Answer:
"we ought rather to call those wild, whose natures we have changed by our artifice, and diverted from the common order."
"there is more barbarity in . . . tearing a body limb from limb by racks and torments, that is yet in perfect sense; in roasting it by degrees; in causing it to be bitten and worried by dogs and swine . . . than to roast and eat him after he is dead."
"I am not sorry that we should here take notice of the barbarous horror of so cruel an action, but that, seeing so clearly into their faults, we should be so blind to our own."
Explanation:
Michel de Montaigne was one of the most important philosophers of the Renaissance. Born in France in 1533, his masterpiece, The Essays comprises three volumes where he reflects on the most varied themes, such as death, love, etc. His writing is sharp and sometimes comical, but he never fails to make us revise our most crystallized convictions.
In "Of Cannibals," the 31st essay in Book I, he criticizes European criteria for labeling Indians as "barbarians" (let us remember that Europeans' contact with the American people was still recent). The term "barbarian" was used by the Greeks to designate all those who did not belong to their ethnic group (Barbarian means literally "non-Greek") and therefore inferior peoples who should be submissive to the Greeks.
The essay "Of Cannibals" is a fierce criticism of European customs of the sixteenth century, certainly. But it is also an excellent reminder that our ideas are products of the culture in which we are educated and that calcify with the time. Before we arrogate ourselves to judge others we must direct our investigation into ourselves for our prejudices before we impose our values. Thus Montaigne shows us that our judgments are always limited by the medium and that we must examine ourselves carefully before "labeling" what is strange to us as inferior.
