Quotation
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“If you press me to say why I loved him, I feel that it cannot be expressed, except by answering: because it was he, because it was I.”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism · Renaissance · 1580
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the answer as a claim that this friendship, with La Boetie, cannot be reduced to a list of useful traits without losing what made it this one. He is not saying that no reasons exist. He is saying that the reasons do not add up to the fact of these two people. A rival reading hears a ban on explaining any love, which would make the long essay pointless, since he spends it distinguishing this bond from ordinary alliances; The sentence is the famous centre of the chapter on friendship.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of the essay on friendship, book one, chapter 28, on Etienne de La Boetie. Frame's English is the other standard. The French is Montaigne's. The sentence explains a particular friendship, not a general theory that reasons never matter.
Where it comes from
Essays I.28
Approximate date: 1580.
How to use it
Asked at a kitchen table in Edinburgh why a particular friendship has lasted twenty years, a person may have a list, humour, reliability, a shared street, and still find that the list fits other people who are not this friend. Montaigne's answer keeps the remainder instead of pretending the list was the whole. It does not forbid the list; It says the list is not the friendship.
A mindset reading
The sentence is often used to make every attachment beyond criticism, as if asking why were a kind of betrayal. He is describing one rare bond, and he is explicit that most relations are mixtures of pleasure, utility, and chance. Treating every crush as beyond expression borrows a sentence from a chapter that is trying to be precise about a difference.
Understand the philosophy
The essay mourns Etienne de La Boetie and tries to say what friendship, in the classical sense of a single complete bond, would be. The key term is the because that names the persons rather than their qualities: it was he, it was the speaker. Screech keeps the answer's refusal to itemise. The chapter still itemises what this bond is not, including political alliance and the unequal loves he thinks cannot be mutual in the same way.
- love
- self
- meaning
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the answer as a claim that this friendship, with La Boetie, cannot be reduced to a list of useful traits without losing what made it this one. He is not saying that no reasons exist. He is saying that the reasons do not add up to the fact of these two people. A rival reading hears a ban on explaining any love, which would make the long essay pointless, since he spends it distinguishing this bond from ordinary alliances; The sentence is the famous centre of the chapter on friendship.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of the essay on friendship, book one, chapter 28, on Etienne de La Boetie. Frame's English is the other standard. The French is Montaigne's. The sentence explains a particular friendship, not a general theory that reasons never matter.
Which work is it in?
Essays I.28 Approximate date: 1580.