Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST (Register here), Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life (a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living).
***This Friday, we begin a brief exploration we’re calling The Wisdom of Montaigne with selected passages of Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction. Check out the bookshelf below for upcoming (and previous) reading.
Who is Montaigne?
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) described his philosophy this way, “My art and profession is to live.” He believed there is no knowledge so hard to acquire as knowing how to live this life well and naturally. Today, Montaigne is best known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre and describing his goal in The Essays to describe himself with utter frankness and honesty.
William M. Hamlin writes in Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction,
Near the end of the Essays, Montaigne alleges that “there are more books about books than about any other subject; we do nothing but write glosses about each other.” The likely truth of this complaint puts me in a rather awkward position, since as the author of a book on Montaigne I have no choice but to plead guilty to his charge. I will say nonetheless that there is no work I would prefer writing about than the Essays, and I feel fortunate to have been able to spend the past few years doing so—not least because my ongoing inclination to read and contemplate Montaigne suddenly coincided with a professional commitment to do precisely that.
Some of our longtime readers may remember the five-part Mondays with Montaigne series we did a few months back.
Selected Passages
Well aware of the idiosyncratic nature of his work, Montaigne describes it as “the only book in the world of its kind, with a wild and eccentric plan.” But he also defends its necessity, claiming that he owes the public a “complete portrait” of himself and that the “wisdom” he proffers lies “wholly in truth, in freedom, in reality”
Montaigne, then, can be remarkably self-assured, though more typically he strikes us as nonchalant and self-dismissive. Even the title of his book suggests unexceptional aspiration. The French verb essayer means “to try” or “to assay,” and thus the word Montaigne selects to describe his musings—essais—might be rendered in English as attempts or trials.
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In a chapter entitled “Of Idleness,” drafted shortly after he retired to his rural property at the age of thirty-eight, he relates that when he leaves his mind to its own devices it charges off “like a runaway horse,” producing a chaotic sequence of “chimeras and fantastic monsters” Documenting these phenomena becomes a way of disciplining his intellect, and Montaigne goes so far as to say that he hopes to make his mind ashamed of itself.
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Each species of living creature possesses a common nature; so, for example, the nature of man consists in living according to the dictates of reason. There is also, however, a nature unique to each individual being. … Man cannot create or change his natural aptitudes, but, as I have shown, we can reinforce to some extent what nature has given us.
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Montaigne’s attitude toward the reading of books resembles that of Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth-century English lexicographer and editor of Shakespeare. Johnson famously told his biographer, James Boswell, that he seldom read any book from cover to cover: “a man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” Montaigne, for his part, notes that he leafs “now through one book, now through another, without order and without plan, by disconnected fragments”
If you are available on a Friday (at Noon EST), feel free to drop into one of our Reading & the Good Life meetups (Register here). It’s a highly casual space for connection and conversations on the art of living.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. As always, feel free to comment, ask questions, or suggest future reads!