The Complete Essays
Michel de Montaigne
Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. Source
Born: 28 February 1533, Château de Montaigne, Guyenne, Kingdom of France
Died: 13 September 1592 (aged 59) Château de Montaigne, Guyenne, Kingdom of France Notes
Montaigne knew that opinions are not certainties, and that most human ‘certainties’ are in fact opinions. de Montaigne (1993).
From Introduction
Montaigne was fluent in Latin but not so in Greek, he was influenced by Plato and Aristotle. He was considered a stoic, skeptic and epicurean1 but he was able to combine all in harmony.
What Montaigne discovered in himself was a self which was governed by a master mold which effectively resisted any attempt to change by education or indoctrination.
Montaigne wanted to find solid facts about what man really is. He concerned himself with practical counsel about how he should live and die.
Reference
de Montaigne, M. (1993). The Complete Essays (M. A. Screech, Trans.; Reprint edition). Penguin Classics.
Epicureanism bases its ethics on a hedonistic set of values, seeing pleasure as the chief good in life. Hence, Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one's lifetime, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure. Epicureans had a very specific understanding of what the greatest pleasure was, and the focus of their ethics was on the avoidance of pain rather than seeking out pleasure.↩