Michel de Montaigne

1533-1592 · French · Skepticism, Moral Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Self

Que sais-je? — What do I know?

Michel de Montaigne invented the essay — the "attempt," the assay, the trying-out of a thought — because no existing form could hold what he wanted to do: portray a single ordinary man, himself, in all his contradiction and change. "I am myself the matter of my book," he warns the reader. He is not confessing sins like Augustine or building a system like the Schoolmen; he is watching his own mind move, and reporting honestly what he finds, which is that it never stands still. "I do not portray being," he writes, "I portray passing."

Topics Michel de Montaigne addresses

• the essay as a form
• Que sais-je? (What do I know?)
• Pyrrhonian skepticism
• the suspension of judgment
• fideism
• the Apology for Raymond Sebond
• the presumption of reason
• the self as the matter of the book
• self-portraiture
• the inconstancy of the self
• I do not portray being, I portray passing
• custom and habit
• cultural relativism
• the judgment of barbarism
• Of Cannibals
• the critique of cruelty
• torture and the wars of religion
• to philosophize is to learn to die
• the natural acceptance of death
• the animals and human presumption
• anthropocentrism
• the body and honesty
• moderation and the middle way
• the limits of medicine and learning

Converse with Michel de Montaigne on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Michel de Montaigne's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.