Last week I took another look at Montaigne’s final essay “On Experience” from a practical viewpoint — what personal need was Montaigne fulfilling through his project, especially as expressed in that work. Today, I’m going to take a few steps further back and look at that project and the essay from the vantage of meaning….

There is nobody less suited that I am to talk about memory. I can hardly find a trace of it in myself; I doubt if there is any other memory in the world as grotesquely faulty as mine is! From “On Liars” I concern myself in this piece with Montaigne’s final essay, On Experience, but…

12 May 2011 About a year ago, I came across some lines from American philosopher Richard Rorty in his book “Contingency, Irony and Solidarity,” that had a big impact on me. I was being treated for depression and had been on Cymbalta for about nine months. I couldn’t stand the drug and wanted to get…

20 September 2020 Now in the summer of 2024, I’m tempted to just let this essay stand as is and allow this argument with myself across time to take place. One reason I considered just posting it as is: annotating this essay just compounds the error. Will I forever think I’m now in the right…

In an essay largely about witches, Montaigne provides a highly plausible theory about how mass delusions spread: At first simple folk are convinced by the event itself: it sweeps over them. From them it spreads to the more intelligent folk by the authority of the number and the antiquity of the testimonies. Personally, what I…

It’s called “On Physiognomy” but there’s no good reason for the title, other than a fairly brief discussion of beauty and how Montaigne finds it hard to believe that Socrates was so ugly. The essay never addresses the concept of judging the character of someone from facial characteristics. But since Montaigne digresses over at least…