Michel de Montaigne’s literary legacy

Three words suffice me to summarise the literary legacy of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592): Think for yourself. In each of his essays, he calls for self-reliance, critical thinking, open-mindedness, and personal initiative. Unfortunately, historians have given excessive weight to the stylistic aspects of Montaigne’s work, and overlooked his ideas and attitude. Indeed, Montaigne invented the essay as a literary genre but it represents a small step compared with the dialogues written by Plato (427-347 BC), the letters written by Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), or the brief treatises written by Cicero (106-43 BC). What about its meditative standpoint? Does thoughtfulness make Montaigne’s essays unique? Not at all. I cannot see that Montaigne’s essays are more reflective than the “Meditations” written by Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD). If we take Montaigne’s essay “On Experience,” which is in part autobiographical, we can find observations reminiscent of those made by Marcus Aurelius fourteen centuries earlier. Neither do scepticism or relativism make Montaigne unique because of the large number of freethinkers in France during the Middle Ages. Montaigne is a notable custodian of a worthy tradition, but not its creator or initiator. When Montaigne published his essays in 1580, he included his “Apology for Raymond Sebond.” It is a remarkable work in terms of theological depth, but its arguments had already been known long before Montaigne. In this essay, a freethinker looks back kindly upon the work of a freethinker from a previous generation, but his arguments about the limits of human reason are spurious and specious. He is bringing back Plato’s world of pure ideas, and lamenting that they remain inaccessible to us. Nothing new under the sun. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/michel-de-montaignes-literary-legacy/