Nussbaum’s Book of Wonders

In the “Apology for Raymond Sebond” Michel de Montaigne aims to upend human arrogance about our superiority over other animals by enumerating the many wonders of the nonhuman animal world. We see birds building intricate nests; spiders thickening and slackening their webs with an engineer’s precision; ants and bees organizing themselves into complicated societies; and dogs making reasoned judgments about the likely location of their prey. Although we may be inclined to dismiss these behaviors as mere instinct, Montaigne argues that it is presumptuous “to judge that the beasts do by natural and obligatory instinct the same things that we do by our choice and cleverness.” 1 And even if other creatures do act with less conscious design than we do, he asks, does that make their actions any less wondrous?