Montaigne translator and editor M.A. Screech says that this essay gives greater insight into the “austere, rigorist side of Montaigne’s Catholicism.” That’s one way to read it. But it occurs to me that Montaigne might not be writing here about religious faith or Catholicism. What he’s actually writing about is the perfectibility of man and…

Montaigne’s contradictory nature returns in this essay, where he starts off saying that the ideal smell is no smell at all: The best characteristic we can hope for is to smell of nothing. The sweetness of the purest breath consists in nothing more excellent than to be without any offensive smell, as the breath of…

As he reaches the end of his first volume of essays, Montaigne is taking stock of the project and wondering if the things he’s cobbled together have any value. And so he compares himself to poets who create elaborate puzzles within the text or people who’ve cultivated stupid party tricks and wonders if there’s a…

This wise Montaigne mini essay left me wanting more—and may have influenced 20th century psychologist and philosopher Jacques Lacan. I have not come across any Lacan quotes about this essay, but the obscurantist French psychologist freely quoted Montaigne in many of his lectures, and this idea in particular sounds similar to one of Lacan’s central…

Towards the end of the first volume of Montaigne essays, there are some clearly unfinished pieces thrown in for reasons I cannot understand. This essay is the worst culprit of that batch—four paragraphs Montaigne lifted from Valerius Maximus, Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus and Seneca that tell instances of leaders eschewing the trappings of leadership and power…

When reading this essay, it’s important to keep in mind that the spoken word was king back in Montaigne’s day. The art of rhetoric was a cornerstone of classical education, especially for the Greeks and Romans. So while he says some very harsh things in this very short piece about orators and, I would assume,…