Michel de Montaigne’s contribution to early modern philosophy

When asked about someone’s contribution to philosophy, I reply by giving a list of his innovations. I want to underline the new concepts that he brought forth, the intellectual connections that nobody else had made until that point. In the case of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), I couldn’t point to any innovation. He didn’t put forward any new concept nor did he make any new intellectual connection. Thus, I don’t share the view that he contributed to early modern philosophy. Montaigne is an extraordinary author in many aspects, great in erudition and wisdom, but not a philosophical innovator. If anything, he looked at the past more than he was looking at the future. He had drawn his more enlightened ideas from antiquity in the formulations given by Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), Plutarch (46-120 AD) or Aristotle (384-322 BC). Even his theological views draw more from medievalism than from modernity. Nevertheless, Montaigne surpassed all his predecessors in a singular area: his passion from balance and perspective; no one in prior centuries had devoted so vast efforts to looking at both sides of every issue. I regard Montaigne in this respect as astonishingly modern, but more in terms of personal development than of philosophy. In order to prove my point, I’m going to refer to the only work of Montaigne that pre-existed his compiled essays, but that he published as one of them, no doubt because he was immensely proud of its contents. Montaigne had written the “Apology for Raymond Sebond” years before he decided to abandon his legal career to relocate to the countryside and devote himself to research and writing. In the “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” we find that Montaigne’s personal philosophy had already congealed. It was not a rectilinear, symmetrical intellectual construction, but did the job beautifully. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/michel-de-montaignes-contribution-to-early-modern-philosophy/