On my country's national holiday I like to offer the following book. On its sleeve one can read that this is the first full biography of Michel de Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years and it relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored.
How does one live ones life? This question obsessed the 16th Century French Catholic Michel de Montaigne, who wrote free-roaming explorations of thought and experiences, unlike anything written beforehand. Into these so-called essays he put down whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, events in the appalling civil wars raging around him.
Montaigne's Essays were an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, readers still come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment - and in search of themselves. Read this book and experience why. This book needs to be in every public library.
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Themes of The Essays by Michel de Montaigne include human nature, truth, and proper behavior.
Human Nature
Montaigne believes that people are only alive "by chance" and that "no one lays down a certain design for his life." He also says that, if human nature was easily discerned, then a brave man would always be brave: he wouldn't charge at the enemy lines on the battlefield and then cry over losing a court case, for example. Montaigne therefore argues that human nature is transient and no one is fixated on a particular end. He says that human nature is difficult to grasp because it's constantly moving like water through a palm. He says:
The more you clutch your hand to squeeze and hold what is in its own nature flowing so much the more you lose what you would grasp and hold.
To Montaigne, human nature is difficult to comprehend.
Truth
In "Of Experience," Montaigne says that:
There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge
This is the perhaps the underlying purpose for his essays. He's searching for knowledge of the truth of the world—though he rarely reaches a firm conclusion. The majority of his essays are an argument between a variety of concepts without a judgment on which is perfectly right.
It's not that Montaigne doesn't have conviction in his opinions; he does, and he states what he believes frequently. But some deeper concepts are things he doesn't believe can be comprehended by man. One difficulty that he mentions in "Of Liars" is that truth is only one thing but a lie can be a thousand things—which makes it even more difficult to discern the truth.
Proper Behavior
Taken together, the The Essays provide a framework for how a person should attempt to live their best life. Montaigne gives a series of guidelines that can help a person improve as they attempt to navigate through some of the most universal human experiences.
Some of the advice is practical in nature; for example, he says that people shouldn't purge, because he finds it very unhealthy. Some of it is more philosophical. For example, he says in "Of Drunkenness" that all vices are alike. However, he goes on to say that drunkenness is "a gross and brutish vice," which makes it obvious that he doesn't believe it's proper for men to get drunk.
@Shadyglow Thank you for that. Like Saint Benedict before him Montaigne looked for the simplicity in life and nature to get inspired. His belief was somewhat unique at the time and that was that human beings can't help but err and by observing everything in nature and all around us one can come to better insight. For example, I was drunk a few hours ago and that was wrong as so far that it did harm anyone about. I was rude because I was drunk thus the drunkenness was wrong by the outcome there was as it did hurt the feelings of others albeit ever so silghtly or unintentionally. There's the source of a morality that is valid up to today. Not that human beings need to obey rules but that they need to be observant to consequences of ones actions and words. Mankind is blind as so far that it goes off the lightened path. Saying sorry for being drunk is thus done but also the lesson learned. One can argue that at first Montaigne in his writings is a light weight but going deeper one dicovers a hidden dept. Human nature is indeed hard on all around but also for oneself.
