Sarah Bakewell, in her 2010 Montaigne biography “How to Live,” detailed the unusual child rearing experiment that his parents attempted on him. She presents them as curious oddities. I wonder if they might constitute induced trauma. Montaigne was separated from his parents until he had weaned himself from his nursemaid, because his father wanted Michel…

Montaigne’s introduction to this essay is gorgeous. He tells two stories where leaders showed mercy towards assassination plotters, the first about a French prince, the second about Roman emperor Augustus. They are parallel stories – both the prince and emperor decide against punishing the plotter and instead give the would-be assassins space to disown their…

Despite the title, this essay is really about customs, and his unusual political views. It starts with his distaste for novelty: I abhor novelty, no matter what visage it presents, and am right to do so, for I have seen some of its disastrous effects. That novelty which has for so many years beset us…

This is a very short essay from Montaigne, and it makes a point that business transactions are a zero sum game. No one attains wealth, according to Montaigne, unless someone else is losing it. Economists would disagree with Montaigne’s assessment, but bear in mind he’s writing from the vantage point of a feudal economy. His…

Montaigne questioned whether cowards should be punished as harshly as traitors. To me, the answer is obvious and it arrives in his second paragraph: It is reasonable that we should make a great difference between defects due to our weakness and those due to our wickedness. In the latter we deliberately brace ourselves against reason’s…