Extract
[...] Montaigne inscribes himself here in the humanist current, since he invites to put aside the hierarchical and arrogant pretensions of the people to which he belongs, to open his thought to a fundamentally different culture, but which he manages to show that, however incomprehensible it may seem at first, it is no less human - and perhaps the 'savages' described here are more human than those they are dealing with. [...]
[...] The benevolence that the members of this people maintain towards each other is also emphasized: the men call each other "brothers », The women do not get annoyed by polygamy and on the contrary, they take pleasure in sharing a husband who is honored by this . The absence of pettiness, the primacy of the collective over the individual, is thus put in confrontation with European hypocrisy and avarice, which particularly stand out from the deeply dishonest attitude of the colonizers towards the kings of the new world. Montaigne reproaches Europeans with individualistic egoism, the absence of social cohesion, avarice, dishonesty, and the futility of their customs. The latter particularly stands out at the end of the essay. [...]
[...] Without a doubt, this is a fundamental reproach that Montaigne addresses to the Europeans: their lack of discernment and intelligence in the face of a people, a civilization that they judge without understanding, unable to detect the values that they claim for themselves without also carrying them with dignity, as they call the savages. The account of the cruel deaths to which the Europeans subjected the two monarchs of this world is quite enlightening in this regard. Not only does it reveal the Europeans' lack of understanding and incomprehension, but worse still, it portrays the colonizers as even more savage, immoral, greedy, violent, than those they call barbarians. [...]
[...] Lies, greed, hypocrisy, stupidity, futility: Montaigne spares no Europeans in these two essays where their flaws stand out, by contrast, from the virtues he recognizes in the Natives. Humanism is a current marked by the importance it attaches to the human being and the dignity of the human being, as an individual and independently of his birth, social affiliation, and by extension, his culture. The humanist is therefore open-minded, curious, and respectful of the other, he nourishes tolerance as a guarantee of wisdom and aspires to the establishment of peaceful relations between men and between nations. [...]
[...] However, in his analysis of the customs of the inhabitants of the new world, Montaigne does not intend to follow the common opinion. In the two essays that are the Cannibals and the Cars (III, Montaigne considers that the indigenous people are not 'less civilized' than the Europeans, but only of distinct customs, and that such a position results from an incomprehension of their values and customs: 'there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation, according to what I have been told, except that each one calls barbarity what is not in their customs ». [...]
