I was in Paris last weekend to give a lecture at INSEAD. My trip coincided with the Pope’s visit so most roads were cordoned off and it was almost impossible to find buses or cabs. This meant walking across the city from one adventure to the next. The weather was great and being without a predetermined plan in Paris isn’t the worst idea.
Around midnight on Saturday, I stumbled into a restaurant called Fitzgerald. For a brief moment, I thought of doing the responsible thing and heading back to my hotel. Thankfully, better sense prevailed. The most popular item on the menu was “a la Montaigne”, named after one of my favourite philosophers. I was alone so I thought it best to enjoy “a la Montaigne” with my Kindle highlights of his essay Of Husbanding Your Will, in which Montaigne looks back on his years as mayor of Bordeaux. Its advice, in modern office language, is to do a good job, but not too good a job.
For anyone who takes their work seriously, this is blasphemous. Not doing too good a job is the kind of language associated with slackers, the unmotivated, and the directionless. It is definitely not going to be anyone’s LinkedIn post any time soon. This raises the question: was Montaigne really asking us to do a good enough job to not get fired and coast along?
In 1581, while travelling in Italy, Montaigne learnt that Bordeaux had elected him mayor. He tried to decline. Henri III then wrote to him in person, telling him to take up the post. Montaigne relented but set strict norms around what to expect from him. His father had held the same office, and Montaigne remembered him in old age, agitated by public business, neglecting his home, his health, and very nearly his life. Montaigne would be sorry, he told them, to let their affairs take hold of him that way. His principle was plain: Il faut se prêter a autrui et ne se donner qu’a soi-même. Lend yourself to others, and give yourself only to yourself. Most professions, he wrote, are a kind of theatre. We should play our part properly while remembering that it is a borrowed role. Le maire et Montaigne ont toujours été deux. The mayor and Montaigne were always two separate people.
Montaigne was mayor during the Wars of Religion, when Catholics and Protestants were killing each other. He had seen strong beliefs turn neighbours into enemies. A mayor who treats every city dispute as a personal attack makes poor decisions, and a city at war needed a mayor who could stay calm.
Some critics called his time as mayor unremarkable. Montaigne replied that a city kept calm through a civil war gives people little to remark on. The graver charge came in 1585. Plague reached Bordeaux in the final weeks of his second term, and Montaigne chose to remain outside the city. Critics have held it against him ever since, claiming that distance from one’s work can harden into distance from one’s duty.
Even so, the advice holds up. Montaigne took the job seriously and kept enough distance to see it clearly. He protested unfair taxes on Bordeaux, hosted Henri of Navarre at his château to keep talks between Catholics and Protestants alive, and worked with the king’s governor to secure the city’s defences when the Catholic League plotted to seize Bordeaux.
None of this means Montaigne was an ideal mayor or that his principles should be emulated by all of us. His essay is simply a useful reminder that suffering or sacrificing for work is not a form of virtue. Even extreme workaholics can learn a ton from Montaigne if they take his advice seriously, not literally.
Essentially, he argues that a healthy distance between what we work on and who we are is helpful. If what we work on and who we are are the same, Montaigne suggests that objectivity, happiness, and composure become elusive. For some, the gamble is worth it. For others, it is not.
Posts on X: @utkarsh_amitabh