Random quote
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) wrote about 250 years ago:
Nature’s productive capacity is so great that the quantity of this vegetal humus would continue to augment everywhere, if we didn’t despoil and impoverish the earth by our planned exploitations of it, which are always immoderate.

Is waiting an action?

Bus stop in Paris

My readers may have noticed that I have become increasingly interested in “boring” questions of daily life, such as waiting. Waiting is often boring for those who are waiting, so many who wait seek distraction using their smartphones. But is waiting also philosophically boring? We spend much time on it, so from that point of view waiting should be an important theme in philosophy!
On the face of it, waiting seems a passive affair: it happens to you. Suppose, you have an appointment with a doctor, and she is not yet there. Maybe you arrived early or she is still busy with another patient. Then you have no option but to wait. Or you arrive early at the bus stop or the bus is late. Also then you can only wait, although it is not your choice. It just happens. On the other hand, when you go to a doctor or want to take a bus, no doubt you take it into account that you must wait. In that sense it is not something that just happens to you. It is not an accident like a car that hits you while you are walking to your appointment or to the bus stop. It belongs to having an appointment or taking a bus, though, if possible, you would prefer not to wait. So, at the same time waiting is something that happens to you and it is something you do, for you don’t cancel the appointment or leave the bus stop. This raises the question: Is or isn’t waiting an action?
What actually is an action? In my PhD thesis I explained that we call what we do an action if we do it with an intention. Now I think that we cannot deny that waiting is something we do. Although you can only wait when the doctor is not yet there or when the bus has not yet arrived, nevertheless it is not something that only happens to you, as we have seen. In fact, you chose to keep waiting. In case an accident happens to you, you are there “at the wrong place at the wrong moment”. Not so when you wait. Maybe you didn’t arrive at the right moment (and that’s why you must wait), but you are there at the right place, anyway. You have chosen to be there and not to walk away, although you may not have chosen to wait as such. You actively prefer to wait because you consider it the best option in the given situation. It is not so that you are forced to wait. If the lift suddenly stops and you cannot go out, you push the alarm button, and wait for help. In this case you are forced to wait. It is not something you do, but it happens to you. Such a wait is comparable to the case that you trip over a stone and automatically try to keep your balance. But such waiting is exceptional.
So, usually you wait because you have chosen to wait, since it is the best you can do in the situation at hand. You choose to wait, because you have reason to do so, namely the thing you are waiting for (the treatment by the doctor; going to the destination where the bus will bring you). If you had nothing to wait for, there would be no reason to wait. Moreover, you have considered that the best you can do is to realize this “for” now at the place and time you have chosen. You could have preferred to come at the last moment, but then you would run the risk that the bus has already left, or that nevertheless you must wait because the doctor has already given your turn to the next patient. Therefore you prefer to come a bit early and wait. So, your waiting is intentional, actually in two respects. Firstly, you are waiting for something, and this something (like the treatment by the doctor) gives the waiting sense. It is the purpose of your waiting and with that its main intention, in the expectation that your purpose will be realized, if you wait long enough. Secondly, you have incorporated deliberately some extra time, so that you will be sure to be in time for your appointment, for the bus etc. Even if the bus is late, or the doctor is still busy with another patient at the time of your arrival, you keep waiting, expecting that it will not be in vain. In short, waiting has an intention in view of your purpose and the extra time you have incorporated and so it is done intentionally and that makes it an action.
In analytical philosophy, an action is often represented by a practical syllogism (PS), so by a scheme like this (see my PhD thesis):

(1) A intends to bring about p.
(2) A considers that he cannot bring about p unless he does a.
(3) Therefore A sets himself to do a.

In this PS A refers to the acting person or actor. In line (1) of this PS we find the purpose p of the action we want to explain. Line (2) tells us which action a the actor will do to realize the purpose. Line (3) tells us that the actor starts to act according to his or her considerations in lines (1) and (2). If a waiting is an action – and not just happens to us like when we are in a lift that suddenly stops – it must be possible to describe it with such a PS. To my mind, it is easy to do so, since the “for” of what you are waiting for refers to your intention (so the thing you want to bring about) and with that to your purpose p, and the waiting is something you must do, for if you don’t, p will not be achieved. Of course, waiting is not the only thing you must do in order to reach your purpose, but it is a necessary part of what you must do to achieve your purpose or otherwise it will not be achieved. (If you leave the doctor’s waiting room, your appointment will not happen) In other words, waiting belongs to the means to achieve your purpose.
So, for the case that John goes to a doctor because he has an appointment with her, you get a PS like this:

PS (waiting)
(1) John intends to go to the appointment with a doctor.
(2) John considers that this appointment will not happen unless
- he leaves his house no later than time x and goes to the hospital
- and waits there till the doctor calls him for his appointment (in case the doctor is still busy with another patient, when he arrives in the hospital).
(3) Therefore John leaves his house no later than time x etc.

PS (waiting) shows how waiting fits in a practical syllogism in line (2) of the PS-scheme that contains the description of the action that must be performed in order to achieve the purpose. Such a PS can be constructed for any waiting, unless it is of the type of waiting for help in case of an accident like a lift that suddenly stops.
I have now shown that waiting is an action. In line (2) of PS (waiting) we see that waiting is not the whole and only action an actor must perform to achieve a certain purpose, but it is one of them. Many actions are links in an action chain. Or, from another point of view, many actions can be divided into several smaller steps or “partial actions”. All these partial actions belong to an overall action or “umbrella action”, in this case the umbrella action “going to the appointment with a doctor”.
The upshot is that, although waiting seems like a passive, not active, if not boring manner of achieving a purpose, in fact it is something you do with an intention and this makes it an action. Waiting is something you actively do.

ONE MILLION views

My philosophical blog reached a milestone: Today my blog passed the magical limit of

ONE MILLION views.

I started writing these blogs 18 years ago with the idea of only writing for myself. But I published these thoughts since you write better if you have an audience. But apparently the readers of these thoughts appreciated them and over the years more and more people have started reading my blogs, and the number of readers of my blogs is still increasing. And so it happened that today I passed the milestone of one million views.

!!! THANK YOU ALL !!!

The folly

Anonymous author. Music by Henry Le Bailly (158?-1637)

Sung by Montserrat Figueras

Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914)

Two weeks ago, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize, although a narcissistic political leader claimed to deserve this award. Anyway, I think this is a good time to pay attention to a person who was not only the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but who also had a major impact on the creation of this award: Bertha von Suttner.
Bertha von Suttner was born in Prague in 1843 as Countess Kinsky. At the time, Prague belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bertha had Austrian nationality. Until the age of thirty, Bertha led an existence that was not unusual in her circles: studying, travelling and an active social life. Then, in 1873, when the family fortune was almost exhausted, partly due to her mother’s passion for gambling (her father had died before she was born), she became governess to the four daughters of Baron von Suttner. She gets into a relationship with the seven years younger son Arthur. This is disapproved of by the family and she is fired. In 1876, she applied for a job as a secretary to the industrialist Alfred Nobel, who lived in Paris, but decided to return after a short stay there and secretly married Arthur. The couple goes to live in the Caucasus at the invitation of a friend. They earn their living by giving lessons and by Arthur's journalistic work. During this time, Bertha began to write, first socially critical articles, later also novels. In 1885, the couple was accepted again by the von Suttner family and they returned to Austria.
Through a friend, Bertha now comes into contact with various peace organisations. In 1886 she went back to Paris for a while, where she met Alfred Nobel again. A strong, lasting friendship develops between the two. The pacifist ideas that Bertha von Suttner had developed in the meantime would have a great influence on Nobel and partly because of her he later decided to establish the peace prize, in addition to the prizes for science and literature. In 1889, Bertha von Suttner’s most famous book Die Waffen nieder! (translated into English as Lay Down Your Arms!) was published in a small edition, after it had previously been refused by various publishers. In this partly autobiographical novel, the female protagonist undergoes all the misery of the war. The story is also very realistic, because Bertha von Suttner had done thorough research into the wars of that time. The novel is a great success and from then on Bertha is a leading figure in the peace movement. She founded various peace organisations and attended international conferences. In 1892, together with the later Nobel Prize winner Alfred Hermann Fried, she took the initiative to create the peace magazine Lay Down Your Arms! She supported attempts by the Russian tsar to organise a peace conference and when it actually took place in The Hague in the Netherlands in 1899, she was the only participant who did not represent a government and she was also the only woman.
Meanwhile, Alfred Nobel died in 1896. For the peace prize awarded from 1901 onwards, he probably had Bertha von Suttner in mind as the first laureate. She did not receive it until 1905.
In the years that followed, she played an important role in the attempts to bring about reconciliation between Germany and England. She attends many congresses and conferences, including the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, and she makes many tours, including in Scandinavia and the United States. In addition, she writes many articles and also some books. In 1913, she again addresses the International Peace Congress in The Hague. She had become ill in the meantime, but in May 1914 she was yet able to help prepare for the Peace Congress in Vienna. For her, the danger of war was already very real. A month later, she died of cancer in Vienna, just before the war, the First World War, would indeed break out. Her ashes are interred in Gotha in Germany.
The significance of Bertha von Suttner lies not only in the fact that she denounced the misery of the war and in her organisational work. She also came up with concrete proposals, such as the establishment of an international court of arbitration to mediate conflicts between states, a peace union of all states to repel with common strength the attack of one state on another and the establishment of an international court to administer justice on behalf of all peoples. Some of her proposals are only now being properly implemented. Bertha von Suttner also had a visionary view. As early as 1911, she was the first to point out the possibility of nuclear war and a year later she foresaw the misery that air wars would cause, only ten years after the first flight with an airplane had taken place. (see here) In Austria today, she is considered a great national personality. Her image is therefore on an Austrian 2-euro coin and she is also depicted on commemorative euro coins. Also postage stamps commemorate her memory in several countries Moreover, streets and squares in Austria, but also in other countries, are named after her. Her book Lay Down Your Arms! is reprinted to this day.

Random quote
I want to do AI my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing, so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

Joanna Maciejewska (Polish author)

The narcissist society

Selfie

Narcissism is a characteristic of some political leaders. It’s a characteristic that brought them to the top. Narcissism is not only a characteristic of leaders. Many people have it, and that’s why, perhaps, the myth of Narcissus exists in Greek mythology, and without a doubt in other mythologies as well. In the past the number of narcissists was limited, though. It could be annoying if you met one (if you weren’t a narcissist yourself), but you could live with it. In the present world this has changed. It is no longer so that only a few persons belong to this category, but it has become the norm, it seems. Even more, narcissism has permeated all of society and it seems as if everyone has become subjected to it, including those who are actually not narcissists. Even if you don’t want to give in, you still have to, if you don’t want to place yourself outside society. Contemporary society is a society in which the ego is central.
This is what I learned from Isolde Charim’s book Die Qualen des Narzismus (“The torments of narcissism”). I’ll not give a review of the book but only pick from it what strikes me, and I’ll give my own thoughts and interpretations. We see then for instance that competition and selfishness have become very important today, especially in the way of “working on yourself” and presenting yourself. In the present neoliberal society, everything is seen in the light of money value, including sectors that were traditionally seen in their own light, like education, culture and even friendships. For instance, for a long time education was a value of its own, but now it’s an investment in yourself in order to increase your market value. Nowadays, you don’t choose a study because you like it, but because it will give you a good salary. Life in the neoliberal view has become a cost-benefit analysis. And if you can, stand out! Be different! The market of life is shaped by the competition model, and you can only win and become better if you are not like others. The market logic shows you the way to self-improvement; the improvement of your material but also your spiritual welfare.
How to know that you are successful; that you are on the way to success? How do others know that you are good? How does your boss know it? In terms of cost-benefit analysis it means that you must be the highest on the rank. And so evaluation and ranking have penetrated society, and everything and everyone is evaluated and ranked. Simply being good and that things have been done well is not enough. What is good must have an objective value. So after every purchase on the internet or when you have used a service, like going to the dentist or simply having a parcel delivered, you receive an e-mail asking for feedback and maybe to rank your purchase or service on a scale. Charim calls this objective narcissism. There is also subjective narcissism, for we are also evaluating and ranking ourselves continuously by comparing ourselves with others and by comparing what we think is our real I with our supposed ideal I.
These rankings show what your worth is, what your value is, and how unique you are, in the eyes of others and even more in your own eyes. The modern human is continuously busy with a narcissistic self-evaluation, and both types of evaluation have become a driving force and control mechanism in modern society. For example, in order to improve ourselves we give much attention to our appearances; to how we look to others (it’s why the beauty industry has become so important, for appearance counts).
What, I think, is the most striking phenomenon of modern narcissistic personality is what I want to call the selfie-cult. I have always been surprised that quite a lot of people, mainly young people (as yet?), have uploaded not only one or two, but often dozens of selfies on their social media pages. And then not so much photos that show them in a situation (at home, at a festival, somewhere abroad…) but usually outside a context, often only their faces. For an outsider these photos are hardly different, though I assume they are for those who do so. Why publish ten, if not sometimes hundred almost equal photos of yourself in one album on the internet? I can see it only as an expression of a narcissistic ego: Look who I am. Look how beautiful I am. But actually, this selfie cult is not meant to show yourself to others, to your public on the internet. The public of the selfie is actually you. It is the optimal expression of your narcissistic feeling.
Spinoza wrote in his Ethics “that we in no case desire a thing because we deem it good, but, contrariwise, we deem a thing good because we desire it … everyone, therefore, according to his particular emotions, judges or estimates what is good, what is bad, what is better, what is worse, lastly, what is best, and what is worst.” (Part III, prop. XXXIX. Note.) Thus, following Charim, good-bad corresponds to our wishes, our desires. What is good or bad is my subjective judgment. Only I am the measure and the measure is me. That’s how we think today. Isn’t it narcissism in the highest degree?

Random quote
“I have done that,” says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually – my memory yields.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Hasty conclusions

The fallacy “Guilt by Association”, discussed in my last blog, is related to two other fallacies, which I have already treated before: argumentum ad hominem or “playing the man” and “jumping to conclusions”. An example of the latter is a fallacy called “hasty generalization” (HG). Because HG is so often found in present-day political discussions, I want to write a few words about it. Hasty Generalization – also called Overgeneralization or Faulty Generalization – is the fallacy that one or several singular cases are seen as exemplary for the group the case belongs to, without further evidence. Or, as Wikipedia tells us: HG is a conclusion drawn about all or many instances of a phenomenon on the basis of one or a few instances of that phenomenon. You could also call it “proof by example”, or better “false proof by example”, for a false proof it is.
When writing this, an example immediately comes to my mind. Recently (case one), near Amsterdam a girl was murdered by a young male asylum seeker when she cycled home at night. Many people, and especially some rightist politicians, reacted with the claim: Asylum seekers are criminals; there is no place for them in the Netherlands. However (case two), a few years ago a similar case happened in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. Just as in case one, a girl cycling home was found murdered, now not far from an asylum seekers’ centre. Many people reacted that the murderer must have been an asylum seeker, adding that there is no place for asylum seekers in the Netherlands. After some time, the murderer was caught: A local Friesian farmer, living not far from the crime scene. Should we remove then all Friesians (or at least all Friesian farmers) from the Netherlands? Nobody said so in case two (and many of those who uttered the false accusation should have to leave then themselves).
These two cases together are good examples, I think, of why without further information, a single instance cannot be seen as representative for a whole group or population. Just as one criminal Friesian farmer doesn’t “make” all Friesians (or all Friesian farmers) criminals, one young asylum seeker doesn’t “make” all asylum seekers criminals. The generalization is too hasty, namely based on insufficient evidence. In general, we can say that a Hasty Generalization happens
1) when there is a lack of knowledge of the selected example (there was no reason to make a connection between the murder and the asylum seekers’ centre in Friesland);
2) when the selected sample is not representative of the whole group (the murderer in case one is not representative of all asylum seekers, just as the farmer is not representative of all Friesians or Friesian farmers);
3) when both (1) and (2) are true. (see Michael J. Muniz, “Hasty Generalization”)
It is also striking in case one that many people saw the murderer as an asylum seeker, and not as a young man, who happened to be an asylum seeker, or as a man, in the first place. Humans are complicated beings with many characteristics, and why pick out just one characteristic?

In formal terms, the argumentation often follows the patterns:
1)         X is true for A
            There is a connection between X and A.
For instance, the crime scene is near the asylum seekers’ centre, so there is a connection between them.
Or: Asylum seeker A has committed a crime, so asylum seekers are criminal. We need much more information, before we can to draw such a conclusion.
2)         A belongs to population P
            A has characteristic X
            So the whole population P or everybody or many in population P have characteristic X.
For instance, A is a criminal, so everybody in or at least many of his group are criminals.

We see hasty generalizations committed almost every day in politics and the media. In politics, HGs are used to emphasize the extremes of a particular viewpoint. For example, case one (the murder near Amsterdam) is often cited in the present Dutch immigration discussions, however without mentioning case two (the murder in Friesland), which would refute its “conclusion”. We find HG not only in political discussions, but also in other discussions in the media, in advertising to promote particular products, etc. To avoid committing this fallacy, the arguer should take into consideration the amount of justifiable knowledge one might have on a particular subject and whether the selected sample being used in the case is justifiably representative of the group in question. (Muniz) Often this is not simple. Good arguing requires much background knowledge and much insight into the problem at hand. A first step to avoid logical mistakes is to take your time. Avoid hasty steps and jumping to your conclusions.

Random quote
The translation of our social relationships, for example friendship, into a matter of investment and benefits seems to be guided by objective market categories, but is in fact no more than an ideological representation of self-calculation.

Isolde Charim in Die Qualen des Narzissmus

Guilt by association

Photo taken at Fort Breendonk, Belgium, a former fortification,
 which  served as a Nazi prison camp during World War II

It occurs so often that actually everybody should know that it is a fallacy: Guilt by Association (GBA). Nevertheless, “this fallacy permeates society, from social groups, to political campaigns, to business relationships, to the court system”, as Leigh Kolb writes in his article about the fallacy. This is not an innocent matter, for throughout history, guilt by association has made people justify persecution, discrimination, and social ostracism. But what is guilt by association, or, as it is also called, the association fallacy?
I found a clear description in an article by Joshua M. Bentley, which I have adapted here a little bit: Guilt by association is the phenomenon that occurs when one party, person or thing is distrusted because of its connection to another party, person or thing that has done something wrong. Guilt by association is a kind of heuristic, or mental shortcut, that people use to decide which companies share their values, viewpoints, ideas, and the like. This is the negative version of the fallacy. There is also a positive version, which I’ll ignore. (You get it by replacing the word “wrong” by “good” here). I’ll also ignore GBA for things. Guilt by Association is related to the idea of identification, because people are identified with (associated with) members of the group(s) they belong to and share ideas and views with, and/or with individuals who have the same views etc. However, the problem is that the person or persons involved are not only associated with others because of the views etc. they share but because of this association they are also often ascribed the views etc. of these others that they don’t share or that they have never commented on. It’s something like: Show me your friends, and I'll show you who you are.
In formal terms, the reasoning in GBA is this from Wikipedia):

                    Premise (1):    A is in set S1
                    Premise (2):    A is in set S2
                    Premise (3):    B is also in set S2
                    Conclusion:    Therefore, B is in set S1.

But the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises, which makes Guilt by Association a fallacy.

First some simple, if not banal examples (again from Wikipedia):

- John is a con artist. John has black hair. Therefore, people with black hair are necessarily con artists.
- Lyle is a crooked salesman. Lyle proposes a monorail. Therefore, the proposed monorail is necessarily folly.
- Simon and Karl live in Nashville, and they are both petty criminals. Jill lives in Nashville; therefore, Jill is necessarily a petty criminal.

I think that you’ll immediately see from these examples how fallacious the GBA is. However, many cases of GBA are more difficult to recognise and less “banal”. Therefore, people often fall into the GBA trap, and commit them themselves. For isn’t it so that associations can also be true? But often they are not and therefore we must always check them. Nevertheless, many times people apply them without checking, because for them the associations seem obvious, though they aren’t.
Even worse are the cases that they are used by politicians in order to manipulate their followers or to attract new followers (and maybe they even believe them themselves). Let me give a few examples of possible dangerous consequences of the Guilt by Association fallacy, leading to suffering by innocent people. Maybe the best-known case of GBA is the McCarthy era in the United States: Senator Joseph McCarthy led a campaign against alleged communists in the government and other institutions. Individuals suspected of having communist sympathies were subjected to intense scrutiny, harassment, and even imprisonment. Many innocent people lost their jobs, careers, and reputations as a result of these unfounded accusations, simply because they were said to have ideas (rightly or wrongly) that were considered “communist”, despite their actual behaviour. (see Bentley) What also often happens is that individuals associated with certain religious or ethnic groups are discriminated against in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, for example after 9/11. Or, – another case – when in 2002 a populist Dutch politician was murdered by an environmentalist, not a few reacted by saying “the bullet came from the left”, as if most people with leftist ideas would support this murder and were responsible for it. This is also what we see now in rising authoritarian states. More and more people there are harassed, dismissed from their jobs, if not held responsible for a political murder, if it happens, simply because they use the democratic right to oppose “the leader” and to disagree with his ideas. But people are only guilty for what they have done and not for possible or alleged associations with perpetrators. If this happens, we have a case of Guilt by Association.

Selfie
A selfie is an ideal self-representation that derives its strength from a public relationship that everyone can establish and no longer needs a real audience, because it is outsourced to a virtual audience (for example on social networks).

Isolde Charim in DieQualen des Narzissmus 

On Books

In his essay “Of three employments” (Essays, III-3), Montaigne distinguishes between dealing with friends, with women, and with books. However, dealings with friends and women are problematical, so Montaigne, for they depend on chance and on the cooperation of others. Moreover, “one is troublesome by its rarity, the other withers with age”. And indeed, real friends are rare and difficult to find for everybody. However, to my mind, the second part of this remark represents a typical male, if not macho point of view – although, I think that Montaigne was not a macho type of man –, besides that as such I disagree with it. By saying that contacts with women withers away with age, Montaigne apparently thinks of sexual contacts that men (if not he himself) have with women, considering the paragraphs preceding this remark. Why would a pure normal friendship bet
ween a man and a woman not be possible and why would such a friendship wither away with age? Furthermore, (implicitly) Montaigne ignores here the friendships and contacts between women among each other, and also in this case there is no reason to suppose that they wither away with age. They do or don’t, just as friendships between men do or don’t, depending on the circumstances.
Anyway, Montaigne prefers contact with books, “which … is much more certain, and much more our own. It yields all other advantages to the two first, but has the constancy and facility of its service for its own share.” Especially, the latter is an advantage of books over humans, for they don’t protest when you need them and they are always there, and as he gets older, Montaigne needs them more. Contact with books, so he says, “comforts me in old age and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness, and delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike: it blunts the point of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, ’tis but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them and drive the other out of my thoughts…”. No wonder that Montaigne never travels without books.
Nevertheless, Montaigne is not a fervent reader. No day goes by that I don’t read a book but not so for Montaigne. Montaigne wants to have books around him and enjoy the reading when he needs it for the reasons just mentioned, but “sometimes I pass over several days, and sometimes months, without looking on them.” They simply must be there so that Montaigne can use his books when he needs them. When at home he likes spending his time in his library, then taking this book, then taking that book, and “I turn over now one book, and then another, on various subjects, without method or design. One while I meditate, another I record and dictate, as I walk to and fro, such whimsies as these I present to you here.”
Books give Montaigne consolation, emotional and mental support, and they help him write his essays. For me, it is different. Like Montaigne, I cannot do without them, but books give me a window on the world. Books stimulate my imagination and give me other perspectives. They help me discover what is outside of me and what is inside me. That’s why reading is so important; not just reading letters whatever they are, like an accounting text, as some think, but reading stories or texts with narrative aspects. And that’s why reading is not only important for the elderly but also and just for young people. Because reading narrative texts stimulates your imagination and broadens your view of and on the world, it stimulates your mental and social development. Nevertheless, as Montaigne tells us: “Every good has its ill.” Also books have, since, so he says,: “[t]he soul indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains in the meantime without action, and grows heavy and sombre. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining age.”
But why should I stop doing what gives me so much pleasure and which is mentally so advantageous for me, because it neglects my physical side? It’s true that reading does not train my body but I have my bike for that.

-.-.-.-.-

Here you find a reconstruction of Montaigne’s library.

Random quote
The societies wherein less disparity is permitted between masters and servants seem to me the most equitable.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Salami Tactics

It is an often-used practise in negotiations, for example in the business world and in politics: The so-called salami tactics, also called salami slicing, salami slicing tactics, and the like. It is a step-by-step method to get what you want to have from your opponent, the person you are negotiating with, by asking or taking it gradually, since it would be impossible to get it in one go, because your opponent would then refuse to give it or would resist in another way. I had to think of it when I thought about how contemporary autocrats or those political leaders who try to become autocrats seize power or already have seized power. The regular readers of this blog will understand that I think of people like Trump and Putin or Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, all democratically elected political leaders who are rising or already established autocrats. But let me explain what salami tactics involve. I concentrate on the use of these tactics in politics.
It may not be a coincidence that also Orbán is on the way to autocracy, for the term “salami tactics” has been coined by the former Hungarian communist leader Mátyás Rákosi as a way to describe his technique of dividing and isolating the other political parties in his country at the end of the 1940s, when the communists had seized power: “demanding a little more each day, like cutting up a salami, thin slice after thin slice.” (source) To cut these parties off like slices of salami till nothing remains was the method used by the Hungarian communists in those days in order to eliminate them. And in the same way the method is still used in politics today (but also in business negotiations and elsewhere) as a way to get what you cannot get at once. In politics, the approach is twofold. On the one hand the opposing parties are discredited and defamed and sometimes even dehumanised, and on the other hand measures are taken that may as such be necessary, but that in addition give the leader more power. Or the leader takes a little bit more power in an illegal way and watches what then happens. If there is no protest worth the name or if (too) many people support the illegal seizure of power, the leader takes some more power in the next step. Etc. Financially eliminating the opponents is another measure of the arising – or already established – autocrat: take away state subsidies that till then were given to institutions you don’t like; forbid them receiving money from abroad. Then forbid thoughts that are allegedly foreign. And if all this works, finally you can try to control the internet as well.
This is a small selection of the possibilities available to an autocrat. Important is that the seizure of power goes on step by step. If taken all at once, at one time, it could give rise to much protest and opposition, which could make the power grab impossible. But taken one by one and one after the other, the measures are often seen as not unreasonable by a majority of people, or they are not seen as a reason for heavy protesting. Small measures with only little impact for most people are often accepted resignedly. It is difficult to organise many to stop them. And then the moment comes that it is too late to stop the autocrat and he can arrest people for the simple reason that they protest or at least he can put them on a sidetrack. That’s what we have seen in Putin’s Russia and that’s what we now see happening in Hungary, the USA and some other countries. For example, in the USA President Trump is pushing the boundaries of the law. “What will happen when I send the National Guard to a city governed by Democrats to ‘help’ the police? Is it legal? How does the city react? What happens if I ignore court orders? If nobody stops me and can stop me in this case, I can take the next step to increase my power.” That’s what the present US president seems to think, and that’s how Putin rose from a democratically elected president to the near-dictator he is now. Salam tactics: Cut up your opponents thin slice after thin slice till nothing is left of them.

Random quote
I never travel without books.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

The psychology of waiting

Rokin Underground Station, Amsterdam

Waiting. Everybody does it and spends much time on it. Therefore, it is surprising how little attention it receives from social scientists and philosophers. I think that street photographers pay more attention to this kind of action. For an action it is. Waiting is not simply doing nothing, being inactive. Waiting has an intention. It is doing nothing in view of something else, and this having an intention makes it an action.
Waiting has philosophical, sociological and psychological aspects. The philosophical aspects concern, for instance, the meaning of waiting and its place in life. The sociological aspects concern, for instance, waiting in a group and waiting in public. The psychological aspects concern how we experience it. Although I am mainly interested in the philosophical and sociological aspects of waiting, and then especially those of waiting in public, I don’t want to ignore the psychology of waiting, also because it influences how “managers” of public spaces organise public areas, and then in the first place, of course, those places made for waiting, like bus stops or platforms in railway stations; and it is the same for managers of semi-public spaces like hospital waiting rooms, the foyers of theatres or sports stadiums. In this blog, I’ll investigate how managers of public space and semi-public spaces, use or can use these psychological aspects for the organisation of waiting spaces. My analysis is based on an article by David H. Maister about the management of waiting in restaurants.

1 – Unoccupied Time Feels Longer than Occupied Time. In semi-public waiting rooms (like a doctor’s waiting room), you often find magazines and other lecture that can be used by the waiting people. However, many waiting people are self-managers and shorten their psychological waiting time with their smartphones or by reading stuff they have taken with them. That’s why many railway stations have bookshops. Music can also reduce the psychological waiting time, for instance in sports stadiums before the match (in addition, it puts the spectators in the mood).
2 – Pre- and Post-process Waits Feel Longer than In-process Waits. Waiting feels less onerous when you are already involved in the process you are waiting for, even in case it increases the overall waiting time. So, when entering a hospital, often you are directly asked to fill in a form, which gives the feeling of being “in-process” and reduces the sense of waiting. When you sit in a moving train for half an hour time seems to go faster than when you wait half an hour on the platform, till the train arrives. Then the train suddenly stops for an unknown reason. The process of the waiting-in-progress stops then as well and a minute of waiting suddenly feels like an hour of moving, so to speak. To reduce the psychological waiting time, modern trains and buses have screens with travel information, such as speed and time to the next station. Sometimes the driver tells you what is going on when an unplanned stop happens.
3 – Anxiety Makes Waits Seem Longer. You are in vain waiting for your train. Then you are informed that an accident has happened. Even if the length of the delay is unknown, information may help. When there are roadworks on a motorway sometimes the length of the works is indicated.
4 – Uncertain Waits are Longer than Known, Finite Waits. Trains and buses are often delayed for unimportant reasons. It should be the norm that such delays always be indicated on information panels.
5 – Unexplained Waits are Longer than Explained Waits. Many motorways have information panels that inform the drivers about traffic jams or slow-moving traffic caused by accidents or roadworks. Train passengers are informed about accidents or technical problems. Or – a semi-public event – sometimes it happens that an opera singer suddenly has become ill and a substitute has not yet arrived in the theatre. So the performance will start somewhat later. Then the public is informed of the problem (also because the cast has changed).
6 – Unfair Waits are Longer than Equitable Waits. In a queue it sometimes happens that someone goes out of turn. Or you don’t know when it is your turn. For semi-public waits, there is an easy solution: Give numbered tickets to waiting people, so that they can be served in order of arrival. In public spaces, this is often difficult or impossible to realise. Lines on the ground indicating where to wait or cords guiding the queues can help, but much depends also on the discipline of the waiting people.
7 – People Will Wait Longer for More Valuable Services. Public space managers can make waiting more comfortable, for example by placing benches, or by simple covered waiting spaces that protect against the weather; or they can even place there a drinks machine and the like.
8 – Waiting Alone Feels Longer than Waiting in Groups. Public space managers cannot do much about this problem.
9 – Physically Uncomfortable Waiting Feels Longer. Waiting rooms, bus shelters, benches, good lightning at dark places in the evening, etc will help. See also point 7.
10 – Waits Seem Longer to New or Occasional Users. Public space managers can provide as much information as possible to customers, travellers, etc. and describe the process they are waiting for in detail. Think of informative websites, information panels, and oral messages via a public address system.

Waiting in public can happen everywhere. In fact, waiting is part of the stream of life and doesn’t stand out. Usually it is a routine action. Indeed, usually it is an action. Waiting implies many decisions, like where and how to wait and what to do while waiting. Waiting is often boring and stressful, as the ten psychological characteristics of waiting show. A public space manager can do something about this. If this is done well, time will fly, even if the wait is long.

Random quote
Philosophy is the entirety of all primitive propositions that are supposed to be true without evidence from the various sciences.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) in a lecture to the Moral Science Club in Cambridge, 29 November 1912). 

If so, almost none of what I have written here is philosophy.

The metro

Passengers waiting for the train in a metro stattion in Rotterdam

You find it in many big cities: the metro, underground, subway, tube, or how you want to call it. It brings you easily where you want to go. A metro train will pass you on to your destination. Therefore, we can call a metro – and other public means of transport – a passage. There are also other reasons to do so, for the metro tube is a kind of space you must pass through to your destination, for instance. Metaphorically, we could call the metro train, where you stay during your transport, a passage as well. You simply must wait there, while being moved, and that’s all. You wait while being passed.
However, the latter observation raises an intriguing question: Is a metro train really a passage, in the sense of an instrument that passes you on? Isn’t it a waiting room? The question is intriguing, since passing and waiting seem to be contradictory “activities”: either you pass, so move (from one place to another), or you wait, but when you wait you cannot go to another place. Nonetheless, in a metro train both happen simultaneously. Therefore, we can say that using the metro is a hybrid activity: passing and waiting. Passing while you are waiting or waiting while you are passing. The passenger is active and passive at the same time: Active when choosing where to go; entering a metro station; walking to a train; taking a seat; and leaving the train at the destination. It’s just like walking through the city or driving a car. However, the passenger is passive, because it is the train that moves him or her and passes the passenger on. It’s like in the waiting room of a hospital: You go to the consulting room, when the doctor calls your name, just as that you leave the train, when you see a sign with the name of your chosen station.
There is more that makes the metro system a special kind of passage: Using a metro train is collectively passing. Usually, passing, like walking or driving a car, is an individual affair. You do it alone or otherwise with people you know, but not with complete strangers. Walking together or driving a car together are things you normally do only with people you know. Using public transport is always collective and with strangers. On the other hand, also waiting is often a single, individual matter, but waiting with others is not unusual. It happens often together with people you don’t know; by far more than passing: At a bus stop, in a railway station, in the doctor’s waiting room, etc. Actually, waiting in a public space is a collective affair most of the time, unless it happens, for example, that you are waiting alone at a street corner (or wherever) for a friend, and the like. Waiting alone at a bus stop is in fact not more than a limited case of collectively waiting, for it can always happen that someone will join you. Of course, this usually collective character of public waiting doesn’t make that you’ll need to connect with those who are waiting with you. Usually, you don’t. It is the same for passing: people passing collectively like in the metro seldom connect and interact with each other.
Using a metro train is not only a collective affair, but this being together there is something special. As Sally Raskoff notes: “The subway is a unique social space where people of different backgrounds and social classes find themselves – perhaps for the only time that day – in the same, small space.” The metro is one of the few means of public transport used by nearly everyone, no matter their social background, class, ethnicity, etc. Maybe, it is the only place where people of all kinds of backgrounds ever meet, even more than in a bus, tram or train. The whole world comes together in the metro, so to speak; it is the human world on wheels, more than any other means of public transport.
There is yet another characteristic of the metro worth mentioning. You pay for using the metro and you may think “that’s it”. However, as Marc Augé has made clear (p. 77), it’s more complicated. Using the metro is concluding a contract with the metro company: You pay and the metro company has the obligation to transport you. Buying a ticket makes you a passenger. You need a ticket to be allowed to go on the metro (or even to enter the metro station), but once you have it, you are entitled to use the metro and the metro company has the duty to transport you and to take care of a good service. Without a ticket you are a fare dodger, or, literally, a “free rider”. It makes that using the metro – and using public transport in general – is based on a contractual relationship. Using the metro is contractually passing, so to speak, and the metro is a contractual passage. And of course, this makes using the metro also contractually waiting and a metro train a contractual waiting room. The latter is only implicitly so. For, in the end you don’t buy a metro ticket for waiting but for being passed on and that’s what the metro company is paid for. However, without providing metro carriages that are also waiting rooms a metro company cannot transport you; without them a metro company cannot pass you on. Moreover, you expect that the carriages are clean and well maintained, and that’s what you also pay for.
Taking the metro always seemed to be such a simple thing, but as you see it isn’t. But when you want to take it, don’t think too much about all this, for otherwise you’ll not arrive at your destination. But that’s true for many things in life.

Random quote
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931-2021)

Autocratic power

I have written here already more about him, but in these days that violence and power are so on the foreground in the news, I cannot resist writing again about this intriguing and interesting person, at the risk of falling into repetitions: Étienne de La Boétie. Actually, little is known about the Frenchman, who lived from 1530 to 1563, so in my former blogs I have already written the essence of what is known about him (see here). Nevertheless, I’ll try to treat some aspects not yet discussed by me.

La Boétie is known by many as the friend of Montaigne, who dedicated his Essays to him, which Montaigne started to write after La Boétie’s premature death. What most people outside France who have heard of La Boétie don’t know is that he was a judge, who, on behalf of the Parlement (court) of Bordeaux, tried to mediate in religious disputes that were troubling France in those days; or that La Boétie was also a poet; that he was a Renaissance humanist who translated several classical works and introduced them in France; and, most important today, that he has written an essay titled Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. (Here you find a translation) It’s about this book that I want to write now.
In a French bookshop you always find several editions of the Discourse, but outside France the book is hardly known, or it must be in circles of political scientists, anarchists and pacifists. The origin of the book is not known, but to my mind the most likely theory is that it was a study assignment La Boétie wrote when he was 18 years old. First the manuscript circulated among students, humanists, Renaissance writers and others interested in it, but around 1576 it was published by Huguenots, and it had a big influence among them. However, gradually the Discourse was forgotten, until it was rediscovered by Enlightenment philosophers and French revolutionaries 200 years later. Since then it has often been reprinted and it has been translated into many languages.
The Discourse describes a theory of power that is still worth taking notice of. It gives a good description of how power works in autocratic countries, but it can also help understand the mechanisms that make a democracy develop into an autocracy. According to La Boétie the essence of autocratic power is dependency. Such power, so La Boétie, has a pyramidal structure. The man at the top – usually it is a man – gives his favours to the persons immediately under him and so makes them and keeps them dependent on him, and, I want to add, he punishes those who don’t support him. The persons who support the leader do the same to those under them; etc., until we reach the “bottom”. The whole network is based on ruling, controlling, playing off against each other and profiting from others, but in the end everybody is connected to the tyrant. He pulls the strings and the so-structured society is like a puppet theatre, where the one at the top plays the subjects with favours and punishments like the puppeteer who makes his puppets dance. And what about those at the bottom who have no one under them? They do what they are asked and, after having fulfilled their tasks, they are free to do what they like, so La Boétie.
However, and now I am going to mix what La Boétie says and how I myself analyse autocratic power, people do not support or obey leaders only because of the favours or punishments. It is often also a matter of habit (like when people are born in an autocratic structure); or the followers think that the one at the top is the most suitable person to govern the country and, even, that there’ll be chaos if this leader is put aside. Nobody can replace him, the followers think. And there is the “bread and games” factor used by power holders for keeping the followers in their hands, although I am not sure whether this is really an important factor today. I guess that the other factors (favours and punishments and supposed chaos) are more important now. Moreover, there are also other means used by autocrats to keep their grip on the situation, not mentioned by La Boétie. Autocrats always try to control the stream of information. In La Boétie’s time there was already a strict censorship (also the Discourse was forbidden, once published). Nowadays we see that autocrats try to control the media and the internet. Moreover, autocrats try to directly control their citizens and those travelling to their countries, for example by checking their internet behaviour, reading their messages on social media, wiretapping, and so on. Even democracies cannot escape such practises in order to try to stop criminality and undesirable foreign interference that undermine democracy.
La Boétie’s strength in the Discourse is his analysis. However, the weak side is that it is merely an analysis. It doesn’t even initiate discussing ways to stop repression by an autocrat. Maybe, La Boétie didn’t want to do so. His analysis makes you think about your situation and already this is a subversive act. However, then you stand alone: You know the problem but you don’t get any indication how to solve it. Moreover, La Boétie’s analysis is individualistic and psychological, but society is a social affair, also governed by social processes. This is absent in the Discourse. Nevertheless, the analysis in the Discourse as such is brilliant and has made it one of the classics of political theory.
Others have tried to address these shortcomings and accepted the challenge to develop action methods based on the Discourse. I just want to mention two names. It was none other than Mahatma Gandhi who has founded a practise of nonviolent action on La Boétie’s idea. The other person I want to mention is the American political scientist Gene Sharp. He developed and described 198 methods of nonviolent action against violence and repression, and wrote books on how to undermine autocratic structures. La Boétie himself did not do so, but his analysis provides you a first idea of how autocratic leadership works, with which you can start.

Random quote
Conducting our public discourse as if it were possible to outsource moral and political judgment to markets, or to experts and technocrats, has emptied democratic argument of meaning and purpose. Such vacuums of public meaning are invariably filled by harsh authoritarian forms of identity and belonging – whether in the form of religious fundamentalism or strident nationalism.

Michael J. Sandel (1953-)

Kinds of violence

La Gleize, Belgium: Monument to the victims of the Second World War

Many people, including most politicians, are talking about violence only in case of direct physical attacks by individuals, groups or armies on other individuals, groups, cities, regions and countries, etc. We think here of intentionally physically hurting, killing, etc., and many see also directly psychologically hurting others as a kind of violence. We can call such violence direct violence. For the Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung, however, this view on violence was too limited. For people can also be hurt and killed by others without a direct involvement of the latter in the hurting and killing, so that the hurting and killing cannot be ascribed to particular individuals. In this case there is no straightforward physical relationship between perpetrator and victim, but nevertheless the effect is the same as in case of direct violence, so that it is reasonable to call this kind of hurting and killing violence as well. Galtung called this type of violence structural violence. This human-caused violence is a consequence of the social circumstances people live in, because victims of this type of violence have no access to the necessary resources that would improve their miserable circumstances, which can even make them die. The reasons why people cannot use the resources they need for improving their living conditions are not natural, but others prevent them from using them or don’t give them the means they should reasonably give them. Galtung calls structural violence also “social injustice”. To quote Galtung (p. 171):

“Resources are unevenly distributed, as when income distributions are heavily skewed, literacy/education unevenly distributed, medical services existent in some districts and for some groups only, and so on. Above all the power to decide over the distribution of resources is unevenly distributed. The situation is aggravated further if the persons low on income are also low in education, low on health, and low on power - as is frequently the case because these rank dimensions tend to be heavily correlated due to the way they are tied together in the social structure… The important point here is that if people are starving when this is objectively avoidable, then violence is committed, regardless of whether there is a clear subject-action-object relation, as during a siege yesterday or no such clear relation, as in the way world economic relations are organized today.”

Following Galtung (ibid.), we can distinguish direct violence and structural violence this way: In case of direct violence there is a clear subject-object relation between perpetrator and victim, and this is manifest because it is visible as action. In case of structural violence a direct subject-object relation between perpetrator and victim is absent. The violence exerted is not visible on the surface, but it is hidden and latent. It is built in the structure, not in direct purposeful actions. Galtung: “[For example,] in a society where life expectancy is twice as high in the upper as in the lower classes, violence is exercised even if there are no concrete actors one can point to directly attacking others, as when one person kills another.”
If this analysis is right – and I think it is – we can discern also an intermediate kind of violence between direct and structural violence, which I want to call indirect violence. In this type of violence there is a clear relation between perpetrator (or perpetrators) and victim (or victims), although the perpetrator doesn’t directly hurt, beat, or kill the victim. The perpetrator doesn’t stick a knife in the body of the victim or shoot the victim down. Nevertheless, the use of violence is manifest and the hurting and killing of the victim is the clear result of manifest actions. We see this type of violence, for instance, when people are deported without giving them sufficient means to survive during the deportation or at their destination; when food aid is explicitly denied to people who are starving; when international aid is cancelled, while people are dependent on it and no alternatives are provided or developed; when social services are cut so that people fall into poverty. Etc. In such cases, the perpetrators are clear and it is clear who their victims are, though we cannot say that particular perpetrators directly and in direct manifest actions hurt or kill particular victims. We can say that indirect violence is halfway between direct violence and structural violence, but, just like the other types, violence it is.

Random quote
Tyrants are only great because we are on our knees.

Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1563)

Montaigne in Basel

John the Baptist Fountain in Basel

Montaigne loved travelling. Usually he travelled for practical purposes; for his work (he has been a judge); for political missions by order of the king; for visiting friends; or because he had something to do in Paris. In 1580, Montaigne decided to make a long journey without a special purpose but only for the pleasure of travelling and for escaping the troubles in France and his domestic worries. Or so he says in the journal he kept of his travel. The travel would last one year and five months.
We don’t know exactly where and when Montaigne’s journey started, since the first pages of his journal are missing. Anyway, it was after the 6th of August 1580, when he had buried his friend Philippe de Gramont in Soissons, in Northern France. Gramont had been killed during the siege of La Fère in Picardy. From there, Montaigne might have gone to Paris, where he could have gathered his company. Be it as it may, on 5 September Montaigne was in Beaumont-sur-Oise, and from there he went via Meaux, Bar-le-Duc and Plombières to Thann, which then belonged to Germany, and from there to Mulhouse, then a Swiss town. From Mulhouse Montaigne and his company went to Basel, where they arrived on 28 September at the end of the day.
Montaigne doesn’t say where stayed in Basel, but he gives a detailed description of the inns in the region, so it’s likely that his inn in Basel must have looked something like that: “In all rooms of this sort, which are always well furnished, there will be five or six tables fitted with benches at which all the guests will dine together, each party at its own particular table. The smallest houses of entertainment will have three or four well-appointed rooms of this kind. They are pierced for many windows which are filled with rich glass, but on the whole it seems that the hosts concern themselves more with the dinner than with aught else, for the bed-chambers are often mean enough, the beds never curtained and always placed three or four together, the rooms being without chimneys, and only heated from the general stove. Beyond this there is no sign of a fire… There is much want of cleanliness in their bed-chambers, and he who gets a white sheet may deem himself fortunate: moreover, it is their fashion never to cover the pillow with sheeting; there is rarely any other covering than a feather quilt, which is very dirty.” (Journal, pp. 68-69) However, the food is excellent and Montaigne likes the wines (“They never mix water with their wine”) and also the service at table is good, though different from the way they do in Montaigne’s home region. (pp. 69-72).
Montaigne calls Basel “a fine town”. (p. 62) “They have a custom in the town, but not in the suburbs, that the clocks shall strike one hour in advance of the true time, to wit, if it should strike ten, the time would be really nine. They say the reason of this custom is that in past years an attempt against the city miscarried on account of a similar fault of the town clock.” The churches, which have become Protestant, are also after the Reformation in good condition, but the altars and images have been removed from the interiors. “The exteriors are still garnished with images and with ancient tombs unmutilated, and inscribed with prayers for the souls of the departed. The organs, the bells, the crosses on the bell towers, and all the different images in the painted windows are whole as ever they were, as well as the benches and the seats of the choirs. The Calvinists place the baptismal font where the high altar stood aforetime, and build at the head of the nave another altar to serve for their Lord’s Supper… The church of the Carthusians is a very fine building, preserved and kept up most carefully; the same furniture and ornaments are still there, a circumstance which the reformers bring forward as a testimony of their good faith, seeing that they gave a promise to maintain these at the time of their agreement.” (pp. 65-66) The quote shows that the relations between the Protestants and Roman Catholics were relatively good in Basel, despite the Reformation and although the churches had been taken over by the Protestants.
Basel has a beautiful library and even three hundred fountains, so Montaigne. The people there and in the region loved balconies that much “that in building they always leave between the windows of the chambers doorways looking over the streets, with the view of letting a balcony be built thereto at some future time.” All houses have glass windows and those of the rich are beautifully decorated. Even

...stoves, which are of pottery...

the smallest church “has a magnificent clock and dial.  Their work in tiles is excellent, and on this account the roofs of the houses are decorated with a medley of tiles, glazed in various colours, and the floors of their chambers are the same. Moreover it would be impossible to find more delicate work than that of their stoves, which are of pottery.” (pp. 67-68) Even today, many houses and buildings in the region “are decorated with a medley of tiles, glazed in various colours”.
A travel party consisting of several gentlemen and servants, like Montaigne’s, couldn’t arrive unnoticed in a town like Basel, and the “city authorities did the honour to M. d’Estissac and M. de Montaigne of sending a present of wine by one of their officers, who made a long speech to them as they sat at table.” (p. 62) In those days, being a nobleman opens doors and commands respect just only because of the fact, and it gave Montaigne the opportunity to meet in Basel interesting and prominent persons, like “many learned men: Grynaeus [note 1] and the author of the Theatrum [note 2], and [the physician Felix] Platerus …, and Francis Hotman. The two last-named supped with M. de Montaigne the day after his arrival.” The table conversation gives some insight into the religious relations of those days in Basel, for Montaigne remarks that apparently “there was in Basle considerable religious discord, some calling themselves Zwinglians, some Calvinists, and others Martinists [=Lutherans], while many, as he was informed, had in their hearts a hidden liking for the Roman religion. The ordinary form of administering the sacrament is to place it in the mouth, but at the same time any one, who so wishes, may reach out his hand for it, the ministers being chary of stirring up afresh the antagonisms of religion.” I wonder whether this must be seen as a matter of religious discord and not as a matter of religious tolerance.
The journal fragments make clear that Montaigne was an attentive observer. Although he certainly must have heard of Erasmus, it is a pity that he doesn’t make any reference to him, for these two men had a lot in common in their views. But maybe Montaigne didn’t know that Erasmus had lived for some years in Basel.
Montaigne and his company left Basel on the 30th of September in the afternoon.

Notes
1) Either Samuel ((1539–1599), Swiss jurist) or Simon Grynaeus ((1539–1582), Swiss mathematician and university professor).
2) Probably Theodor Zwinger.

Peter Church in Basel

Random quote
The common genetic element with the largest known effect on propensity for violence is the Y chromosome, but we don’t take its presence as exculpatory.

Kevin J. Mitchell (associate professor at Trinity College, Dublin)

Erasmus in Basel

Erasmus's Gravestone in the Minster in Basel

When I was on holiday in the southern part of the Alsace, in eastern France, a few weeks ago, I made also a trip to Basel, only a 40 minutes’ drive from my holiday home. For it was in Basel that the famous Dutch humanist, theologian and philosopher Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam had passed the last years of his life.
When Erasmus left the – now Belgian

Zum Sessel (the house with
the red groundfloor and white
upper floors)

 – city of Leuven in 1521, he might have realised that maybe he would never return there again. Erasmus left Leuven because he was increasingly criticised for his religious ideas, since Luther had openly published his criticism of the Roman Catholic Church in 1517. Some even saw Erasmus as a supporter of Luther, although Erasmus stayed a loyal though critical supporter of the Catholic Church till the end of his life. Erasmus had decided to move to Basel, for Johann Froben there had been the publisher of his works already for many years. Froben had one of the most important publishing houses of his time in Europe. It was established in a building called Zum Sessel, in the present Totengässlein. Today a pharmacy museum is established in the house.

Zur Alten Treu 
{left of the scaffolding)

Erasmus went to work for Froben as an author, editor and acquirer. They got along very well and, moreover, Erasmus was by far Froben’s most popular and most productive author, and someone who worked very hard for his publisher. So, no wonder that Froben bought a house for Erasmus in the Nadelberg street, called Zur Alten Treu (nowadays a bookshop). Froben gave Erasmus also a yearly income of 200 florins. Since Erasmus had other earnings as well, he could live a very good life in Basel. Moreover, besides working for Froben, Erasmus taught private students, who could live in Zur Alten Treu for 40 florins a year. One of the persons Erasmus met in Basel was the Swiss painter Hans Holbein the Younger, who worked as an illustrator for Froben and also painted the now famous portrait of Erasmus.
Buying a house and giving him an income was not the only thing Froben did for Erasmus. He bought even a garden for him, a thing which Erasmus had longed to have already for years. It was a space large enough to walk, with a gazebo where he could work. Erasmus could reach the garden walking from Zum Sessel or from his house along the Peter’s Church to the city wall on the westside of the town.

Zum Luft

In 1527 Johann Froben died. His son Hieronymus succeeded his father in the publishing house, and since also Erasmus and the son got along well, Erasmus could continue his life more or less as it was. However, in 1529 the Reformation reached also Basel. The Roman Catholic churches became Protestant, and Erasmus no longer felt at ease in Basel, and he decided to move to Freiburg in southwest Germany. Erasmus gradually got many physical complaints and he was often ill and he

Erasmus's garden

became a really old man. Because the situation in Basel had somewhat improved, in 1535 Erasmus decided to return and to pass the last days of his life there. Hieronymus Froben gave him an apartment in the Haus zum Luft in the Bäumleingasse, the house to which Hieronymus had moved his father’s publishing house. Erasmus continued working on a new manuscript, but his health deteriorated sharply and he died in Zum Luft on 12 July 1536, almost 70 years old.
Erasmus was buried in the Basel Minster. Since this had become a Protestant church, it was remarkable that the city authorities allowed that a Catholic requiem mass was celebrated for him. Erasmus’s grave was originally in the nave of the Minster, but was moved to the catacombs in the 19th century. The gravestone was placed in the left side aisle of the church.

The Minster in Basel

Sources
- Anne Bakker, “Citytrip Bazel – In de voetsporen van Erasmus”, https://reportersonline.nl/citytrip-bazel-in-de-voetsporen-van-erasmus/ .
- Sandra Langereis, Erasmus: Dwarsdenker. Een biografie, Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2021; esp. pp. 640-701.
- “Das Haus zum Luft / Erasmushaus”, https://altbasel.ch/haushof/haus_zum_luft.html .