Sarah Bakewell, "How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne"

Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself.

–Michel de Montaigne

How to Live (2010) is gimmicky and cutesy, but still a fun way to get reacquainted with Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). I first read Montaigne's Essays during the summer after I graduated from college, and like so many other introverted, bookish people, I fell in love immediately. Some old classic books fall flat with modern readers, but not the Essays, which have been admired extravagantly for more than 400 years. And also, sometimes, bitterly despised.

One reason to read about Montaigne, rather than just reading the essays, is to understand how that famous text evolved over the years. The final, 1595 version was three times as long as the first text of 1572, and very different in both content and effect. In the beginning most of the essays were short and studded with Latin quotations from ancient philosophers; some early readers understood it as mainly a collection of sayings, with the personal bits in between mainly there to show how one might use ancient wisdom in one's life. And that was part of Montaigne's purpose; he understood philosophy, not as an academic discipline, but as a guide to leading a good life. But as the years passed and Montaigne grew more confident in his project he added more and more personal material until in the end it overwhelmed the old skeleton of classical wisdom. "My book is myself," he said.

Another reason to read about Montaigne is to understand that he was actually much more important in French politics than he lets on. His adult life coincided with the French Wars of Religion, an ugly series of bloody conflicts involving Catholics, Protestants, and the royal government, which was trying to hold the kingdom together. Montaigne presents himself in the essays as moderate by nature, without a trace of fanaticism in his being, and his behavior during these civil wars confirms this. He was a key figure among those known as the Politiques, who feared faction and sought peace by any means. He was elected mayor of Bordeaux when it was riven by religious strife, and partly due to his actions the city held together. He was summoned by King Henri III to assist with negotiations in Paris, and became friendly with both the king and his powerful mother, Marie de Medici; when Montaigne was imprisoned by some Catholic fanatics the queen mother went in person to obtain his release. He was also friendly with Navarre, the future Henri IV, who visited Montaigne at his estate to solicit his advice. I had no idea about any of this when I first read him, due to my habit of skipping introductions, and once I learned it I found the meaning of some essays much changed. For example Montaigne writes in multiple places about his approach to serving as an arbitrator, never mentioning that he is not referring to property disputes among his neighbors but tense talks between combattants in a civil war. 

Rather than his own accomplishments, what fascinated Montaigne was the particular moral situations people might face, and what they should do when confronted with them. For example: if you are cornered by your enemies, should you grovel and plead, surrender but stand up manfully, or fight to your dying breath? He then cites examples from history of people who tried all of these approaches, sometimes with success but sometimes the opposite. Some conquerors respect and spare those men who fight to the bitter end, but at other times they are enraged and decide to slaughter not just the men resisting but their whole community. And so on. There is, Montaigne implies, no course that will necessarily lead to success, so you might as well face up to events as manfully as you can. And he lived this; in the midst of civil war, he refused to place guards around his own estate, and once when some Catholic freebooters attacked his property he went unarmed and alone out to meet them; they ended up taking the food they needed but otherwise leaving his home and property in peace.

Another reason to read about Montaigne is to ponder the remarkable afterlife of his book, beloved by so many people for so long. His astonishing honesty about himself led many readers to say that they had never known how much of their own minds was shared by other humans until they read the essays. Stefan Zweig, a Jew living in exile from Nazi-dominated Europe, read Montaigne and exclaimed, "He is I, and I am he; 400 years has vanished in an instant." Others who loved him included Voltaire, Emerson, Nietzsche, and, some scholars think, Shakespeare; there are lines in the plays that seem taken from John Florio's English translation of the essays, and many critics have thought that the character of Hamlet was modeled on Montaigne. One person who hated Montaigne was Rene Descartes. You have probably heard that Descartes launched himself on a long quest to find out what he knew for certain, ending up at "I think, therefore I am." But you might not have heard that what started him on this quest was reading Montaigne.

What is so remarkable about Michel de Montaigne?

Montaigne was a skeptic in the classical sense. That is, he thought that many questions were simply beyond our power to answer, and for the rest our answers will be only provisional, always subject to revision:

We, and our judgment, and all mortal things go on flowing and rolling unceasingly. Thus nothing certain can be established about one thing by another, both the judging and the judged being in continual change and motion.

But while it was conventional among skeptics to doubt the world, Montaigne was remarkable in that doubted himself even more. "We are, I know not how, doubled in our minds." He tells us that he vacillated about all questions, taking one side and now the other, changing his mind from day to day and even hour to hour. In many of the essays he considers a problem from every side, turning it around and around but never coming to any conclusion. In others he minutely examines his own memories and ponders how false and partial they are, and wonders how he ended up with certain opinions that he cannot justify. There were certain classical characters who also turned skepticism on themselves, but at least as their stories come down to us this seems to have made them strange and annoying people. Montaigne turned his doubts into charm.

He was also open about his faults – actually, weirdly insistent about his faults. He was, he tells us, too lazy to improve his estate as a Renaissance landowner ought, he resigned his post as a judge because it was too much work, he read only what interested him. Instead he would rather play with his dog (who makes several appearances) or sit around and talk with his friends. He wrote hymns to the joy of conversation, which was his favorite activity. He would, he said, rather go blind than deaf, because reading never gave him as much pleasure as conversation did. 

I am too much of a post-modernist to claim that the Essays reveal Montaigne with complete openness and honesty; come to think of it, Montaigne was also too much of a skeptic to make any such claim himself. But the Essays are to me one of the great treasures of world literature, in which a moderate, humane, and distinctly peculiar man laid his soul open to us, trusting the we would receive him with the same remarkable acceptance he showed toward his life, his world, his sufferings, and his talent for putting a working mind on the page. Reading How to Live has reawakened my relationship with one of my favorite historical characters, and I thank Sara Bakewell for that.