Before I jump into the essay, I want to take issue with M.E. Screech’s English translation. I don’t do this often, but I believe he screwed up one of Montaigne’s best quotes and should be held accountable. The modern French translation of the quote is: Tout mouvement nous fait connaitre. This is a simple phrase…

Montaigne seems to care more about culture than anything else and seems to enjoy himself most when describing odd behavior. Montaigne scholars believe it’s one of the first that he wrote and includes a great deal of raw material he returns to in later essays. It sits well at this point in his corpus, towards…

Oh the warhorses essay, the piece that most thoroughly baffled me every time I’ve written about Montaigne. Perhaps the only way to tackle it is one disconnected quip at a time. Montaigne wrote: The Mamelukes boast of having the most skilful horses of any knights in the world: they say that their nature and training…

Thanks to high school debate, I learned at a young age that a rational person could argue either side of any policy conflict. There’s a cold logic to competitive debate that cuts through ideology or “belief” — whether you draw affirmative or negative from round to round predetermines your strategic options and often your arguments….

Philosopher Colin McGinn wrote a wonderful book several years ago entitled “Shakespeare’s Philosophy” that, among other things, pointed out many scenes in Shakespeare’s plays that were clearly influenced by Miguel de Montaigne (who Shakespeare had read.) Most were in “Hamlet” or “The Tempest” (which I mentioned in a previous essay), but one play McGinn did…

There’s a tension in Montaigne that seems unusual to modern readers. He writes quite a bit about battles, but seems highly conflict averse. This essay, in particular, displays Montaigne taking what might appear to be a Machiavellian position—that it’s perfectly acceptable to deploy a military strategy that will probably lead to heavy casualties on your…