Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592) was an influential French Renaissance writer, generally considered to be the inventor of the personal essay. In his main work, the Essais, unprecedented in its candidness and personal flavor, he takes mankind and especially himself as the object of study. He is generally considered to be a Skeptic and a Humanist.

Life

Montaigne was born in Périgord, on the family estate Château de Montaigne near Bordeaux. The family was rich as a result of commercial activity; his father was also active in public service and had been the mayor of Bordeaux. Until his sixth year, Michel was raised exclusively in Latin, the language of the educated class.

He studied law in Toulouse and entered a career in the legal system. Serving at the parlement of Bordeaux (a high court) in 1557, he became close friends with the humanist writer Étienne de la Boétie, who died in 1563. Montaigne married in 1565; he had six daughters, but only one survived childhood. In 1568 his father died and he inherited the Château de Montaigne.

He started to write in 1569, first a translation of the Spanish monk Raymond Sebond's Theologia naturalis, then a posthumous edition of Boétie's works. In 1571 he retired to the Château where in his library he began work on his Essais, first published in 1580.

During this time of the Wars of Religion in France, Montaigne, himself a Roman Catholic, acted as a moderating force, respected both by the Catholic King Henry III and the Protestant Henry of Navarre.

Beginning in 1578, Montaigne suffered from painful kidney stones. From 1580 to 1581, Montaigne travelled in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, partly in search for a cure. He kept a detailed journal recording various episodes and regional differences. It was published much later, in 1774, under the title Travel Journal.

While in Rome in 1581, he learned that he was elected mayor of Bordeaux; he returned and served until 1585, again moderating between Catholics and Protestants. The plague broke out in Bordeaux toward the end of his term.

Montaigne continued to extend, revise and oversee the publication of his Essais. In 1588 he met the writer Marie de Gournay who admired his work and would later edit and publish it. King Henry III was assassinated in 1589, and Montaigne then helped to keep Bordeaux loyal to Henry of Navarre, who would go on to become King Henry IV.

Montaigne died in 1592 at the Château de Montaigne and was buried nearby. Later his remains were moved to the church of a Commandery of St. Antoine at Bordeaux.

Essais

Montaigne essentially invented the literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic, of which his book contains a large number. Essai is French for "attempt".

Montaigne writes with a highly crafted rhetoric designed to intrigue and involve the reader, sometimes appearing to move in a stream-of-thought fashion from topic to topic and at othertimes employing a structured style which gives more emphasis to the didactic nature of his work. His arguments are often supported with quotes from classical Greek and Roman texts.

Montaigne's stated goal in his book is to describe man, and especially himself. He finds the great variety and volatility of human nature to be its most basic features. A typical quote is "I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself." He describes his poor memory, his ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting emotionally involved, his disgust for man's pursuit of lasting fame, and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for death.

Montaigne is disgusted with the violent and for him barbaric conflicts between Catholics and Protestants of his time, and his writings show a pessimism and skepticism quite uncharacteristic for the Renaissance.

Mentioning the case of Martin Guerre as an example, he believes that humans cannot attain certainty, and he rejects general and absolute statements and all dogma. His skepticism is best exposed in the long essay "An Apology for Raymond Sebond" (12th chapter of book 2) which has frequently been published separately. We cannot trust our reasoning because thoughts just occur to us: we don't control them. We do not have good reasons to consider ourselves superior to the animals.

Overall, Montaigne was a strong supporter of Humanism. He believed in God but declined to speculate about His nature.

Montaigne considered marriage necessary for the raising of children, but disliked the strong feelings of romantic love as being detrimental to freedom. One of his quotations is "Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out."

He exhibited a quite modern cultural relativism, recognizing that laws, morals and religions of the various cultures, while often quite different, may all be equally valid. He opposed the conquest of the New World, deploring the suffering it brought to the natives.

In education, he favored concrete examples and experience over the teaching of abstract knowledge that has to be accepted uncritically.

Chronology of the Essais

Interestingly, Montaigne chose to edit his Essais heavily at various points in his life. Sometimes he would insert just one word, sometimes he would insert whole passages. Most editions of Montaigne mark this with letters as follows:

• A: passages written 1571-1580, published 1580
• B: passages written 1580-1588, published 1588
• C: passages written 1588-1592, published 1595 (posthumously)

Analysis of the differences and additions between editions help to show how Montaigne's thoughts evolved over time. Remarkably, he does not seem to remove previous writings, even when they conflict with his "newer" views.

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External links

• The Charles Cotton translation of some of Montaigne's essays:
  • plain text version (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=3600) by Project Gutenberg
  • HTML version (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/m76e/) at the University of Adelaide
  • searchable HTML version (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/montaigne/m-essays_contents.html) at Oregon State University
• The complete, searchable text of the Villey-Saulnier edition (http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/montaigne/) from the ARFTL project at the University of Chicago (French)
• Timeline and links (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/montaigne.html)
• The Montaigne Studies Journal (http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/montaigne/) at the University of Chicago
• Photos of his chateau, his personal belongings, and his grave (http://www.stanford.edu/class/ihum21a/img/montind.htm)
• A German resource: http://www.michel-montaigne.de
• Société des Amis de Montaigne (http://www.amisdemontaigne.net) (French)