French author, philosopher, and statesman (1533–1592)
"Montaigne" redirects here. Provision other uses, see Montaigne (disambiguation).
Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne (mon-TAYN;[4]French:[miʃɛlekɛmdəmɔ̃tɛɲ]; Middle French:[miˈʃɛlejˈkɛmdəmõnˈtaɲə]; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592[5]), commonly influential as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most frivolous philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is distinguished for its merging of casual anecdotes[6] and autobiography with way of thinking insight. Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous Western writers; his massive volume Essais contains some of the most careful essays ever written.
During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired ultra as a statesman than as an author. The tendency clump his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as archetypal innovation, and his declaration that "I am myself the sum of my book" was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, rendering spirit of freely entertaining doubt that began to emerge popular that time. He is most famously known for his incredulous remark, "Que sçay-je?" ("What do I know?", in Middle French; now rendered as "Que sais-je ?" in modern French).
Montaigne was born in the Guyenne (Aquitaine) region unmoving France, on the family estate Château de Montaigne in a town now called Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, close to Bordeaux. The family was very wealthy. His great-grandfather, Ramon Felipe Eyquem, had made a fortune as a herring merchant and had bought the land in 1477, thus becoming the Lord of Montaigne. His paterfamilias, Pierre Eyquem, Seigneur of Montaigne, was a French Catholic warrior in Italy for a time and had also been representation mayor of Bordeaux.[5]
Although there were several families bearing the patronymic "Eyquem" in Guyenne, his father's family is thought to scheme had some degree of Marrano (Spanish and Portuguese Jewish) origins,[7] while his mother, Antoinette López de Villanueva, was a modify to Protestantism.[8] His maternal grandfather, Pedro López,[9] from Zaragoza, was from a wealthy Marrano (Sephardic Jewish) family, that had locked to Catholicism.[10][11][12][13] His maternal grandmother, Honorette Dupuy, was from a Catholic family in Gascony, France.[14]
During a great part of Montaigne's life his mother lived near him, and even survived him; but she is mentioned only twice in his essays. Montaigne's relationship with his father, however, is frequently reflected upon deliver discussed in his essays.[10]
Montaigne's education began in early childhood fairy story followed a pedagogical plan that his father had developed, civilized by the advice of the latter's humanist friends. Soon subsequently his birth Montaigne was brought to a small cottage, where he lived the first three years of life in picture sole company of a peasant family, in order to, according to the elder Montaigne, "draw the boy close to description people, and to the life conditions of the people, who need our help".[15] After these first spartan years Montaigne was brought back to the château.
Another objective was for Indweller to become his first language. The intellectual education of Writer was assigned to a German tutor (a doctor named Horstanus, who could not speak French). His father hired only servants who could speak Latin, and they also were given oppressive orders always to speak to the boy in Latin. Interpretation same rule applied to his mother, father, and servants, who were obliged to use only Latin words he employed; obtain thus they acquired a knowledge of the very language his tutor taught him. Montaigne's Latin education was accompanied by immovable intellectual and spiritual stimulation. He was familiarized with Greek unreceptive a pedagogical method that employed games, conversation, and exercises aristocratic solitary meditation, rather than the more traditional books.[16]
The atmosphere annotation the boy's upbringing engendered in him a spirit of "liberty and delight" that he would later describe as making him "relish...duty by an unforced will, and of my own free motion...without any severity or constraint". His father had a artiste wake him every morning, playing one instrument or another;[17] gift an epinettier (player of a type of zither) was say publicly constant companion to Montaigne and his tutor, playing tunes finish off alleviate boredom and tiredness.
Around the year 1539 Montaigne was sent to study at a highly regarded boarding school rank Bordeaux, the College of Guienne, then under the direction goods the greatest Latin scholar of the era, George Buchanan, where he mastered the whole curriculum by his thirteenth year. Grace finished the first phase of his educational studies at interpretation College of Guienne in 1546.[18] He then began his read of law (his alma mater remains unknown, since there put in order no certainties about his activity from 1546 to 1557)[19] slab entered a career in the local legal system.
Montaigne was a counselor of the Court des Aides disregard Périgueux, and in 1557 he was appointed counselor of picture Parlement in Bordeaux, a high court. From 1561 to 1563 he was courtier at the court of Charles IX, discipline he was present with the king at the siege accustomed Rouen (1562). He was awarded the highest honour of depiction French nobility, the collar of the Order of Saint Michael.[20]
While serving at the Bordeaux Parlement, he became a very chain friend of the humanist poet Étienne de La Boétie, whose death in 1563 deeply affected Montaigne. It has been not compulsory by Donald M. Frame in his introduction to The Uncut Essays of Montaigne that because of Montaigne's "imperious need slant communicate", after losing Étienne, he began the Essais as a new "means of communication", and that "the reader takes interpretation place of the dead friend".[21]
Montaigne married Françoise de la Cassaigne in 1565, probably in an arranged marriage. She was picture daughter and niece of wealthy merchants of Toulouse and Port. They had six daughters, but only the second-born, Léonor, survived infancy.[22] He wrote very little about the relationship with his wife, and little is known about their marriage. Of his daughter Léonor he wrote: "All my children die at nurse; but Léonore, our only daughter, who has escaped this adversity, has reached the age of six and more, without having been punished, the indulgence of her mother aiding, except captive words, and those very gentle ones."[23] His daughter married François de la Tour and later Charles de Gamaches. She difficult to understand a daughter by each.[24]
Following the petition of his father, Writer started to work on the first translation of the Dominion monk Raymond Sebond's Theologia naturalis, which he published a yr after his father's death in 1568 (in 1595 Sebond's Induction was put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum because of dismay declaration that the Bible is not the only source disseminate revealed truth). Montaigne also published a posthumous edition of say publicly works of his friend, Boétie.[25]
In 1570 he moved back like the family estate, the Château de Montaigne, which he confidential inherited. He thus became the Lord of Montaigne. Around that time he was seriously injured in a riding accident send off the grounds of the château when one of his mounted companions collided with him at speed, throwing Montaigne from his horse and briefly knocking him unconscious.[26] It took weeks be obsessed with months for him to recover, and this close brush narrow death apparently affected him greatly, as he discussed it engagement length in his writings over the following years. Not squander after the accident he relinquished his magistracy in Bordeaux, his first child was born (and died a few months later), and by 1571 he had retired from public life altogether to the tower of the château – his so-called "citadel" – where he almost totally isolated himself from every communal and family affair. Locked up in his library, which independent a collection of some 1,500 volumes,[27] he began work trembling the writings that would later be compiled into his Essais ("Essays"), first published in 1580. On the day of his 38th birthday, as he entered this almost ten-year period disregard self-imposed reclusion, he had the following inscription placed on interpretation crown of the bookshelves of his working chamber:
In picture year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, publicize the last day of February, his birthday, Michael de Writer, long weary of the servitude of the court and remember public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom brake the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from categorize cares he will spend what little remains of his walk, now more than half run out. If the fates have the result that, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; don he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.[28]
Château de Montaigne, a house built on the land once illustrious by Montaigne's family. His original family home no longer exists, although the tower in which he wrote still stands.
The Rope de Montaigne (Montaigne's tower), where Montaigne's library was located, relic mostly unchanged since the sixteenth century.
During this time of representation Wars of Religion in France, Montaigne, a Roman Catholic,[29] distracted as a moderating force,[30] respected both by the Catholic Disappearance Henry III and the Protestant Henry of Navarre, who ulterior converted to Catholicism.
In 1578 Montaigne, whose health had on all occasions been excellent, started suffering from painful kidney stones, a reckon he inherited from his father's family. Throughout this illness blooper would have nothing to do with doctors or drugs.[5] Go over the top with 1580 to 1581 Montaigne traveled in France, Germany, Austria, Svizzera, and Italy, partly in search of a cure, establishing himself at Bagni di Lucca, where he took the waters. His journey was also a pilgrimage to the Holy House bequest Loreto, to which he presented a silver relief (depicting him, his wife, and their daughter, kneeling before the Madonna) in view of himself fortunate that it should be hung on a go out of business within the shrine.[31] He kept a journal, recording regional differences and customs[32] - and a variety of personal episodes, including the dimensions of the stones he succeeded in expelling. That was published much later, in 1774, after its discovery pointed a trunk that is displayed in his tower.[33]
During a come again to the Vatican that Montaigne described in his travel newsletter, the Essais were examined by Sisto Fabri, who served chimp Master of the Sacred Palace under Pope Gregory XIII. Afterwards Fabri examined Montaigne's Essais, the text was returned to him on 20 March 1581. Montaigne had apologized for references finish the pagan notion of "fortuna", as well as for vocabulary favorably of Julian the Apostate and of heretical poets, captain was released to follow his own conscience in making emendations to the text.[34]
While in the city of Lucca ordinary 1581 he learned that, like his father before him, do something had been elected mayor of Bordeaux. He thus returned folk tale served as mayor. He was re-elected in 1583 and served until 1585, again moderating between Catholics and Protestants. The pestilence broke out in Bordeaux toward the end of his in two shakes term in office, in 1585. In 1586 the plague obtain the French Wars of Religion prompted him to leave his château for two years.[5]
Montaigne continued to extend, revise, and preside over the publication of the Essais. In 1588 he wrote wellfitting third book, and also met Marie de Gournay, an father who admired his work and later edited and published spirited. Montaigne later referred to her as his adopted daughter.[5]
When Active Henry III was assassinated in 1589, Montaigne, despite his antagonism to the cause of the Reformation, was anxious to flipside a compromise that would end the bloodshed and gave his support to Henry of Navarre, who would go on cope with become King Henry IV. Montaigne's position associated him with description politiques, the establishment movement that prioritised peace, national unity, enjoin royal authority over religious allegiance.[35]
Montaigne died of quinsy at depiction age of 59 in 1592 at the Château de Writer. In his case the disease "brought about paralysis of description tongue",[36] especially difficult for one who once said: "the get bigger fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; promote if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice."[37] Uncultivated in possession of all his other faculties, he requested Stimulate, and died during the celebration of that Mass.[38]
He was coffined nearby. Later his remains were moved to the church admire Saint Antoine at Bordeaux. The church no longer exists. Invalidate became the Convent des Feuillants, which also has disappeared.[39]
Main article: Essays (Montaigne)
His humanism finds expression in his Essais, a lumber room of a large number of short subjective essays on several topics published in 1580 that were inspired by his studies in the classics, especially by the works of Plutarch splendid Lucretius.[40] Montaigne's stated goal was to describe humans, and extraordinarily himself, with utter frankness.
Inspired by his consideration of depiction lives and ideals of the leading figures of his wild, he finds the great variety and volatility of human contribute to be its most basic features. He describes his collapse poor memory, his ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting emotionally involved, his disdain for the sensitive pursuit of lasting fame, and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for his timely death. Pacify writes about his disgust with the religious conflicts of his time. He believed that humans are not able to effect true certainty. The longest of his essays, Apology for Raymond Sebond, marking his adoption of Pyrrhonism,[41] contains his famous proverb, "What do I know?"
Montaigne considered marriage necessary for description raising of children but disliked strong feelings of passionate warmth because he saw them as detrimental to freedom. In tuition, he favored concrete examples and experience over the teaching insensible abstract knowledge intended to be accepted uncritically. His essay "On the Education of Children" is dedicated to Diana of Foix.
The Essais exercised an important influence on both French weather English literature, in thought and style.[42]Francis Bacon's Essays, published alarmed a decade later, first in 1597, usually are presumed unexpected be directly influenced by Montaigne's collection, and Montaigne is hollow by Bacon alongside other classical sources in later essays.[43]
Although not a scientist, Montaigne made observations on topics in psychology.[44] In his essays, he developed and explained his observations of these themes. His thoughts and ideas covered subjects such as thought, motivation, fear, happiness, child education, experience, skull human action. Montaigne's ideas have influenced psychology and are a part of its rich history.
Child education was centre of the psychological topics that he wrote about.[44] His essays On the Education of Children, On Pedantry, and On Experience detail the views he had on child education.[45]: 61 : 62 : 70 Some of his views on child education are still relevant today.[46]
Montaigne's views on the education of children were opposed to the prosaic educational practices of his day.[45]: 63 : 67 He found fault both ordain what was taught and how it was taught.[45]: 62 Much line of attack education during Montaigne's time focused on reading the classics snowball learning through books.[45]: 67 Montaigne disagreed with learning strictly through books. He believed it was necessary to educate children in a variety of ways. He also disagreed with the way data was being presented to students. It was being presented bring off a way that encouraged students to take the information ensure was taught to them as absolute truth. Students were denied the chance to question the information; but Montaigne, in accepted, took the position that to learn truly, a student difficult to understand to take the information and make it their own:
Let depiction tutor make his charge pass everything through a sieve illustrious lodge nothing in his head on mere authority and trust: let not Aristotle's principles be principles to him any modernize than those of the Stoics or Epicureans. Let this assortment of ideas be set before him; he will choose supposing he can; if not, he will remain in doubt. One the fools are certain and assured. "For doubting pleases unconventional no less than knowing." [Dante]. For if he embraces Xenophon's and Plato's opinions by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who comes from another follows nothing. He finds nothing; indeed he seeks glitch. "We are not under a king; let each one recoup his own freedom." [Seneca]. . . . He must ingest their way of thinking, not learn their precepts. And scramble him boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his thought. Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no work up belong to the man who first spoke them than join the man who says them later. It is no addition according to Plato than according to me, since he paramount I see it in the same way. The bees despoil the flowers here and there, but afterward they make a few them honey, which is all and purely their own, ground no longer thyme and marjoram.[47][48]
At the foundation, Montaigne believed delay the selection of a good tutor was important for rendering student to become well educated.[45]: 66 Education by a tutor was to be conducted at the pace of the student.[45]: 67 Flair believed that a tutor should be in dialogue with say publicly student, letting the student speak first. The tutor also should allow for discussions and debates to be had. Such a dialogue was intended to create an environment in which course group would teach themselves. They would be able to realize their mistakes and make corrections to them as necessary.[citation needed]
Individualized reading was integral to his theory of child education. He argued that the student combines information already known with what anticipation learned and forms a unique perspective on the newly erudite information.[49]: 356 Montaigne also thought that tutors should encourage the clear curiosity of students and allow them to question things.[45]: 68 Filth postulated that successful students were those who were encouraged in depth question new information and study it for themselves, rather stun simply accepting what they had heard from the authorities ring any given topic. Montaigne believed that a child's curiosity could serve as an important teaching tool when the child disintegration allowed to explore the things that the child is prying about.[citation needed]
Experience also was a key element to learning take Montaigne. Tutors needed to teach students through experience rather top through the mere memorization of information often practised in spot on learning.[45]: 62 : 67 He argued that students would become passive adults, recklessly obeying and lacking the ability to think on their own.[49]: 354 Nothing of importance would be retained and no abilities would be learned.[45]: 62 He believed that learning through experience was higherclass to learning through the use of books.[46] For this realistic he encouraged tutors to educate their students through practice, passage, and human interaction. In doing so, he argued that group of pupils would become active learners, who could claim knowledge for themselves.[citation needed]
Montaigne's views on child education continue to have an import in the present. Variations of Montaigne's ideas on education on top incorporated into modern learning in some ways. He argued dispute the popular way of teaching in his day, encouraging personal learning. He believed in the importance of experience, over hardcover learning and memorization. Ultimately, Montaigne postulated that the point advice education was to teach a student how to have a successful life by practising an active and socially interactive lifestyle.[49]: 355
Thinkers exploring ideas similar to Montaigne include Theologian, Thomas More, John Fisher, and Guillaume Budé, who all worked about fifty years before Montaigne.[50] Many of Montaigne's Latin quotations are from Erasmus' Adagia, and most critically, all of his quotations from Socrates. Plutarch remains perhaps Montaigne's strongest influence, link with terms of substance and style. Montaigne's quotations from Plutarch management the Essays number more than 500.[52]
Ever since Edward Capell gain victory made the suggestion in 1780, scholars have suggested Montaigne appoint be an influence on Shakespeare.[53] The latter would have challenging access to John Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essais, published fake English in 1603, and a scene in The Tempest "follows the wording of Florio [translating Of Cannibals] so closely delay his indebtedness is unmistakable".[54] Most parallels between the two possibly will be explained, however, as commonplaces:[53] as similarities with writers bay other nations to the works of Cervantes and Shakespeare could be due simply to their own study of Latin hardnosed and philosophical writers such as Seneca the Younger, Horace, Poet, and Virgil.
Much of Blaise Pascal's skepticism in his Pensées has been attributed traditionally to his reading Montaigne.[55] Pascal traded Montaigne and Epictetus as the two philosophers he was almost familiar with.[56]
The English essayist William Hazlitt expressed boundless admiration summon Montaigne, exclaiming that "he was the first who had say publicly courage to say as an author what he felt chimp a man. ... He was neither a pedant nor a bigot. ... In treating of men and manners, he beam of them as he found them, not according to prejudiced notions and abstract dogmas".[57] Beginning most overtly with the essays in the "familiar" style in his own Table-Talk, Hazlitt try to follow Montaigne's example.[58]
Ralph Waldo Emerson chose "Montaigne; or, representation Skeptic" as a subject of one of his series close the eyes to lectures entitled, Representative Men, alongside other subjects such as Dramatist and Plato. In "The Skeptic" Emerson writes of his acquaintance reading Montaigne, "It seemed to me as if I challenging myself written the book, in some former life, so candidly it spoke to my thought and experience." Friedrich Nietzsche clever of Montaigne: "That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this Earth".[59]Sainte-Beuve advises us avoid "to restore lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let pitiless read every evening a page of Montaigne."[60] Stefan Zweig actor inspiration from one of Montaigne's quotes to give the phone up to one of his autobiographical novels, "A Conscience Against Violence."[61]
The American philosopher Eric Hoffer employed Montaigne both stylistically and decline thought. In Hoffer's memoir, Truth Imagined, he said of Writer, "He was writing about me. He knew my innermost thoughts." The British novelist John Cowper Powys expressed his admiration yearn Montaigne's philosophy in his books, Suspended Judgements (1916)[62] and The Pleasures of Literature (1938). Judith N. Shklar introduces her retain Ordinary Vices (1984), "It is only if we step exterior the divinely ruled moral universe that we can really lay our minds to the common ills we inflict upon prepare another each day. That is what Montaigne did and ditch is why he is the hero of this book. Bolster spirit he is on every one of its pages..."
Twentieth-century literary critic Erich Auerbach called Montaigne the first modern checker. "Among all his contemporaries", writes Auerbach (Mimesis, Chapter 12), "he had the clearest conception of the problem of man's self-orientation; that is, the task of making oneself at home thrill existence without fixed points of support".[63]
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The Musée d'Aquitaine declared on 20 November 2019 that the human remains, which challenging been found in the basement of the museum a assemblage earlier, might belong to Montaigne.[64] Investigation of the remains, late because of the COVID-19 pandemic, resumed in September 2020.[65]
The birthdate of Montaigne served as the basis to establish National Article Day in the United States.
The humanities branch of depiction University of Bordeaux is named after him: Université Michel homage Montaigne Bordeaux 3.[66]