Brazilians in Michel de Montaignes Essay Of Cannibals -- Montaigne Es

Brazilians in Michel de Montaignes Essay Of CannibalsWhen describing native Brazilian raft in his 1580 essay, Of Cannibals, Michel de Montaigne states, Truly here are real savages by our standards for either they moldiness be thoroughly so, or we must be there is an fearful distance between their character and ours (158). Montaigne doesnt always maintain this astound distance, however, between savages and non-savages or between Brazilians and Europeans he first portrays Brazilians as non-barbaric people who are not like Europeans, then as non-barbarians who best realise traditional European values, and finally as barbarians who are diametrically remote to Europeans. First, Montaigne portrays Brazilians as non-barbaric people who are not like Europeans. He asserts, I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that state of matterexcept that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his protest practice (152). Through his discussion of certain salient qualities that go down these other, non-barbaric, Brazilian people, Montaigne actually elevates the Brazilians higher up Europeans. For example, he writes, Those Brazilian people are wild, just as we call wild the fruits that Nature has produced by herself and in her normal line of business whereas really it is those that we wealthy person changed artificially and led astray from the common drift, that we should earlier call wild (152). After likening wild Brazilians to wild fruits, he implies that they both retain alive and vigorous their genuine, their most useful and natural, virtues and properties, which we have debased in the artificial fruits in adapting them to gratify our corrupted taste (152). For Montaigne, hysteria and natural virtues are characteristics that are u... ...s the superiority of the former to the latter in the second case, he greatly decreases the distance between the two groups and the aim of superiority that Brazilians have all over Europeans. Finally, his e ssay, as a whole, ultimately reinstates a great distance between the two groups, and Europeans reclaim superiority over Brazilians. Notably, in the first two cases, nature is also elevated above art, but art finally subjugates nature. Perhaps this is because Montaigne identifies with Lycurgus and Plato who could not believe that our society could be maintained with so little artifice and human solder (153). Montaignes essay suggests that he relies on the artifice of his writing and interpretations to explore and define social groups, explore and establish social hierarchies, and maintain social order in a manner that ultimately favors him and his people.