Michel de Montaigne

Agora

Michel de Montaigne

1533–1592

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Be honest about how little you know, study yourself closely, and treat your own customs as no more natural than anyone else’s.

Placement

Renaissance & Humanism · Western Europe · Existence & Self, Epistemology, Ethics

Created the essay, named after his ‘attempts’, as skeptical self-exploration: “Que sais-je?” – What do I know?

Key ideas

Que sais-je?
The essay as self-experiment
Tolerance

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Influence

Influenced by 4

Socrates

influenced by
Montaigne made Socrates his model of a wise life lived naturally and of a calm death, in the late essays ‘Of Physiognomy’ and ‘Of Experience’ (Essays III.12–13). M. de Montaigne, Essais III.12, III.13 (1588/95); SEP “Michel de Montaigne”
Evidence: AI draft
Socrates › 470–399 BCE
Lucretius

influenced by
Montaigne quoted Lucretius often in the Essays and annotated his own copy of Lambin’s edition (1563), rediscovered in 1989. M. de Montaigne, Essais (1580–95); M. A. Screech, Montaigne’s Annotated Copy of Lucretius (1998)
Evidence: AI draft
Lucretius › c. 99–55 BCE
Seneca

influenced by
Montaigne quoted Seneca constantly and paired him with Plutarch as his main reading, taking up his practice of self-examination and preparation for death (Essays I.20, II.10). M. de Montaigne, Essais I.20, II.10, II.32 (1580–95); SEP “Michel de Montaigne”
Evidence: AI draft
Seneca › c. 4 BCE – 65 CE
Sextus Empiricus

influenced by
In the ‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’ Montaigne took up Sextus’ Pyrrhonian modes against human reason, available in Henri Estienne’s Latin translation of 1562 (Essays II.12). M. de Montaigne, Essais II.12; Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniarum hypotyposeon libri III, Latin tr. H. Estienne (1562); SEP “Michel de Montaigne”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Sextus Empiricus › c. 160–210

Influenced 5

René Descartes

influenced
Descartes’ Discourse on Method (1637) echoes Montaigne in its first-person form and in the lesson drawn from the diversity of customs, without naming him. R. Descartes, Discours de la méthode (1637), ed. É. Gilson, Discours de la méthode: texte et commentaire (1925); SEP “Michel de Montaigne”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
René Descartes › 1596–1650
Blaise Pascal

influenced ✓
Pascal drew heavily on Montaigne’s Essays, above all the Apology for Raymond Sebond, for his picture of human misery, custom and diversion in the Pensées (1670). B. Pascal, Pensées (1670); Entretien avec M. de Sacy (1655); SEP “Blaise Pascal”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO
Blaise Pascal › 1623–1662
Pierre Bayle

influenced
Bayle drew on Montaigne’s Essays from the Various Thoughts on the Comet (1682) to the Dictionary (1697); C. B. Brush (1966) read his scepticism as variations on Montaigne’s. C. B. Brush, Montaigne and Bayle: Variations on the Theme of Skepticism (1966); S. Giocanti, on Bayle’s use of Montaigne, Libertinage et philosophie à l’époque classique 21 (2024)
Evidence: AI draft
Pierre Bayle › 1647–1706
Ralph Waldo Emerson

influenced ✓
Emerson made Montaigne the type of the sceptic in Representative Men (1850), recalling that reading the Essays as a youth felt as if he had written them himself. R. W. Emerson, Representative Men (1850), “Montaigne; or, the Skeptic”; SEP “Ralph Waldo Emerson”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO
Ralph Waldo Emerson › 1803–1882
Friedrich Nietzsche

influenced ✓
In Schopenhauer as Educator (1874) Nietzsche praised Montaigne’s honesty and cheerfulness: that such a man wrote has increased the joy of living on this earth. F. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer als Erzieher (1874); SEP “Friedrich Nietzsche”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO
Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900

Works

1580Essays
I am myself the matter of my book.

Position

Montaigne invented the essay as an “attempt” to examine himself, and through himself the human condition. Drawing on Sextus Empiricus, Seneca and Plutarch, he showed how changeable, contradictory and bound to custom our judgements are. His motto “What do I know?” expresses a scepticism that is not despair but a source of modesty and tolerance: what one people call barbaric, another find natural, as he argued in his essay on cannibals. Instead of grand systems he offers an art of living – accepting the body, death and one’s own limits with humour. He influenced Shakespeare, Descartes, Pascal and the whole modern tradition of self-reflection.

Life & context

Born in 1533 at the Château de Montaigne near Bordeaux, Michel de Montaigne grew up speaking Latin as his first language and served as a councillor in the Bordeaux parliament. In 1571 he withdrew to the tower library of his estate to write. Amid the French Wars of Religion he travelled to Italy, served two terms as mayor of Bordeaux and acted as a mediator; he died in 1592.