources, but more

sophisticated in that he gives a name to that which is defined as under his own

control: he calls that himself . He creates an idea of a self which can provide ananchor and make it possible to remain constant and take part in an uncertainpublic sphere.

Pierre Charron’s De la sagesse, translated by Samson Lennard in as Of

wisdome three bookes written in French, aimed beyond ‘a wisdom, discretion andadvised carriage in a mans affairs and conversation’, this being ‘common, as

respecting nothing but that which is outward and in action’.%# Charron arguesthat man is the ‘play-game of Fortune, the image of inconstancy, the example

and spectacle of infirmity’.%$ In response to this, desires and pleasures must begoverned, and suffering should be welcomed: ‘In these times of prosperity,

adversity is a medicine, because it leadeth us to the knowledge of our selves.’ %%

The ‘fruit of all our labours and studies, the crown of wisdom’ is to ‘maintainhimself in true tranquillity of spirit’, not involving a ‘ retreat or vacation from

all affairs’ but an impermeability to the blows of fortune, and to ‘restorehimself to himself ’.%&

Many English writers followed Montaigne and produced volumes of essays,

$* Ibid., p. . %! Ibid., pp. , . %" Ibid., p. .%# Pierre Charron, Of wisdome three bookes written in French , trans. Samson Lennard (London,

), sig. A, v. On Charron’s life, seeAlfred Soman,‘ PierreCharron: a revaluation’, Bibliothe Zque

d’ humanisme et Renaissance, (),pp. –. On hispolitical significance, Anna MariaBattista,Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino (Milan, ). Seealso E. F. Rice, The Renaissance idea of wisdom

(Harvard, ), pp. –; Richard H. Popkin, The history of scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes

(Assen, ),pp. – ; Anthony Levi, French moralists, the theory of the passions (Oxford, ), pp. – ; M. C. Horowitz, ‘Pierre Charron’s view of the source of wisdom’, Journal of the History of

Philosophy, (), pp. –. %$ Charron, Of wisdome, p. . %% Ibid., p. %& Ibid., pp. , .



but few discussed constancy or stoic ideas in any detail.%' One who did was

William Cornwallis, whose Essayes was published in . As well as using theessay form, he speaks of having common purpose with Montaigne in speakingof himself only in order to instruct. While accepting that human beings are

subject to fate or destiny, he regards it as an excuse for sloth, as ‘these namesof shelter are but the surnames to our folly’, and ‘Our actions are in our own

hands’, to be directed by wisdom and virtue.%( To gain such wisdom and liveaccordingly, it is necessary for the individual to be reflexive: ‘let us begin with

our selves, and marshal and dispose our own course; let us determine it, andleave nothing to uncertainties, but drawing out our intents regularly, followthat delineated and weighed manner: Here lives Happiness, for here lives

wisdom.’%)

Constancy is necessary to do this, and Cornwallis praises the patience

necessary to resist calamities, ‘to be shaken with the winds and tempests of Chance, and mortality, and yet not to be loosened, nor in danger of falling, is

the most beautiful, the most happie, and the most renowned blessing of man’.%*

Cornwallis’s reflections serve as testimony to the influence of stoic thought inEngland, but also to the complexity of its reception in a country which, while

at times politically unstable, was not racked by civil war. The stoic virtue of

constancy made central by the Dutchman Lipsius remains important, but issubordinated to other aspects of stoic philosophy and ideas of selfhood.

Another perspective on the stoic inheritance is provided by the divine Joseph

Hall, author of Characters of virtues and vices, whose Heaven upon earth, or of true peace

and tranquillitie of mind was published in . He gives a traditional definitionof tranquillity, ‘That it is such an even disposition of the heart, wherein the

scales of the mind neither rise up towards the beam, through their ownlightness, or the over-weaning opinion of prosperity, nor are too much

depressed with any load of sorrow; but hanging equal and unmoved betwixtboth.’&! Hall adds Christian ideas of grace to the Senecan method by which one

may attain tranquillity. Later in the piece he reiterates some of Seneca’s ideasat greater length, for instance the promotion of that wisdom to ‘teach us toesteem of all events as they are’, that is how they truly relate to ourselves, rather

than how they seem to affect us.&" Expectation and foresight of suffering arealso recommended such that troubles are ‘half past in their violence when they

do come’.&#

%' Francis Bacon’s Essayes, published in and later expanded, was perhaps the first.%( William Cornwallis, Essayes by Sir William Cornewalys the younger , knight (London, ), sig.B,

r. His Discourses upon Seneca the tragedian (London, ) were often bound in with the essays, anda combined edition was published in . %) Ibid., sig. B, v.

%* Ibid., sig. E, r–v.&! Joseph Hall, Heaven upon earth, or of true peace and tranquillitie of mind (London, ), pp. –.

Joseph Hall ( –) was famous as a writer of meditative literature. See Richard McCabe, Joseph Hall: a study in satire and meditation (Oxford, ); Frank Livingstone Huntley, Bishop Joseph

Hall and Protestant meditation (Binghampton, ); T. F. Kinlock, The life and work of Joseph Hall , – (London, ); AudreyChew, ‘Joseph Hall and neo-stoicism’, Proceedings of the Modern

Languages Association, (), pp. –. &" Hall, Heaven upon earth, p. .&#

Ibid., p. .



The ideal of being independent from the capricious events of the world was

obviously of great importance to a wide variety of early modern thinkers. Thevirtue of constancy became less associated with the consistent performance of duty, and more with an inner state, which, while it helped the individual carry

out public service, was also intrinsically important. The methods for attainingconstancy and tranquillity involved a reservation of a part of the individual,

most often in line with the Epictetian distinction between that which is withinour control, and that which is not. This did not mean a retreat from external

events, which were outside the individual’s control, but a tendency to devaluethem so that they lost their power to define the individual.

I I I

Constancy, as described above, was dependent upon a correct discerning of what was of value and what was not. A false opinion of where the good lay

could be extremely damaging, and was identified as an enemy of tranquillity.Regarding the external world as inessential to the real well-being of the

individual involved not merely being impervious to adverse events, but alsoregarding external or general opinion as unimportant. Writers discussing ideas

of stoicism and the self not only counselled independence from opinion, butregarded their ideas, at an individual level, as an antidote to the problems itcaused.

For Epictetus, ‘The things do not trouble men, but the opinions which theyconceive of them’, as it is only an opinion that a particular event is harmful, in

contrast to its true significance which is negligible with regard to those thingswhich he regarded as important.&$ Similarly, one should not judge glory by the‘use of opinion’.&% In du Vair’s version of stoic thought, the desire for riches and

honour should be resisted, and in this respect one must ‘chase away this furiousdesire far from us, and leaving the foolish opinions of the vulgar sort of

people’.&& The doubt thrown on the link between glory and virtue was theresult of a scepticism about the value of general approbation, where techniques

of manipulating that approbation were openly practised. This was especiallytrue when a distinction was made between those who could discern suchmanipulation, ideally of course the stoic sage, and those to whom opinion

provided the only guide. There was no guarantee that virtue would bringhonour: it would have to be its own reward. To judge by opinion would lead

to both discontent and potentially immoral action.For Lipsius, the intellectual confusion caused by the calamity of civil war is

a result of opinion. In Two bookes of constancie, the character of Lipsius is indialogue with Charles Langius who attempts to convince him to constancy. He

describes Lipsius’s present confusion, ‘For these mists and clouds that thuscompass thee, do proceed from the smoke of . ’&' Opinion is linked to

&$ Epictetus, Manuell , sig. B, v. &% Ibid., sig. B, v.&& Du Vair, The moral philosophie of the stoicks, p. .&'

Lipsius, Two bookes of constancie, p. . Charles Lange was a humanist and friend of Lipsius.



the senses in Lipsius’s physiognomy of thought, as it ‘representeth to the soul

the shapes and forms of things thorough windows of the senses’, and as suchtakes their side and ‘By the means of it wee are troubled with cares, distractedwith perturbations, over-ruled by vices.’&( Later in the work, Langius argues

that we must not fear circumstances such as poverty, exile, or death, but‘behold them naked without any vestment or vizard of opinions’.&) To achieve

constancy or tranquillity, Lipsius regards a proper appreciation of the dangersof opinion as a necessity.

The figure of the sagacious man figures strongly in Montaigne’s Essayes, oftenin opposition to common or vulgar thought. He argues that ‘diversity of opinions’ possible upon any event or thing means that any particular opinion

on pain, poverty, or death is subjectively determined, ‘For if evils have noentrance into-us, but by our judgement, it seemeth that it lieth in our power,

either to contemn or turn them to our good.’&* Montaigne thus retains thelineaments of the stoic argument, while emphasizing the sceptical element that

not only contributes both to the necessity of so acting or so thinking, but makesit a possibility. In discussing glory, Montaigne expands Epictetus ’ argumentabout public approbation. Taking account of other people’s views, we are

exposed to a ‘breathy confusion of bruits, and frothy Chaos of reports, and of

vulgar opinions’, especially dangerous as appearances are no clear indicationof the nature of the event.'! Honour is rejected: ‘Let us disdain this insatiatethirst of honour and renown, base and beggarly, which makes us so suppliantly

to crave it of all sorts of people.’'" Montaigne’s scepticism with regard to hisown opinions and the opinions of others has the effect of destroying thehumanist connection between virtue and glory, and turns opinion into the

enemy of the wise man rather than the measure of the virtuous.For Pierre Charron, opinion was a ‘vain, light, crude and imperfect

iudgement of things drawn from the outward senses, and common report …never arriving to the understanding’, which is extremely dangerous if it is

allowed to become settled.'# In opposing ‘dogmatists, and such as will govern,and give laws unto the world’, Charron argues that people are too quick tobelieve what is commonly accepted, thus he regards ‘ the whole world led and

carried with opinions and beliefs ’.'$ ‘Common opinion’ tends to have asnowballing effect, thus which dogma is accepted, or who is regarded as

virtuous, is for Charron merely a question of fortune.'% The state of the worldis a mass of contradictory opinions, which can only be resolved by subservience

to custom.English writers took up the arguments about opinion with some enthusiasm,

and indeed this was an aspect of English thought evident before the importing

of French stoic material. In his Virtue’s commonwealth of , Henry Crosseargued that the problems of poverty and other afflictions are bad if judged

&( Ibid., p. . &) Ibid., p. . &* Montaigne, Essayes, p. .'! Ibid., p. . '" Ibid., p. . '# Charron, Of wisdome, p. .'$ Ibid., pp. , . '% Ibid., p. .



‘only with the eye of common reason’, which the wise should ignore to ‘fit

himself to bear the troubles of this life, with a valiant and immutablecourage’.'& He rejected ‘ riches, parentage, office, place, dignity ’ as indicatorsof virtue, as they are part of a ‘ rotten ladder’, dependent on the judgement of

the ‘opinion of the multitude’.'' He criticizes those who have climbed thisladder; they ‘are in their own opinion very gallant, but in the judgement of

wise men they are but a blown bladder, painted over with many colours,stuffed full of pride and envy’.'( Opinion has enabled such men to succeed

thanks to the uncertain nature of success and failure in the public world.Cornwallis held that opinion, ‘a monster, half Truth, and half Falsehood’,

is to be rejected even though it is a component of worldly success, as it ‘cleaves

most to great Fortunes, and yet liveth upon the breath of the vulgar’. ') Thisillustrates the disjunction between the necessity of courting opinion for

promotion or honour and its natural falsehood and debasement, accentuatedby its association with the vulgar people. Those who court popularity ‘Needs

must they have cunning that deal with this ticklish commodity of the vulgar’sfavour’, which cunning has the capacity to corrupt the ambitious. It isnecessary, but as ‘the blossom of the tree of virtue’ is susceptible to ‘base

mercenary imitations’, as ‘the labour of most men now adayes is not to obtain

truths, but opinions warrant’.'* Cornwallis’s attitude to opinion is ambiguous,distrusting it while recognizing its indispensability. His is a less pressingconstancy, and also a less pressing rejection of opinion than that which was

required of the stoic sage.Opinion within an individual was regarded as the mistaken estimation of

both people and things that could do harm by leading one to have a false

conception of what lay within one’s power and what did not, thus disturbingthe mind’s tranquillity. Opinion in the world was beyond control, especially as

it could be consciously manipulated by the unscrupulous, or even by the honestman attempting to advance or merely act in the world. To regard such opinion

as a true measure would lead either to dishonesty or perturbation of the mind,or both, and an alienation of the individual from his true worth which couldnot thus be estimated. The discernment of appearance from reality was held to

be impossible, or at least very difficult, for the vulgar or common sort of people.This prejudice favoured those who had read and accepted the sceptical and

stoic arguments on which it was based; to some extent at least they were ableto penetrate the mist of opinion with which all knowledge was shrouded. It was

they, therefore, who could be constant, and who could discern what was, andwhat was not, essential to the self.

A sense of constancy and independence from common opinion were both

virtues advised in the ancient texts in pursuit of an ideal of the correct

'& Henry Crosse, Virtue’s commonwealth: or the high-way to honour (London, ), sig. F, r, sig. F,r. '' Ibid., sig. D, r. '( Ibid., sig. K, v. ') Cornwallis, Essayes, sig. I, v.

'* Ibid., sig. Q, v–Q, r; sig. Q, r–v; William Cornwallis, Discourses upon Seneca the tragedian

(London, ), sig. B, v.



the individual, or the exclusion of the inessential, was not a simple process. One

part of that process was the maintenance of the sovereignty of reason within thesoul or the mind, which enabled correct judgement to be made about thenature of that which was presented through the senses. Good judgement could

therefore be seen as both a product of, and essential to, the self. Self-examination was part of this process, both because it could help maintain the

balance necessary for good judgement, and because it was essential to thenotion of reservation of something which was particular individual.

The stoic sources were relatively silent on these issues. Seneca did, however,make a strong link between tranquillity and a sense of reservation. In Of

tranquilitie, he discusses the hazards of the public life, concluding ‘ let my mind

cleave unto himself, let him seem himself : let him not intend no foreignbusinesses, nor any thing that is subjectto every mans censure’.(# Conversations

with strangers are dangerous, and ‘we ought to retire our selves very inwardlywithin our selves, for the conversation of those men that are of different humour

from us, disturbeth those things that are well composed, and renewethaffections’.($ The idea that exposure to novelty or affections could disturb asense of self was reproduced by du Vair in his account of the passions in The

moral philosophy of the stoicks. Fear promotes other passions such as hatred of what

is feared, and ‘ carrieth us out of our selves’, while jealousy is ‘ nothing else buta distrust of a mans self, and a bearing witness of him self against himself of hissmall deservings’.(% Passion, as taking one away from oneself, or being an

expression of the fact that one is already alienated from one’s essence, is a verysignificant step beyond Epictetus, whose thought du Vair claimed to berepresenting.(&

Montaigne makes a similar complaint about the affections, that they create‘false imagination in us’, which means that ‘We are never in our selves, but

beyond.’(' The soul is unable to remain constant, being always ‘moved andtossed’, and ‘if she have not some hold to take, looseth it self in it self, and must

ever be stored with some object, on which it may light and work’.(( He claimsthat it is not possible to complain enough about the ‘ disorder and unruliness of our minde’, which is not settled enough to concentrate on itself and thus create

a settled sense of itself, but will always wander towards new objects.() Theimport of Montaigne’s answer is that judgement must be turned and focused

upon oneself if any part of his project is to be realized. An effort must be madeto create a sense of self that is separated from the external world. In discussing

solitariness, he argues that ‘it is not sufficient to shift place, a man must alsosever him-self from the popular conditions, that are in us. A man must sequesterand recover himself from himself.’(* This sequestration requires judgement,

and makes impartial judgement a possibility. Once achieved, it should be

(# Seneca, Works, p. . ($ Ibid., p. .(% Du Vair, Moral philosophy, pp. , –.(& This has become proverbial; one still speaks of being ‘beside oneself’ with anger or fear.(' Montaigne, Essayes, p. . (( Ibid., p. . () Ibid., p. . (* Ibid., p. .



possible for the wise man to ‘wed nothing but himself’, despite the huge

inequality in appearance and reality between individuals.)! In Of exercise or

practice, Montaigne describes self-examination as essential to this process,‘There is no description so hard, nor so profitable, as is the description of a

mans own self.’)" A conceited consideration of one’s life leads to alienation forthose who ‘build castles in the air; deeming themselves as a third person and

strangers to themselves’, such that it is essential that good judgement bereflexively employed.)#

Montaigne argues in the same vein when discussing the active life: it is mostimportant to avoid becoming a stranger to oneself. In On how one ought to govern

his will he develops the traditional analogy of the stage as ‘ Most of our

vacations are like plays.’ Care must be taken when playing a part to maintainan appropriate distinction: ‘ We must play our parts duly, but as the part of a

borrowed personage. Of a vizard and appearance, wee should not make a realessence, nor proper of that which is another’s.’)$

Such as fail to distinguish the ‘skin from the shirt’ become inconstant, they‘ transform and transubstantiate themselves, into as many new forms andstrange beings as they undertake charges’.)% The primary injunction from

Montaigne is to avoid this happening, not to give oneself to any party so that

the ‘ understanding is thereby infected’.)& The understanding must bemaintained to retain the sense of something specific and unique. ForMontaigne, living in the world required the reservation, or even the creation,

of an idea of the self in order to sustain a proper outward appearance. For thereto be different parts well played, there had to be an actor capable of judgingand distinguishing the part from reality: there had to be a self.

Charron demanded for his wisdom a high status, ‘First, that wisdom whichis neither common nor vulgar hath properly this libertie and authoritie, Iure suo

singulari, to judge of all … and in judging to censure and condemn … commonand vulgar opinions.’)' To judge by one’s own rule was a radical solution to the

problem of scepticism, but was restricted to a relatively small number of people.It was dependent upon reason, but, more importantly, on self-knowledge:‘ Thou forgetest thy self, and losest thy self about outward things; thou

betrayest and disrobest thy self; thou lookest alwaies before thee ; gather thy self unto thy self, and shut up thy self within thy self: examine, search, know thy

self.’)(

Charron here communicates a strong sense of the necessity of reserving and

keeping something of the self through the process of searching for self throughintrospection. It is easy to know the things which are ‘ outwardly adjacent ’ toindividuals, such as ‘offices, dignities, riches, nobilitie, grace, and applause of

the greatest peers and common people’, but this public carriage is of noaccount; what is necessary is a ‘true, long, and daily study of himself, a serious

)! Ibid., pp. –. )" Ibid., p. . )# Ibid., p. . )$ Ibid., p. .)% Ibid., pp. –. )& Ibid., p. . )' Charron, Of wisdome, sig. A, v.)( Ibid., p. .



and attentive examination not only of his words, and actions, but of his most

secret thoughts’.)) This is the essence of the wisdom that Charron wishes toteach.

This independence of mind does not imply the ability to ignore accepted

rules and customs, but while outwardly conforming, the wise man ‘will playone part before the world, and another in his mind, which he must do to

preserve equity and iustice in all’.)* Judgement is here preserved in a spaceaway from the censure of an unthinking and unreflective world, enabling the

individual to remain just despite the uncertain value of truth or opinion. Theelite capable of reservation and judgement must not, however, retreat into theirgardens to preserve their independence. While we must ‘ reserve our selves unto

our selves’, the wise individual must apply himself ‘to public society thoseoffices and duties which concern him’, but in doing so should not confuse such

duties with his own self.*! Charron argues: ‘we must know how to distinguishand separate our selves from our public charges: every one of us playeth two

parts, two persons; the one strange and apparent, the other proper andessential’.*"

Knowing how to separate and preserve the ‘proper and essential’ person is

the subject of Charron’s chapter, ‘Of the justice and duty of man towards

himself’, which he argues is a microcosm of the entire three books. What isrequired is to make a ‘diligent culture of himself’, asking himself the reasonwhy things have gone either right or wrong. If vices or natural defects are

found, ‘ he must quietly and sweetly correct them, and provide for them’. It isa process of recovery: ‘ He must reason with himself, correct and recall himself courageously.’*# In Charron’s thought the convergence between the ideas of a

self and ideas about judgement is striking. It is necessary to judge well in orderto recall oneself well, and to recall oneself well in order to reserve a self that is

able to judge.William Cornwallis is eloquent in recommending the knowledge of the self,

asking ‘whether can knowledge bend her force, more excellently then, thenman to look upon man: this knowledge is profitable, for it is for himself’. Allother sorts of knowledge are subordinate to this, as ‘it hunts for light without

light, in himself he must begin and end, for in himself is the light of reason,that discovereth all things else’.*$ For Cornwallis knowledge of the self is a

prerequisite for the acquisition of any type of knowledge, as it shows how it ispossible to have knowledge at all. It is necessary to have knowledge of how the

mind can and does know things, and to have a knowledge of the particularnature of one’s own mind, before knowledge of the world becomes a possibility. Judgement is described as the child of this knowledge and reason, and enables

the individual to be virtuous, especially in the exercise of power. To be takenin by deception, especially flattery, is a flaw in knowledge of the self, a ‘false

reflection of our own thoughts that abuseth us’.*% To be absorbed in deception,

)) Ibid., pp. , . )* Ibid., p. . *! Ibid., p. . *" Ibid., p. .*# Ibid., p. . *$ Cornwallis, Essayes, sig. X, v. *% Ibid., sig. Nn, r.



to be continually practising it, means that a man ‘looseth the use of himself’. *&

Cornwallis’s ideas about the self are limited, but the force of his text is toattempt to show how it is possible to retain the use of oneself. The prerequisitefor good judgement in matters of the external world, and the divination of

falsehood, is a knowledge and examination of the soul.The self as an object is elusive, and the closest most authors come to

describing it is as something which retains its independence and ability to judge, despite both the inherent deceptiveness of appearance, and the roles

which the individual is forced to take up as a matter of course. This involvesintrospection, and a continual assessment of the individual’s state of mind, toensure that there is something which remains untouched either by internal

passions or external perturbations. A language of liberty could be used touphold this conception about how individuals should act with respect to

themselves and the world.

V

Ideas of independence could merge easily with ideas of freedom. If it were

possible to retain a self that was unaffected by outside events or opinions, thenthat self could be regarded as free. Unfreedom could exist if one were enslaved

either to passion, the inner motions of an unbalanced soul, or to opinion,accepted but untried knowledge. Seneca put his views on fortune in these termsin Of tranquilitie, emphasizing that all are subject to her caprice, ‘Some are

enthralled by their honours, othersome by their base estate.’*' In Of constancy,freedom is equated with that quality, liberty being when we ‘oppose a resolute

mind against injuries’.*( Epictetus put his ideas in terms of freedom,commanding ‘He then which will be free, let him neither desire, nor flee anything, which is in an other man his hand, and power, otherwise of necessity he

shall be constrained to serve.’*) Only that which was within the mind was not,to some extent, in the power of others.

Lipsius put the point in a more dialectical fashion when speaking of reason,perhaps putting a twist on the common humanist sentiment that to bear rule

one must learn to obey: ‘To obey it is to bear rule, and to be subject thereuntois to have the sovereignty in all human affairs. ’** Freedom through subjectionmay appear somewhat paradoxical, but to be rational was a prerequisite of any

freedom, because it left the judgement free despite the generally evil use of power in the world. Lipsius concluded ‘Thy judgement is not restrained, but

thy acts. ’"!! Du Vair describes in more detail how a passion, envy, destroysfreedom by making one chase after false goods such as wealth, which in order

to gain we have to ‘flatter and cozen as they do, suffer many injuries, and needslose our liberty’."!" To be invited to a banquet one must flatter the host, and so

lose the liberty of expressing an honest judgement. Thus, ideas of liberty

*& Ibid., sig. Nn, v. *' Seneca, Works, p. . *( Ibid., p. .*) Epictetus, Manuell , sig. C, v. ** Lipsius, Constancy, p. . "!! Ibid., p. ."!" Du Vair, Moral philosophie, p. .



functioned within these texts in two ways: first, with respect to the way the

individual should be in order to be capable of freedom, and secondly, how it waspossible to express that freedom despite the corruption of the world by beingindependent of it.

The greatest liberty for Montaigne was the contemning of death or any othertemporal affliction after the stoic manner. He advises the contemplation of

death such that it loses its strangeness, and argues: ‘Herein consists the true andSovereign liberty, that affords us means wherewith to jest and make a scorn of

force and injustice, and to deride imprisonment, gives, or fetters.’"!#

The readiness to accept affliction is the way to gain independence andfreedom from the world. Montaigne also values a somewhat similar intellectual

liberty associated with scepticism. He praises the Pyrrhonians for their extremedoubt, ‘They are so much the freer and at liberty, for that their power of

judgement is kept entire.’"!$ It is not only an inner liberty that is valued, buta life where that liberty can be given expression. He goes on to condemn the

favours and obsequies that courtiers have to perform, ‘These favours, with thecommodities that follow minion-courtiers, corrupt (not without some colour of reason) his liberty, and dazzle his judgement.’"!% Courtiers are unfree not only

because they have to subject their own judgement to that of others, but because

this process leads to the destruction of their original ability to judge. This dualliberty, of judgement and expression, is a liberty which Montaigne evidentlyvalued and saw as an integral part of ideas about stoicism or the self.

Charron in his introduction shows how he values self-knowledge, and linksthe fight against passion and opinion to freedom: ‘He that hath an erroneousknowledge of himself, that subjecteth his minde to any kinde of servitude, either

of passions or popular opinions, makes himself partial; and by enthrallinghimself to some particular opinion is deprived of the liberty and jurisdiction of

discerning, judging and examining all things.’"!&

Slavery is here imagined as occurring within the mind, as lack of

independence from a particular idea or way of thinking. To remain ‘free inhimself’ the individual must ‘examine, and weigh’ all reasons or opinions, andnot give up that ability to judge in any sphere, else he will be ‘led like oxen’,

rather than living freely."!' The most important opinion to be free of is thatconcerning death or other afflictions, and Charron follows Montaigne’s

argument about learning to die, ‘the science of dying is the science of liberty’."!( Death is natural and part of one’s own life, and to fear it is to fear

"!# Montaigne, Essayes, p. . "!$ Ibid., p. . "!% Ibid., p. ."!& Charron, Of wisdome, sig. A, v. "!' Ibid., pp. , ."!( Ibid., p. . On attitudes to death, see Philipe Arie ' s, The hour of our death, trans. Helen

Weaver (New York, ); Michel Vovelle, Mourir autrefois: attitudes collectives devant la mort aux

XVII e et XVIII e sie Zcles (Paris, ); Joachim Whaley, ed., Mirrors of mortality: studies in the social

history of death (London, ); David Stannard, The puritan way of death: a study in religion, culture and

social change (Oxford, ); Clare Gittings, Death, burial and the individual in early-modern England

(London, ); Michael Neill, Issues of death: mortality and identity in English Renaissance tragedy

(Oxford, ), pp. –.



an opinion. Opinion can also enslave in its manifestation as honour, which,

being the opinion of others, is in their gift. To follow honour unreservedly is‘voluntarily to renounce his own liberty’, because it is to ‘let his own affectionsdepend upon the eyes of another’, or even the ‘vulgar sort’."!) Thus, Charron’s

wisdom is intended to free the individual from two sorts of slavery; theknowledge is necessary ‘to set at liberty, and to free our selves from that

miserable double captivity, public and domesticall, of another, and of ourselves’."!*

English writers were on the whole less keen to emphasize this aspect of theirthought, but it did emerge in the writings of Cornwallis. In speaking of suspicion he describes how a lack of virtue means liberty is lost, ‘giving liberty

we loose liberty, and by degrees throwing of the prescribed course of Virtue, wefall into the incertainties of passions, and appetites’.""! Here liberty is again

figured in opposition to the internal tyranny of appetites. Later, he puts it interms of pleasure, ‘it is not pleasure to do what wee list, but never to stray from

what we should’.""" In Of nature’s policy, he links these ideas to a concept of policy, which is equivalent to the sovereignty of reason over the ‘childish orbeastly courses’ in the soul. Policy is reason writ large, and it too is important

for the soul, and can contribute to its freedom: ‘and therefore Policy producing

peace, and peace giving liberty to the soul’s workings, government and policyare the destinated and direct objects of the souls that are yet in bodies’.""#

Cornwallis is interested here in the public conditions necessary for the

production of peace in the mind, and he concludes that the efforts of thoseminds must be focused on the problem of the public peace. This concurs witha more traditionally republican notion of freedom which requires individuals

to demonstrate virtue to ensure its preservation.The idea of intellectual freedom was a highly significant product of neo-

stoicism or thought concerning the self. While accepting the essentially unfreenature of the individual’s place within the world, no matter what status he or

she was accorded, it showed how there was a different sort of liberty that couldbe achieved. It was divided into two parts: first, the ability to judge by virtueof the freedom of one’s own mind, scorning the interferences of passions;

secondly, which was not so easily within grasp, the freedom to express judgement, or not to be bound to admitting conventional wisdom, or the

particular opinion of another. The latter was especially bound up with ideas of honour or popularity, which were closely tied to the opinion of others, such that

not to accept these values was to be free.

"!) Ibid., p. . "!* Ibid., p. . ""! Cornwallis, Essayes, sig. C, r.""" Cornwallis, Discourses upon Seneca the tragedian, sig. A, r.""# Ibid., sig. Aa, v, sig. Aa, r.



V I

This amalgam of liberties points to the confused and at times contradictorynature of writings that concerned themselves with the self. What is clear is that

after the turn of the century there was an explosion of interest in texts whichhad several themes in common, and can be thought of as providing strategies

for individual survival in a capricious world. These ideas did not provide aclear and cogent argument, but rather an association of several different

concepts, some of them having their origins in newly popular stoic thought. Itis plausible to group these ideas around the idea of a self, as so many texts usedthis term of analysis, although it was only comparatively rarely that they

stopped to analyse it in any detail. In order to be able to elude the clutches of fortune, it was necessary to be constant, and to disregard that which was

outside one’s control, without at the same time abandoning public duties orvirtuous effort. Associated with fortune was the opinion of the world, which

itself was both subject to fortune, and at the same time determined it. Todisregard the world it was necessary to reserve something that could not beharmed or in any way influenced by it.

Ideas about reason and the functioning of the soul were employed to

demonstrate how it was possible for an individual to judge, or how it waspossible to resist either accepted opinion or the sensual urges of the body. Theideal of reason could be held up as giving the possibility of the search after an

impartial truth, and defeating passions which clouded the mind against clearsightedness. Judgement made possible the reservation of something whichcould be called the self, away from that which sought either to control or to

destroythe individual. It is clear that the French writers’ conceptions of the self were far more sophisticated than those of the English, and they were far keener

to discuss the self as an object. There was a huge demand for this Frenchliterature, all of the important texts from the French stoic thought being

translated very rapidly after their composition. The English writers seemedkeener to emphasize the sovereignty of reason as the most significant productof this complex of ideas, and it may be significant that this was the formulation

farthest removed from the stoic sources. They did not on the whole employthese ideas to construct a theory of liberty as did the French. The important

point is, however, that these ideas were available to Englishmen at the start of the seventeenth century, and would be highly influential throughout the whole

century.With the possible exception of William Cornwallis, the English essayists and

writers were less sophisticated than their French counterparts, and the full

impact of their ideas would not be apparent from merely studying theirimmediate intellectual heirs. What is very apparent is that both sets of thinkers

used these ideas to address the problematic relationship between the public andprivate spheres, which traditional humanist concepts were increasingly unable

to resolve. The valuing of honour and glory as an indication of worth had been



questioned by scepticism, and a theory of the self provided a method for

retaining ideals of public service while accepting the sceptical argument aboutthe value of general opinion. In order to present a public persona given thisatmosphere, it was important not to put one’s whole self into this persona, sothat

the individual could not be described by referring to the sum of duties or officesheld. Something unique had to be retained that could not be crushed, as

Montaigne’s father had been crushed, by the destruction of those other persona.Not only this, but the self which was reserved had to be capable of judgement,

so that it could discern the deception of the world and direct the operation of one or more persona. This made it possible to act in a flawed world, and remaintrue to oneself and therefore potentially free.

The sense of self evinced in the texts described above differs from the ideas of self which have been used to examine and criticize literary texts. For

Greenblatt, an artificial self is created by an author for a purpose, in effect, toperform an act of communication. It is precisely this process, which is part of

political as well as literary life, that these writers are protesting against. Theperformance of this act, without any attempt to retain a sense of the essentialself, is both unsuccessful and damaging to the individual. The resolution of the

problem of acting in a fluid public sphere, with all the strategies of presentation

that implies, is the self-conscious fashioning of a real, as opposed to a fictive, self.This would make it possible both to understand, and live in, the external world.

The sense of self which seems to emerge here is one which lies between the

stereotypical view of Renaissance humanism and individualism in a latereighteenth-century sense. These writers did not regard autonomy as thedefining feature of human existence, and therefore as the basis of ethics, as did

Kant, for whom each individual must legislate the moral law. Neither did theydescribe the individual’s relationship with the political and social world in

terms of roles to be performed, or offices to be filled. They attempted to offer asolution to the problems of a public existence as dramatized by writers like

More and Shakespeare. There is an analogy between the public ethics of earlymanifestations of humanism in England, such as that of Elyot, and the view of the world as inter-subjective held by some literary critics: in both there is little

space for the self as opposed to a persona. Such an analogy can lead to thedangerous error of homogenizing the Renaissance in England, whereas

reactions to the problems raised by humanist thought constituted a significantinnovation in effectively and deliberately separating self and persona : an

enumeration of offices could not describe an individual. Later writers such asHobbes or Spinoza would attempt to base a moral theory, and politicalobligation, on private deliberation. At the beginning of the seventeenth

century, there was a body of writers who developed ideas of the self which drewupon stoicism and ideas of office, but went beyond both of these. They pointed

forward to more individualistic moral theories, as well as backwards to theconception of the individual as a performer of a variety of roles.

individual and self in the late renaissance

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