Welcome to The PATH (Monday Meditation): A weekly reflection with insights into daily life. This week’s reflection begins a new series exploring the writing and philosophy of Michel de Montaigne (I’m calling Mondays with Montaigne).
Mondays with Montaigne
The philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533—1592) described his philosophy this way, “My art and profession is to live.” Montaigne believed there is no knowledge so hard to acquire as knowing how to live this life well and naturally. Today, he is best known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He described his goal in The Essays as to describe himself with utter frankness and honesty.
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Today’s meditation is Part III of our series on Montaigne. In Part I, The Wisdom of Montaigne, we explored 12 short rules for life. Part II focused on Montaigne’s view on judgment, curiosity, and questioning everything.
How to Philosophize — Like Montaigne
In an essay titled, To Philosophize is to Learn How to Die, Montaigne explained that the usefulness of living lies not in duration but in what you make of it. “Whether you have lived enough depends not on the count of years but on your will,” at least that is how Montaigne put it.
In his Essays, Montaigne wrote,
We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die gives us freedom from subjection and constraint.
Why do so many philosophers stress the contemplation of death?
How does meditating on our mortality connect with freedom?
Is learning to live and learning to die a similar project?
“Mortal creatures live lives dependent on each other; like runners in a relay, they pass on the torch of life.”
— Montaigne
Montaigne turns to the Roman Statesman Cicero for guidance. “Cicero says that philosophizing is nothing other than getting ready to die. That is because study and contemplation draw our souls somewhat outside ourselves, keeping them occupied away from the body, a state which both resembles death and which forms a kind of apprenticeship for it; or perhaps it is because all the wisdom and argument in the world eventually come down to one conclusion; which is to teach us not to be afraid of dying.”
Similarly, the ancient philosopher Epicurus alluded to a universal need to transcend our fears and anxieties around death. However, the benefits of this type of philosophizing does not stop there. Montaigne notes one of the most significant reasons for contemplating death is to enjoy life!
Montaigne advised,
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness; let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death. At every instant, let us evoke it in our imagination under all its aspects. Whenever a horse stumbles, a tile falls, or a pin pricks however slightly, let us at once chew over this thought: ‘Supposing that was death itself?’
For some, the practice of memento mori can feel sad or melancholy. But it does not need to be. Montaigne once called his “art and profession to live.” He only warns that we should be wary of being carried away by life. “Amid joy and feasting,” stressed Montaigne, “let our refrain recall our human condition.” Let us never be carried away by pleasure so strongly that we fail to recall occasionally how many ways our joy is subject to death.
The sight and inevitable nature of death need not bring sadness. In his Letters from a Stoic, Seneca suggests: “Philosophy enables a person to be cheerful within sight of death, brave and cheerful no matter what condition his body is in, not giving up just because the body is giving out. A great captain sails on, even with his canvas in tatters….”
Montaigne concluded the Essay this way,
Truly imagine how much less bearable for Man and how much more painful it would be a life that lasted forever rather than the life which I have given you. If you did not have death, you would curse me forever for depriving you of it.
Seeing what advantages death holds, I have deliberately mixed a little anguish into it to stop you from embracing it too avidly or too injudiciously. To lodge you in that moderation which I require of you, neither fleeing from life nor yet fleeing from death, I have tempered them both between the bitter and the sweet.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. Feel free to comment, ask questions, or make suggestions!
How to Philosophize - Like Montaigne
I think this is one of the best essays I have ever read on the subject of dealing with our inevitable demise! And I say that because it deals with the positives and the negatives of both thinking too much of death, and not thinking enough. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and the thoughts of these wonderful philosophers, Montaigne, Seneca, and Cicero, with us!