Michel de Montaigne’s key lesson on the art of living

The biographies of great individuals teach us many lessons, but I am always seeking the common thread between them. In the case of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), it requires some work to figure out the key lesson. Montaigne’s essay titled “On the inequality amongst us” is conveying the key lesson from his life, namely, that we should accept without complaints the fact that each person is different, and that all attempts to homogenise people are doomed to fail. Individuals are unequal in intelligence, agility, beauty, skills and personal interests, just to mention a few aspects. Luckily, Montaigne accepted inequality as a fact early in life and spared himself lots of trouble. In sixteenth-century France, the monarch deployed massive efforts to homogenise the ideas in the country, but his attempts proved a dismal failure. In fact, he achieved exactly the contrary. Instead of having all citizens share the same ideals, he destroyed social harmony. Instead of having everybody accept the same beliefs, he only generated discrimination, hatred and war. Montaigne did not praise enough the wisdom of adopting a realistic stance. Not only is it a fact that individuals are all unequal, but that life rarely delivers perfect justice or fairness. We all know of people who, in their profession or business, have profited from personal connections. It is certainly unfair, but I wouldn’t waste a minute worrying about those situations. Montaigne commends self-made individuals like Spartacus (1st century BC) that rise to positions of leadership, and has no good words for incompetent aristocrats like the Ancient Roman senator and consul Claudius Pulcher. While Spartacus led a revolt that defeated Roman armies on two occasions, Claudius Pulcher ordered a foolish attack which exposed the flanks of his ships. As a result, he lost seventy-five per cent of the Roman military fleet. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/michel-de-montaignes-key-lesson-on-the-art-of-living/