Biography of michel de montaigne ensayos

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With your contribution, this site can continue to grow and remain free and accessible to all. The Essays is not a single, cohesive book but a collection of short and long pieces on various subjects such as religion, horses, friendship, sleep, law, or suicide, which Montaigne wrote over more than twenty years. His goals for the book and the circumstances under which he worked on it changed over time.

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The simple dismissal of truth would be too dogmatic a position; but if absolute truth is lacking, we still have the possibility to balance opinions. We have resources enough, to evaluate the various authorities that we have to deal with in ordinary life. For example, when Montaigne sets down the exercise of doubt as a good start in education, he understands doubt as part of the process of the formation of judgment.

Renaissance thinkers strongly felt the necessity to revise their discourse on man. Instead, Montaigne is considering real men, who are the product of customs. It is bound to destroy our spontaneous confidence that we do know the truth, and that we live according to justice. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction.

What is crime for one person will appear normal to another. In the XVII th century, Blaise Pascal will use this argument when challenging the pretension of philosophers of knowing truth. One century later, David Hume will lay stress on the fact that the power of custom is all the stronger, specifically because we are not aware of it.

However, it is more complicated in the case of Montaigne. Getting to know all sorts of customs, through his readings or travels, he makes an exemplary effort to open his mind. Judgment is at first sight unable to stop the relativistic discourse, but it is not left without remedy when facing the power of custom. Exercise of thought is the first counterweight we can make use of, for example when criticizing an existing law.

Customs are not almighty, since their authority can be reflected upon, evaluated or challenged by individual judgment. The comparative method can also be applied to the freeing of judgment: although lacking a universal standard, we can nevertheless stand back from particular customs, by the mere fact of comparing them. Montaigne thus compares heating or circulating means between people.

Montaigne elaborates a pedagogy, which rests on the practice of judgment itself. Moreover, relativistic readings of the Essays are forced to ignore certain passages that carry a more rationalistic tone. Independence of thinking, alongside with clear-mindedness and good faith, are the first virtues a young gentleman should acquire. According to him, wisdom relies on the readiness of judgment to revise itself towards a more favorable outcome: [ 55 ] this idea is one of the most remarkable readings of the Essays in the early history of their reception.

The influence Montaigne had on Descartes has been commented upon by many critics, at least from the XIX th century on, within the context of the birth of modern science. As a sceptic, calling into question the natural link between mind and things, Montaigne would have won his position in the modern philosophical landscape. Far from substituting Montaigne for his Jesuit schoolteachers, Descartes decided to teach himself from scratch, following the path indicated by Montaigne to achieve independence and firmness of judgment.

The world, as pedagogue, has been substituted for books and teachers. This new education allows Descartes to get rid of the prejudice of overrating his own customs, a widespread phenomenon that we now call ethnocentrism.

Biography of michel de montaigne ensayos

In recent years, critics have stressed the importance of the connection between Montaigne and Hobbes for the development of a modern vision of politics, rooted in a criticism of traditional doctrines of man and society. In his capacity as tutor, he traveled widely in Europe and spent several sojourns in France, before the English Civil War forced him into exile in Paris — Montaigne identified human life with movement and instability, and pointed to the power that our passions have to push us toward imaginary future accomplishments honor, glory, science, reason, and so on.

On the contrary, they underline his instinctive and passionate nature, which eventually leads to violence and conflict wherever the political community collapses. This negative anthropology is to be understood in the light of the historical experience of the civil wars upsetting both their countries. The normative force of law results from its practical necessity, as it is the rational condition of life in society.

Montaigne cultivates his liberty by not adhering exclusively to any one idea, while at the same time exploring them all. In exercising his judgment on various topics, he trains himself to go off on fresh tracks, starting from something he read or experienced. For Montaigne this also means calling into question the convictions of his time, reflecting upon his beliefs and education, and cultivating his own personal thoughts.

His language bears an unmistakable tone but contradicts itself sometimes from one place to another, perhaps for the very reason that it follows so closely the movements of thought. If being a philosopher means being insensitive to human frailties and to the evils or to the pleasures which befall us, then Montaigne is not a philosopher. Yet, if being a philosopher is being able to judge properly in any circumstances of life, then the Essays are the exemplary testimony of an author who wanted to be a philosopher for good.

Montaigne is putting his judgment to trial on whatever subject, in order not only to get to know its value, but also to form and strengthen it. He manages thus to offer us a philosophy in accordance with life. How to preserve our inborn clear-mindedness in front of all the threats and dangers of fanaticism, how to preserve the humanity of our hearts among the upsurge of bestiality?

The question is not who will hit the ring, but who will make the best runs at it. Life 2. Work 3. A Philosophy of Free Judgment 4. During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent.

In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt that began to emerge at that time. The family was very wealthy. His great-grandfather, Ramon Felipe Eyquem, had made a fortune as a herring merchant and had bought the estate in , thus becoming the Lord of Montaigne.

During a great part of Montaigne's life his mother lived near him, and even survived him; but she is mentioned only twice in his essays. Montaigne's relationship with his father, however, is frequently reflected upon and discussed in his essays. Montaigne's education began in early childhood and followed a pedagogical plan that his father had developed, refined by the advice of the latter's humanist friends.

Soon after his birth Montaigne was brought to a small cottage, where he lived the first three years of life in the sole company of a peasant family, in order to, according to the elder Montaigne, "draw the boy close to the people, and to the life conditions of the people, who need our help". Another objective was for Latin to become his first language.

The intellectual education of Montaigne was assigned to a German tutor a doctor named Horstanus, who could not speak French. His father hired only servants who could speak Latin, and they also were given strict orders always to speak to the boy in Latin. The same rule applied to his mother, father, and servants, who were obliged to use only Latin words he employed; and thus they acquired a knowledge of the very language his tutor taught him.

Montaigne's Latin education was accompanied by constant intellectual and spiritual stimulation. He was familiarized with Greek by a pedagogical method that employed games, conversation, and exercises of solitary meditation, rather than the more traditional books. The atmosphere of the boy's upbringing engendered in him a spirit of "liberty and delight" that he would later describe as making him "relish His father had a musician wake him every morning, playing one instrument or another; [ 17 ] and an epinettier player of a type of zither was the constant companion to Montaigne and his tutor, playing tunes to alleviate boredom and tiredness.

Around the year Montaigne was sent to study at a highly regarded boarding school in Bordeaux, the College of Guienne , then under the direction of the greatest Latin scholar of the era, George Buchanan , where he mastered the whole curriculum by his thirteenth year. He finished the first phase of his educational studies at the College of Guienne in From to he was courtier at the court of Charles IX , and he was present with the king at the siege of Rouen He was awarded the highest honour of the French nobility , the collar of the Order of Saint Michael.

It has been suggested by Donald M. She was the daughter and niece of wealthy merchants of Toulouse and Bordeaux. She had a daughter by each. Following the petition of his father, Montaigne started to work on the first translation of the Catalan monk Raymond Sebond 's Theologia naturalis , which he published a year after his father's death in in Sebond's Prologue was put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum because of its declaration that the Bible is not the only source of revealed truth.

He thus became the Lord of Montaigne. Locked up in his library, which contained a collection of some 1, volumes, [ 27 ] he began work on the writings that would later be compiled into his Essais "Essays" , first published in On the day of his 38th birthday, as he entered this almost ten-year period of self-imposed reclusion, he had the following inscription placed on the crown of the bookshelves of his working chamber:.

In the year of Christ , at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michael de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out.

If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure. In Montaigne, whose health had always been excellent, started suffering from painful kidney stones , a tendency he inherited from his father's family. Throughout this illness he would have nothing to do with doctors or drugs.

His journey was also a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loreto , to which he presented a silver relief depicting him, his wife, and their daughter, kneeling before the Madonna considering himself fortunate that it should be hung on a wall within the shrine. This was published much later, in , after its discovery in a trunk that is displayed in his tower.

After Fabri examined Montaigne's Essais , the text was returned to him on 20 March Montaigne had apologized for references to the pagan notion of " fortuna ", as well as for writing favorably of Julian the Apostate and of heretical poets, and was released to follow his own conscience in making emendations to the text. While in the city of Lucca in he learned that, like his father before him, he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux.

He thus returned and served as mayor. He was re-elected in and served until , again moderating between Catholics and Protestants. The plague broke out in Bordeaux toward the end of his second term in office, in Montaigne continued to extend, revise, and oversee the publication of the Essais. In he wrote its third book, and also met Marie de Gournay , an author who admired his work and later edited and published it.

Montaigne later referred to her as his adopted daughter. When King Henry III was assassinated in , Montaigne, despite his aversion to the cause of the Reformation, was anxious to promote a compromise that would end the bloodshed and gave his support to Henry of Navarre, who would go on to become King Henry IV. Montaigne's position associated him with the politiques , the establishment movement that prioritised peace, national unity, and royal authority over religious allegiance.

In his case the disease "brought about paralysis of the tongue", [ 36 ] especially difficult for one who once said: "the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. He was buried nearby.

Later his remains were moved to the church of Saint Antoine at Bordeaux. The church no longer exists. It became the Convent des Feuillants , which also has disappeared. His humanism finds expression in his Essais , a collection of a large number of short subjective essays on various topics published in that were inspired by his studies in the classics , especially by the works of Plutarch and Lucretius.

Inspired by his consideration of the lives and ideals of the leading figures of his age, he finds the great variety and volatility of human nature to be its most basic features. He describes his own poor memory, his ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting emotionally involved, his disdain for the human pursuit of lasting fame, and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for his timely death.

He writes about his disgust with the religious conflicts of his time. He believed that humans are not able to attain true certainty. The longest of his essays, Apology for Raymond Sebond , marking his adoption of Pyrrhonism , [ 41 ] contains his famous motto, "What do I know? Montaigne considered marriage necessary for the raising of children but disliked strong feelings of passionate love because he saw them as detrimental to freedom.