Interpreting Montaigne: Ed's superficial reading of the Essay of judging happiness only after death

I was pleased with the comments yesterday's blog elicited.  As Mr. Dupin observed, Montaigne (the granddaddy of all bloggers, GOAB) does say it best, in his essay, (aptly named for our subject) "That our happiness must not be judged until after our death." He begins by quoting Ovid:

No man should be called happy till his death; 

Always we must await his final day

Reserving judgment till he's laid away. 

Here I have the aid of my son, Austin, back from his studies for a few days, in interpreting: Ovid's stories involve metamorphosis.  The man with the grief in his old age was Cadmus.  "Actaeon, one of your grandsons, was your first reason for grief, in all your happiness, Cadmus."   The grandson grew horns on his forehead and his hunting dogs ate him.   As long and happy as Cadmus' life had been when his grandchildren began to suffer, his joy ended.

Mr. Hugo 2006 adds the alliterative "lawyers' lament" verdict to the concerns about success and failure.   But we lawyers cannot take comfort from the fact we are largely too selfish to find ourselves working in a hospice;  we very well may end up the recipient of the care.

Montaigne makes the point, "God has willed it as he pleased; but in my time three of the most execrable and most infamous persons I have known in very abomination of life have had deaths that were ordered and in every circumstance composed to perfection."

And it feels like to me, good people often have nasty, ugly deaths.  When the wrong organs begin to fail before the rest of the body, long periods a pain result.

Montaigne also tells us, "In judging the life of another, I always observe how it ended; and one of my principal concerns about my own end is that it shall go well, that is to say quietly and insensibly."

Montaigne is concerned that we may live just a day too long.  He quotes someone named Laberius:  "Truly this day I have lived one day longer than I should have."  When I first read that I tried to figure out who Laberius was and why he thought he should have avoided a certain day.

One guy named Laberius was ridiculed by Julius Caesar but he won the day by being quicker witted.  This is all I can find out about him, but it doesn't seem like his last day disgraced his historical legacy, in any case.

Another guy name Laberius died in Britain with a spear through his lung.

Lingering on seems to give the chance to repair a reputation.  It is rather like refusing to pass the examination of a harmful witness until something good comes of the testimony.  A line in Chinatown made this point: "Course I'm respectable.  I'm old.  Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

Presidents are said to worry about what history will say.  And I have friends who worry about a legacy.  "Will I be known as a greater lawyer than Clarence Darrow?"  That sort of thing.

Now my task is to decide whether or not it matters.

That all having been said, Austin tells me I have missed the whole point of the essay.  On the next post, I'll describe what he says it really means.

If At First You Don't Succeed, Failure May Be Your Style. Quentin Crisp

My friend Randall (who hereinafter will be referred to as R. to protect his anonymity) called with a topic. When are we failures in life? His wife tells him he is a failure and he is past 60 with the kid grown and gone, so there is not much time to turn things around at this point.

R. disputes her conclusion. He sees his life as largely a success and his wife sees it as largely (or completely and totally) a failure. A loss. Not really worth having been lived.

I for one would be willing to declare R. a success on the basis of being a successful father alone. This was Jackie O's definition and she was rich and famous. So R. can accept this definition if he wants. His wife won't, but I'll give it to him. For that matter, it would be easy to make an argument for R. He was elected a member of his city counsel and had many successful law suits that mattered at least to his clients. Somehow, though, I don't think these would weigh much in the wifely judgment day.

I have further assured R. that in my experience, all husbands are sooner or later failures, completely and utterly. I further assured him that Kathy is always asking me, "If you're so smart, why aren't we rich." She throws out the decade that has passed without a vacation. She notes my car always looks like a wreck. My clothes are terrible. My dog is fat and has gas. She grumbles about the 32 inch waist I had when we were married that keeps swinging between 40 and 50 inches. Despite my soaring success in life (as I see it), she is sure I have failed and failed her as well. "I'm worried about my future," she cries.

And it is the same with all of our friends. I mentioned our mutual friends, all of whom are now about sixty and failures in the eyes of their wives. Some have actually saved money, have a nice house, annuities and 401 K plans, but their wives are still wrecks about the declining income and the likelihood of destitution. None of this seemed to comfort R.

Anyway, it is now incumbent upon me to redefine success and failure in such a way that R. and I and all of our friends (who have lived so long and have so little to show for it) are not failures.

Oddly, I don't remember much comment about the subject of failure from philosophers or novelists or poets in my decades of aimless and unproductive reading.

However, I do think when we read a translation of Aristotle and his definition of "happiness," this is something we would now call "success." My hope is that Aristotle can bail out R. and me and all others similarly situated. If we can claim to be a success by Aristotelian standards, this would largely negate being a failure when we are weighed in the wifely balance.

The word we translate as happiness is eudaimonia which breaks down, eu, "good" and daimonia, "spirit." By extension, it refers to good fortune or what we might usually call "success."

Happiness for moderns is subjective. You can take a pill or have whiskey and become happy. For Aristotle, a child could never be happy, because not enough life had been lived. Aristotle grappled with the concept of not calling anyone happy until his death and believed that the life of happiness could be negated even after death. If someone based his life on a project that was merely and illusion and false, this may not be learned until later. The happy life would be erased retroactively even if the dead was oblivious to the failure. If the dead man's son turns out to be a murderer, he will not have been happy.

Even for moderns, these things could be said about success. The apparently successful man might be safely in the grave when his children or his life's work goes on to prove he was a terrible failure.

First what I "remember" Aristotle said, but cannot find. Happiness (hereinafter called success) is achieved with good birth, good health, good land, good children and some other things like good horses.

These things are achieved by practicing the virtues. Political virtue is highly ranked. R. served as a counsel member for the poor area of town and worked to help them get the city services of the richer parts of town. Aristotle would give him high marks for this. I'd say a B or maybe an A-.

Aristotle would also judge success on how money is handled. He ranked liberality and magnificence high. Magnificence is something like giving a park to the city. I doubt R. was able to do much of this, but he always ranked high in liberality. He gave political contributions and attended the arts and bought lunches. Aristotle would probably at least give him a C+. Now this is the sticking point and where his wife probably fails him. In fact, a failure here for most wives seems to outweigh all the other grades. It is heavily weighted in the wifely report card.

Aristotle put a lot of stock in honor as well. I think he was talking about war or other sacrifice. R. probably wouldn't get much there.

Aristotle wanted a balance between ambitions and lack of ambition. R. may have fallen a little heavy in the lack of ambition category. OK, only a D, but it isn't failure.

On the anger/good temper grade, after overcoming a childhood inability to lose at ping pong, he would score very high on the good temper grade. Pushing an A, I would say.

Aristotle also graded success on friendliness, truthfulness and good-wit. R. really should get better than average on all of these. Especially on friendliness and good-wit. I don't know if Aristotle graded on a curve or not, but surely R. should get B's or better.

So, on Aristotle's success report card, I think R. would probably be a success.

How then, should he (and I and all others similarly situated) comfort ourselves on having failed on the wife report card? I say we look to true successes in life like Socrates, Tolstoy, Gandhi. If the biographers are correct, their wives would have given them failing grades as well.