Book Review: Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics, by Douglas I. Thompson

• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719876628
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews
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is possible only because human beings can recognize one another as “per-
sons” and impute rational intentions to one another (see especially 227–28,
but also 245–46 and 258–62). For this reason, self-interest, according to
Abizadeh, is not the ground on which the second dimension of normativity
rests; that ground is rather the capacity in question and the directed com-
mitments to which it gives rise. But here a reader—at least this reader—is
left with a question: what deserves to be regarded as the more fundamental
ground of an obligation, the incentive that leads one to assume it by mak-
ing a promise or the capacity by which meaningful promises are possible
between human beings? That Hobbesian obligations not only are rooted in
self-interest but remain contingent on it makes me skeptical of Abizadeh’s
argument. But readers who want to ponder the question and decide for
themselves should pay careful attention to chapters 5–7 of Abizadeh’s
book, especially section 2 of chapter 6.
Let me close by saying that Abizadeh’s book is well worth reading and
wrestling with, even or especially for those who approach Hobbes with a dif-
ferent background from his. This is a serious and rigorous work that deserves
attention, from political theorists as well as philosophers.
Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics, by Douglas I. Thompson. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2018, 248 pp.
Reviewed by: Ingrid Creppell, The George Washington University, Washington, DC,
USA
DOI: 10.1177/0090591719876628
The globalizing world trends not toward cosmopolitanism or liberal conver-
gence but impassioned particularist identities and causes. Groups within
countries demand standing against each other; polarization becomes hard-
ened; dueling movements clash in the streets; and nationalists push back
against immigrants, minorities, the EU, and the waning of sovereignty. The
idea of tolerance is often invoked with the hope it can manage or solve clashes
of such disagreement or difference. Douglas Thompson returns to Montaigne’s
Essais against the background of our current conflicts and finds there a clear
political purpose relevant to our time. At the center of his political interpreta-
tion is Montaigne’s original appeal for and manifestation of tolerance.
While a few scholars have studied political aspects of Montaigne’s work,
for the most part, he is not considered an “especially political thinker” (2), his
literary genius acknowledged for having invented “modern inwardness” or “a

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morality of self-governance” (17). Thompson undertakes a gestalt switch to
bring to light a wholly different dimension of well-known themes, without
reducing the complicated nature of the text to a political manifesto. Thompson
reads the work as a “kind of handbook” (3), “a single project of cultural trans-
formation” that “seeks to effect social and political reform through a deep
change in the character of his readers” (84). He carries out his retrieval in a
richly Montaignian spirit, performing a multifaceted political theory that
shuttles back and forth, seeking “to probe, test, try out, and assay the present
possibilities and limits for thinking about tolerance from Montaigne’s per-
spective” (11). He wonderfully succeeds; Montaigne’s writing becomes a
dynamic of political praxis with a distinctive approach to tolerance.
Montaigne did not use the terms tolérar or tolération with the ethical con-
notations they now carry; moreover, his...