QuestionsCan we be certain of anything?How can anyone be Persian?
Can we be certain of anything?We must doubt

How can anyone be Persian?

Montesquieu 1689 · 1755To prevent abuse, power must check power.
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What it claims

As long as we do not look at ourselves from outside, our judgements about what is normal or odd are worthless: our worst prejudices are those that "render men ignorant of themselves".

Why

We judge everything by looking back at ourselves: what seems normal or odd only shows who we are.

In short

"How can anyone be Persian?" is an argument by Montesquieu (Persian Letters, 30 and 59 (Rica)) on the question "Can we be certain of anything?" (answer: we must doubt). Its claim: As long as we do not look at ourselves from outside, our judgements about what is normal or odd are worthless: our worst prejudices are those that "render men ignorant of themselves". According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Persian Letters, 30 and 59 (Rica)
Valid with an implicit premise

Rica, a Persian, arrives in Paris. In Persian dress, everyone stares at him. In European dress, nobody notices him any more. But as soon as people learn he is Persian: "However can anybody be a Persian?" Parisians find natural whatever resembles them, and everything else odd. The novel turns the mirror around: Persians find the French odd. Characters are speaking, but the device is Montesquieu's whole method: looking at ourselves through a stranger's eyes.

P1We never judge things except by a secret reference to ourselves: "if triangles made a god, they would give him three sides".
P2As long as we never leave home, this reference to ourselves makes what is habitual seem normal and the rest absurd: people who "had never travelled beyond their own door" wonder how anyone can be Persian.
P3 · implicit premiseA judgement that measures things only by our habits does not tell us what they are worth: it only tells us what we are.
Therefore, as long as we do not look at ourselves from outside, our judgements about what is normal or odd are worthless: our worst prejudices are those that "render men ignorant of themselves".

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where we judge everything by our habits and yet our judgements tell the true worth of things: it would be enough for our habits to be, by luck, the right ones.
With P3, the argument is valid. P3 is implicit: it separates what a judgement says about the thing from what it says about the judge. The conclusion is a limited scepticism: it targets our spontaneous judgements about customs, not all knowledge. Montesquieu elsewhere believes in truths that do not depend on the point of view, such as justice. The weak point is P1: if all our judgements refer back to ourselves, so does this one.
Analogy. We do not hear our own accent. We have to go abroad, or have a foreigner imitate us, to discover that we have one.

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

C
Classic objection: the argument turns against itself attacks premise 1

If we never judge except by reference to ourselves, then this very judgement is only such a reference too. And if everything depends on the point of view, nothing is true or just any more: there are only customs, and we no longer have the right to criticise those of others.

Montesquieu replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Montesquieu Usbek, in another letter (Persian Letters, 83)
Justice is a relation of fitness really found between two things: this relation is always the same, whatever being considers it, God, an angel or a man. It is true that men do not always see these relations, and their interest is always what they see best.
The debate goes on (our summary) Usbek answers the second half of the objection (everything would be mere custom), not the first: he does not say how a judgement made "by reference to oneself" can itself be reliable. So the novel separates two things: customs, which vary and which we judge badly from inside, and justice, which does not vary. One difficulty remains: how can we know, from inside our own culture, where the boundary between the two lies? The Persian Letters give no rule; they give a method: step outside yourself.
E
Edward Said 1978 · attacks the conclusion

The "foreign gaze" of the Persian Letters is not that of real Persians: it is an Orient imagined by a European, with its seraglio, eunuchs and confined women, drawn from travellers' tales. One does not step outside oneself by dressing up as a Persian: one projects one's own fantasies onto the other (Orientalism, 1978).

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1978, after the author's death (1755).
The debate goes on (our summary) The novel also turns the gaze against its hero: Usbek, so clear-sighted about France, stays blind to the despotism he exercises in his own seraglio, and a confined woman, Roxane, has the last word: "I have lived in slavery, and yet always retained my freedom". Yet Said is not wrong: this Orient is built from the images and clichés of the Europe of 1721, and real Persians never speak in it. The device of the foreign gaze remains powerful; the setting is dated.