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

John Vespasian explains that 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. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/michel-de-montaignes-key-lesson-on-the-art-of-living/