Michel de Montaigne and literary exploration

It is a myth that Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) had an extraordinary interest in literary exploration. Although he used many literary quotations, those are drawn from a couple of dozen books. Montaigne reread those books frequently, but rarely added new ones to his library. His literary explorations serve just one purpose, namely, to provide materials for his research in ethics. The latter constitutes the primary purpose of his work. The key contents of his essays revolve around ethics, not literature. As a teenager, Montaigne had attended a school where Latin language and literature in Latin shaped the curriculum; thus, he was familiar with major classical authors writing in Latin. I am referring to Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. In his library, Montaigne also had books from ancient Greek authors such as Plato and Aristotle. However, those books were in Latin translation because Montaigne’s knowledge of ancient Greek was fragmentary. He was unable to read Aristotle, Plato, or Sophocles in the original Greek. I am reluctant to categorise Montaigne’s practice as “literary exploration.” He was regularly rereading a couple of dozen books, taking notes and putting together his essays, but I fail to see in Montaigne a primary interest in literary criticism. Montaigne tells readers very clearly that his main interest is philosophical, not literary. In his essay titled “On experience,” we can read the following statement: “The objective of writing is self-improvement.” He meant the author’s self-improvement in the first place, but readers can draw the same benefit. The above statement by Montaigne is not an isolated case. I can point to similar ones in other essays. For instance, in his essay “On solitude,” he acknowledges that writing is a way to “explore one’s own thoughts and discover the truth.” There is another strong argument against Montaigne’s being primarily motivated by literary exploration: in about one fifth of his essays, he is using his own personal anecdotes to support his philosophical assessment. If my primary interest was literary exploration, I would not be placing my own personal anecdotes on the same level as quotations from works of Cicero, Plato, and Seneca. However, I would have no problem doing so if my primary interest was philosophical exploration. That’s precisely what Montaigne did, but in a way that gave more weight to his personal anecdotes than to Cicero, Plato, or Aristotle. As a result, his essays are tainted by subjectivity. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/michel-de-montaigne-and-literary-exploration/