Who are the Barbarians?

Barbarian has become a standard word in most languages. We can thank the Greeks for that, for anyone who was not Greek was a barbarian. Which meant they were uncivilized, not Greek, and inferior to all Greeks. In Michel de Montaigne’s Of Cannibals, he addresses this illusion of civilization. What he trying to say is that Western Civilization is far more barbarous than the “barbarians” outside Western culture, and barbarianism is in the eye of the beholder.

Montaigne begins by saying our beliefs should come through our own experiences, not through what others have experienced. For those opinions are always biased, ethnocentric, and exaggerated. He then goes on to describe a people who are considered barbarians, but are, in fact, more civilized than Westerners in many ways. These people have a straight forward sense of what is important: “valor against the enemy and love for their wives” (Montaigne, 5). They fight well, they build well, and they have their own form of government. Overall, these people are much easier to understand than Westerners, and are in no need of “being civilized” because they surpass western culture in many ways.

He then points out how they view us as having strange ideas. An example would be the king and why so many strong men (the Swiss Guard) surround him. This idea is barbarian to them, yet civilized to us. Therefore, depending on your point of view, barbarianism may be different, according to the culture one was raised in.

Whether we are the barbarians, or they are, has never been settled. But it is safe to say that each culture has its own unique idea of what constitutes as civilized. I think Montaigne has some excellent ideas and very good points; points and ideas we could all learn from.