Lavinia reviewed The Performer by Richard Sennett
Review of 'The Performer' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
At the end of his life, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne inserted, in one of his essays a question.
"When I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me?"
The question summed up Montaigne's long-held conviction that we can never really plumb the inner life of others, be they cats or other human beings.
My premise about this is that we frequently don't understand what's passing in the hearts and the minds of people with whom we have to work. Yet as Montaigne kept playing with his cat, so too a lack of mutual understanding shouldn't keep us from engaging with others in order to get something done together.