Philosopher
Michel de Montaigne
Overview
Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne (28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), commonly known as just Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant writers 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. Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous writers of Western literature; his Essais contain some of the most influential essays ever written.
During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired as a statesman more 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; moreover, 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 recognised as embodying the spirit of critical thought and open inquiry that began to emerge around that time. He is best known for his sceptical remark, "What do I know?" ("Que sçay-je?" in Middle French; "Que sais-je?" in modern French).
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Michel de Montaigne
- Epicurus
- Heraclitus
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Hélène Cixous
- Sextus Empiricus
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Pythagoras
- Plutarch
- Alain de Botton
- Renaissance
- Socrates
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Jean Bodin
- Simon Critchley
- Blaise Pascal
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
- Seneca the Younger
- Allan Bloom
- Léon Brunschvicg
- Juan Luis Vives
- Pierre Hadot
- Stephen Batchelor (author)
- Michel Serres
- Pierre Charron
Ideas Michel de Montaigne discusses
- Erasmus
- Empiricism
- Epictetus
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Francis Bacon
- Greek language
- Pyrrhonism
- Western philosophy
- French Wars of Religion
- Sephardic Jews
- Index Librorum Prohibitorum
- Julian (emperor)
- Essays (Montaigne)
- Latin
- Stoicism
- Miguel de Cervantes
- Philosophical skepticism
- John Cowper Powys
- Psychology
- Poetry
- Plato
- The Tempest
- Counter-Reformation
- Western literature
Place in the tradition
Part of Atheism.