## 1. Life



 Montaigne (1533-1592) came from a rich bourgeois family that acquired
nobility after his father fought in Italy in the army of King Francis
I of France; he came back with the firm intention of bringing refined
Italian culture to France. He decorated his Perigord castle in
the style of an ancient Roman villa. He also decided that his son
would not learn Latin in school. He arranged instead for a German
preceptor and the household to speak to him exclusively in Latin at
home. So the young Montaigne grew up speaking Latin and reading
Vergil, Ovid, and Horace on his own. At the age of six, he was sent to
board at the College de Guyenne in Bordeaux, which he later
praised as the best humanist college in France, though he found fault
with humanist colleges in general. Where Montaigne later studied law,
or, indeed, whether he ever studied law at all is not clear. The only
thing we know with certainty is that his father bought him an office
in the Court of Perigueux. He then met Etienne de La
Boetie with whom he formed an intimate friendship and whose death
some years later, in 1563, left him deeply distraught. Tired of active
life, he retired at the age of only 37 to his father's castle. In the
same year, 1571, he was nominated Gentleman of King Charles IX's
Ordinary Chamber, and soon thereafter, also of Henri de Navarre's
Chamber. He received the decoration of the Order of Saint-Michel, a
distinction all the more exceptional as Montaigne's lineage was from
recent nobility. On the title page of the first edition (1580) of the
*Essays*, we read: "Essais de Messire Michel Seigneur de
Montaigne, Chevalier de l'ordre du Roy, & Gentilhomme ordinaire de
sa chambre." Initially keen to show off his titles and, thus,
his social standing, Montaigne had the honorifics removed in the
second edition (1582). 



 Replicating Petrarca's choice in *De vita solitaria*,
Montaigne chose to dedicate himself to the Muses. In his library,
which was quite large for the period, he had wisdom formulas carved on
the wooden beams. They were drawn from, amongst others,
*Ecclesiastes*, Sextus Empiricus, Lucretius, and other
classical authors, whom he read intensively. To escape fits of
melancholy, he began to commit his thoughts to paper. In 1580, he
undertook a journey to Italy, whose main goal was to cure the
pain of his kidney stones at thermal resorts. The journey is related
in part by a secretary, in part by Montaigne himself, in a manuscript
that was only discovered during the XVIIIth century, given the title
*The Journal of the Journey to Italy*, and forgotten soon
after. While Montaigne was taking the baths near Pisa, he learnt of
his election as Mayor of Bordeaux. He was first tempted to refuse out
of modesty, but eventually accepted (he even received a letter from
the King urging him to take the post) and was later re-elected. In his
second term he came under criticism for having abandoned the town
during the great plague in an attempt to protect himself and his
family. His time in office was dimmed by the wars of religion between
Catholics and Protestants. Several members of his family converted to
Protestantism, but Montaigne himself remained a Catholic. 


## 2. Work



 Montaigne wrote three books of *Essays*. ("Essay"
was an original name for this kind of work; it became an appreciated
genre soon after.) Three main editions are recognized: 1580 (at this
stage, only the first two books were written), 1588, and 1595. The
last edition, which could not be supervised by Montaigne himself, was
edited from the manuscript by his adoptive daughter Marie de
Gournay. Till the end of the XIXth century, the copy text for all new
editions was that of 1595; Fortunat Strowski and shortly after him
Pierre Villey dismissed it in favor of the "Bordeaux
copy", a text of the 1588 edition supplemented by manuscript
additions.[1]
Montaigne enriched his text continuously; he preferred to add for the
sake of diversity, rather than to 
correct.[2]
 The unity of the work and the order of
every single chapter remain problematic. We are unable to detect
obvious links from one chapter to the next: in the first book,
Montaigne jumps from "Idleness" (I,8) to
"Liars" (I,9), then from "Prompt or slow
speech" (I,10) to "Prognostications" (I,11). The
random aspect of the work, acknowledged by the author himself, has
been a challenge for commentators ever since. Part of the brilliance
of the *Essays* lies in this very ability to elicit various
forms of explanatory coherence whilst at the same time defying
them. The work is so rich and flexible that it accommodates virtually
any academic trend. Yet, it is also so resistant to interpretation
that it reveals the limits of each interpretation.



 Critical studies of the *Essays* have, until recently, been
mainly of a literary nature. However, to consider Montaigne as a
writer rather than as a philosopher can be a way of ignoring a
disturbing thinker. Indeed, he shook some fundamental
aspects of Western thought, such as the superiority we assign to man
over
 animals,[3]
 to European civilization over
 "Barbarians",[4]
 or to reason as an alleged universal standard. A
tradition rooted in the 19th century tends to relegate his work to
the status of literary impressionism or to the expression of a
frivolous subjectivity. To do him justice, one needs to bear in
mind the inseparable unity of thought and style in his work.
Montaigne's repeated revisions of his text, as modern editions show with
the three letters A, B, C, standing for the three main editions,
mirror the relationship between the activity of his thought and
the *Essays* as a work in progress. The *Essays* display
both the laboriousness and the delight of thinking. 


In Montaigne we have a writer whose work is deeply infused by 
philosophical thought. One verse out of sixteen in Lucretius'
 *De natura rerum* is quoted in the
 *Essays*.[5]
 If it is true, as Edmund Husserl said, that philosophy is a shared
endeavor, Montaigne is perhaps the most exemplary of philosophers
since his work extensively borrows and quotes from others. Montaigne
managed to internalize a huge breadth of reading, so that his
erudition does not appear as such. He created a most singular work,
yet one that remains deeply rooted in the community of poets,
historians, and philosophers. His decision to use only his own
judgment in dealing with all sorts of matters, his resolutely distant
attitude towards memory and knowledge, his warning that we should not
mix God or transcendent principles with the human world, are some of
the key elements that characterize Montaigne's position. As a
humanist, he considered that one has to assimilate the classics, but
above all to display virtue, "according to the opinion of
Plato, who says that steadfastness, faith, and sincerity are real
philosophy, and the other sciences which aim at other things are only
powder and
 rouge."[6]



## 3. A Philosophy of Free Judgment



 Montaigne rejects the theoretical or speculative way of
philosophizing that prevailed under the Scholastics ever since the
Middle Ages. According to him, science does not exist, but only a
general belief in science. Petrarch had already criticized the
Scholastics for worshiping Aristotle as their God. Siding with the
humanists, Montaigne develops a sharp criticism of science
"a la mode des
 Geometriens",[7]
 the *mos geometricus* deemed to be the most rigorous. It is
merely "a practice and business of
 science",[8]
 he says, which is restricted to the University and essentially
carried out between masters and their disciples. The main problem of
this kind of science is that it makes us spend our time justifying as
rational the beliefs we inherit, instead of calling into question
their foundations; it makes us label fashionable opinions as truth,
instead of gauging their strength. Whereas science should be a free
inquiry, it consists only in gibberish discussions on how we should
read Aristotle or
 Galen.[9]
 Critical judgment is systematically silenced. Montaigne demands a
thought process that would not be tied down by any doctrinaire
principle, a thought process that would lead to free enquiry. 



 If we trace back the birth of modern science, we find that
Montaigne as a philosopher was ahead of his time. In 1543, Copernicus
put the earth in motion, depriving man of his cosmological
centrality. Yet he nevertheless changed little in the medieval
conception of the world as a sphere. The Copernican world became an
"open" world only with Thomas Digges (1576) although his
sky was still situated in space, inhabited by gods and
 angels.[10]
 One has to wait for Giordano Bruno to find the first representative
of the modern conception of an infinite universe (1584). But whether
Bruno is a modern mind remains controversial (the planets are still
animals, etc). Montaigne, on the contrary, is entirely free from the
medieval conception of the spheres. He owes his cosmological freedom
to his deep interest in ancient philosophers, to Lucretius in
particular. In the longest chapter of the *Essays*, the
"Apologie de Raymond Sebond", Montaigne conjures up many
opinions, regarding the nature of the cosmos, or the nature of the
soul. He weighs the Epicureans' opinion that several worlds exist,
against that of the unicity of the world put forth by both Aristotle
and Aquinas. He comes out in favor of the former, without ranking his
own evaluation as a truth. 


As a humanist, Montaigne conceived of philosophy as morals. In the
chapter "On the education of
 children",[11]
 education is identified with philosophy, this being understood as the
formation of judgment and manners in everyday life: "for
philosophy, which, as the molder of judgment and conduct, will be his
principal lesson, has the privilege of being everywhere at
 home".[12]
 Philosophy, which consists essentially in the use of judgment,
is significant to the very ordinary, varied and
 "undulating"[13]
 process of life. In fact, under the guise of innocuous anecdotes,
Montaigne achieved the humanist revolution in philosophy. He moved
from a conception of philosophy conceived of as theoretical science,
to a philosophy conceived of as the practice of free
judgment. Lamenting that "philosophy, even with people of
understanding, should be an empty and fantastic name, a thing of no
use and no
 value",[14]
 he asserted that philosophy should be the most cheerful activity. He
practised philosophy by setting his judgment to trial, in order to
become aware of its weaknesses, but also to get to know its
strength. "Every movement reveals
 us",[15]
 but our judgments do so the best. At the beginning of the past
century, one of Montaigne's greatest commentators, Pierre Villey,
developed the idea that Montaigne truly became himself through
writing. This idea remains more or less true, in spite of its obvious
link with late romanticist psychology. The *Essays* remain an
exceptional historical testimony of the progress of privacy and
individualism, a blossoming of subjectivity, an attainment of personal
maturity that will be copied, but maybe never matched since. It
seems that Montaigne, who dedicated himself to freedom of the mind and
peacefulness of the soul, did not have any other aim through writing than
cultivating and educating himself. Since philosophy had failed to
determine a secure path towards happiness, he committed each individual
to do
 so in his own way.[16]




 Montaigne wants to escape the stifling of thought by knowledge, a
wide-spread phenomenon which he called
 "pedantism",[17]
 an idea that he may have gleaned from the tarnishing of professors by
the *Commedia dell'arte*. He praises one of the most
famous professors of the day, Adrianus Turnebus, for having combined 
robust judgment with massive erudition. We have to moderate
our thirst for knowledge, just as we do our appetite for
pleasure. Siding here with Callicles against Plato, Montaigne asserts
that a gentleman should not dedicate himself entirely to
 philosophy.[18]
 Practised with restraint, it proves useful, whereas in excess it leads
to eccentricity and
 insociability.[19]
 Reflecting on the education of the children of the aristocracy
(chapter I, 26, is dedicated to the countess Diane de Foix, who was
then pregnant), Montaigne departs significantly from a traditional
humanist education, the very one he himself received. Instead of
focusing on the ways and means of making the teaching of Latin more
effective, as pedagogues in the wake of Erasmus usually did, Montaigne
stresses the need for action and playful activities. The child will
conform early to social and political customs, but without
servility. The use of judgment in every circumstance, as a warrant for
practical intelligence and personal freedom, has to remain at the core
of education. He transfers the major responsibility of education from
the school to everyday life: "Wonderful brilliance may be gained
for human judgment by getting to know
 men".[20]
 The priority given to the formation of judgment and character
strongly opposes the craving for a powerful memory during his time. He
reserves for himself the freedom to pick up bits of knowledge here and
there, displaying the "nonchalance" or unconcern intellectually, much in
the same way that Castiglione's courtier would use
*sprezzatura* in social relationships. Although Montaigne
presents this nonchalance as essential to his nature, his position is
not innocent: it allows him to take on the voice now of a Stoic, and
then of a Sceptic, now of an Epicurean and then of a
Christian. Although his views are never fully original, they always
bear his unmistakable mark. Montaigne's thought, which is often rated
as modern in so many aspects, remains deeply rooted in the classical
tradition. Montaigne navigates easily through heaps of classical
knowledge, proposing remarkable literary and philosophical innovations
along the way. 



 Montaigne begins his project to know man by noticing that the same
human behavior can have opposite effects, or that even opposite conducts
can have the same effects: "by diverse means we arrive at the
same
 end".[21]
 Human life cannot be turned into an object of rational theory. Human
conduct does not obey universal rules, but a great diversity of rules,
among which the most accurate still fall short of the intended mark.
"Human reason is a tincture infused in about equal strength in
all our opinions and ways, whatever their form: infinite in substance,
infinite in
 diversity"[22]
 says the chapter on custom. By focusing on anecdotal experience,
Montaigne comes thus to write "the masterpiece of modern moral
science", according to the great commentator Hugo Friedrich. He
gives up the moral ambition of telling how men should live, in order
to arrive at a non-prejudiced mind for knowing man as he
is. "Others form man, I tell of
 him".[23]
 Man is ever since "without a definition", as philosopher Marcel Conche
 commented.[24]
 In the chapter "Apologie de Raimond Sebond", Montaigne
draws from classical and Renaissance knowledge in order to remind us
that, in some parts of the world, we find men that bear little
resemblance to us. Our experience of man and things should not be
perceived as limited by our present standards of judgment. It is 
a sort of madness when we settle limits for the possible and the
 impossible.[25]



Philosophy has failed to secure man a determined idea of his place
in the world, or of his nature. Metaphysical or psychological
opinions, indeed far too numerous, come as a burden more than as a
help. Montaigne pursues his quest for knowledge through experience;
the meaning of concepts is not set down by means of a definition, it
is related to common language or to historical examples. One of the
essential elements of experience is the ability to reflect on one's
actions and thoughts. Montaigne is engaging in a case-by-case
*gnoti seauton*, "know thyself": although truth
in general is not truly an appropriate object for human faculties, we
can reflect on our experience. What counts is not the fact that we
eventually know the truth or not, but rather the way in which we seek
 it. "The question is not who will hit the
ring, but who will make the best runs at
 it."[26] 
The aim is to properly
exercise our judgment. 



 Montaigne's thinking baffles our most common categories. The vision
of an ever-changing world that he developed threatens the being of
all things. "We have no communication with
 being".[27]
 We wrongly take that which appears for that which is, and we indulge
in a dogmatic, deceptive language that is cut off from an
ever-changing reality. We ought to be more careful with our use of
language. Montaigne would prefer that children be taught other ways
of speaking, more appropriate to the nature of human inquiry, such as
"What does that mean ?", "I do not understand
it", "This might be", "Is it
 true?"[28]
 Montaigne himself is fond of "these formulas that soften the
boldness of our propositions": "perhaps", "to
some extent", "they say", "I
 think",[29]
 and the like. Criticism on theory and dogmatism permeates for example
his reflexion on politics. Because social order is too complicated to
be mastered by individual reason, he deems conservatism as the wisest
 stance.[30]
 This policy is grounded on the general evaluation that change is
usually more damaging than the conservation of social
institutions. Nevertheless, there may be certain circumstances that
advocate change as a better solution, as history sometimes
showed. Reason being then unable to decide *a priori*,
judgment must come into play and alternate its views to find the best option. 


## 4. Montaigne's Scepticism



 With Cornelius Agrippa, Henri Estienne or Francisco Sanchez, among
others, Montaigne has largely contributed to the rebirth of scepticism
during the XVIth century. His literary encounter with Sextus produced
a decisive shock: around 1576, when Montaigne had his own personal
medal coined, he had it engraved with his age, with
"*Epecho*" , "I abstain" in Greek, and
another Sceptic motto in French: "*Que sais-je*?":
what do I know ? At this period in his life, Montaigne is thought to
have undergone a "sceptical crisis", as Pierre Villey
famously commented. In fact, this interpretation dates back to Pascal,
for whom scepticism could only be a sort of momentary
 frenzy.[31]
 The "Apologie de Raimond Sebond", the longest chapter of
the *Essays*, bears the sign of intellectual despair that
Montaigne manages to shake off elsewhere. But another interpretation of
scepticism formulates it as a strategy used to confront
"fideism": because reason is unable to demonstrate
religious dogmas, we must rely on spiritual revelation and faith. The
paradigm of fideism, a word which Montaigne does not use, has been
 delivered by Richard Popkin in *History of
 Scepticism*[32]. 
Montaigne appears here as a
founding father of the Counter Reformation, being the leader of the
"Nouveaux Pyrrhoniens", for whom scepticism is used as a
means to an end, that is, to neutralize the grip that philosophy once
had on religion. 



 Commentators now agree upon the fact that Montaigne largely
transformed the type of scepticism he borrowed from Sextus. The two
sides of the scale are never perfectly balanced, since reason always
tips the scale in favor of the present at hand. This imbalance
undermines the key mechanism of *isosthenia*, the equality of
strength of two opposing arguments. Since the suspension of judgment
cannot occur "casually", as Sextus Empiricus would like it
to, judgment must abstain from giving its assent. In fact, the sources
of Montaigne's scepticism are much wider: his child readings of
Ovid's *Metamorphosis*, which gave him a deep awareness of
change, the *in utramque partem* academic debate which he
practised at the College de Guyenne (a *pro* and*contra* discussion inherited from Aristotle and Cicero), and the
humanist philosophy of action, dealing with the uncertainty of human
affairs, shaped his mind early on. Through them, he learned repeatedly
that rational appearances are deceptive. In most of the chapters of
the *Essays*, Montaigne now and then reverses his judgment:
these sudden shifts of perspective are designed to escape adherence,
and to tackle the matter from another point of
 view.[33]
 The *Essays* mirror a discreet conduct of judgment, in keeping
with the formula *iudicio alternante*, which we still find
engraved today on the beams of the Perigord castle's
library. The aim is not to ruin arguments by opposing them, as it is
the case in the Pyrrhonian "antilogy", but rather to
counterbalance a single opinion by taking into account other
opinions. In order to work, each scale of judgment has to be laden. If
we take morals, for example, Montaigne refers to varied moral
authorities, one of them being custom and the other reason. Against
every form of dogmatism, Montaigne returns moral life to its original
diversity and inherent uneasiness. Through philosophy, he seeks full
accordance with the diversity of life: "As for me, I love life
and cultivate it as God has been pleased to grant it to
 us".[34]




 We find two readings of Montaigne as a Sceptic. The first one
concentrates on the polemical, negative arguments drawn from Sextus
Empiricus, at the end of the "Apology". This hard-line
scepticism draws the picture of man as
 "humiliated".[35]
 Its aim is essentially to fight the pretensions of reason and to
annihilate human knowledge. "Truth", "being"
and "justice" are equally dismissed as unattainable. Doubt
foreshadows here Descartes' *Meditations*, on the problem of the
reality of the outside world. Dismissing the objective value of one's
representations, Montaigne would have created the long-lasting problem
of "solipsism". We notice, nevertheless, that he does not
question the reality of things -- except occasionally at the very
end of the "Apology" -- but the value of opinions and men. The
second reading of his scepticism puts forth that Cicero's probabilism
is of far greater significance in shaping the sceptical content of the
*Essays*. After the 1570s, Montaigne no longer read Sextus;
additions show, however, that he took up a more and more extensive
reading of Cicero's philosophical writings. We assume that, in his early 
search for polemical arguments against rationalism during the 1570s,
Montaigne borrowed much from Sextus, but as he got tired of the
sceptical machinery, and understood scepticism rather as an ethics of
judgment, he went back to
 Cicero.[36]
 The paramount importance of the *Academica* for
XVIth century thought has been underlined by Charles
B. Schmitt.[37] 
In the free enquiry, which Cicero engaged throughout the
varied doctrines, the humanists found an ideal mirror of their own
relationship with the Classics. "The Academy, of which I am a
follower, gives me the opportunity to hold an opinion as if it were
ours, as soon as it shows itself to be highly
 probable"[38], 
wrote Cicero in the *De Officiis*. Reading Seneca, Montaigne
will think as if he were a member of the Stoa; then changing for
Lucretius, he will think as if he had become an Epicurean, and so
on. Doctrines or opinions, beside historical stuff and personal
experiences, make up the nourishment of judgment. Montaigne
assimilates opinions, according to what appears to him as true,
without taking it to be absolutely true. He insists on
the dialogical nature of thought, referring to Socrates' way of
keeping the discussion going: "The leader of Plato's dialogues, 
Socrates, is always asking questions and stirring up
discussion, never concluding, never
 satisfying (...)."[39]
 Judgment has to determine the most convincing position, or at least
to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each position. The simple
dismissal of truth would be too dogmatic a position; but if absolute
truth is lacking, we still have the possibility to balance
opinions. We have resources enough, to evaluate the various
authorities that we have to deal with in ordinary life.



The original failure of commentators was perhaps in labelling
Montaigne's thought as "sceptic" without reflecting on the
proper meaning of the essay. Montaigne's exercise of judgment is an
exercise of "natural judgment", which means that judgment
does not need any principle or any rule as a presupposition. In this
way, many aspects of Montaigne's thinking can be considered as
sceptical, although they were not used for the sake of scepticism. For
example, when Montaigne sets down the exercise of doubt as a good
start in education, he understands doubt as part of the process of the
formation of judgment. This process should lead to wisdom,
characterized as "always
joyful".[40]
 Montaigne's scepticism is not a desperate
one. On the contrary, it offers the reader a sort of jubilation which
relies on the modest but effective pleasure in dismissing knowledge,
thus making room for the exercise of one's natural faculties. 


## 5. Montaigne and Relativism


 
 Renaissance thinkers strongly felt the necessity to revise their
discourse on man. But no one accentuated this necessity more than
Montaigne: what he was looking for, when reading historians or
travellers such as Lopez de Gomara's *History of Indies*, was
the utmost variety of beliefs and customs that would enrich his image
of man. Neither the Hellenistic Sage, nor the Christian Saint, nor the
Renaissance Scholar, are unquestioned models in the
*Essays*. Instead, Montaigne is considering real men, who are
the product of customs. "Here they live on human flesh; there it
is an act of piety to kill one's father at a certain
 age (...)."[41]
 The importance of custom plays a polemical part: alongside with
scepticism, the strength of imagination (chapter I,21) or Fortune
(chapters I,1, I,24, etc.), it contributes to the devaluation
of reason and will. It is bound to destroy our spontaneous confidence that
we do know the truth, and that we live according to justice. During
the XVIth century, the jurists of the "French school of
law" showed that the law is tied up with historical
 determinations.[42]
 In chapter I,23, "On custom", Montaigne
 seems to extrapolate on this idea : our opinions and conducts being everywhere
the product of custom, references to universal "reason",
"truth", or "justice" are to be dismissed as
illusions. Pierre Villey was the first to use the terms
"relativity" and "relativism", which proved to
be useful tools when commenting on the fact that Montaigne
acknowledges that no universal reason presides over the birth of our
 beliefs.[43]
 The notion of absolute truth, applied to human matters, vitiates the
understanding and wreaks havoc in society. Upon further reflexion,
contingent customs impact everything: "in short, to my way of
thinking, there is nothing that custom will not or cannot
 do".[44]
 Montaigne calls it "Circe's
 drink".[45]
 Custom is a sort of witch, whose spell, among other effects, casts
moral illusion. "The laws of conscience, which we say are born
from nature, are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward veneration 
the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot 
break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without
self-satisfaction."[46] 
 The power of custom, indeed, 
not only guides man in his behavior, but also persuades him of
its legitimacy. What is crime for one person will appear normal to
another. In the XVIIth century, Blaise Pascal will use
this argument when
challenging the pretension of philosophers of knowing truth. One
century later, David Hume will lay stress on the fact that the power
of custom is all the stronger, specifically because we are not aware
of it. What are we supposed to do, then, if our reason is so flexible
that it "changes with two degrees of elevation towards the
pole", as Pascal
puts it?[47]
 For the Jansenist thinker, only one alternative exists, faith in Jesus
Christ. However, it is more complicated in the case of
Montaigne. Getting to know all sorts of customs, through his readings
or travels, he makes an exemplary effort to open his mind. "We
are all huddled and concentrated in ourselves, and our vision is
reduced to the length of our
 nose."[48]
 Custom's grip is so strong that it is dubious as to whether we are in
a position to become aware of it and shake off its
power. 



 Montaigne was hailed by Claude Levi-Strauss as the progenitor of
the human sciences, and the pioneer of cultural
 relativism.[49]
However, Montaigne has not been willing to indulge entirely in
relativism. Judgment is at first sight unable to stop the relativistic
discourse, but it is not left without remedy when facing the power of
custom. Exercise of thought is the first counterweight we can make use
of, for example when criticizing an existing law. Customs are not
almighty, since their authority can be reflected upon, evaluated or
challenged by individual judgment. The comparative method can also be
applied to the freeing of judgment: although lacking a universal
standard, we can nevertheless stand back from particular customs, by
the mere fact of comparing them. Montaigne thus compares heating or
circulating means between people. In a more tragical way, he denounces
the fanaticism and the cruelty displayed by Christians against one
another, during the civil wars in France, through a comparison with
cannibalism: "I think there is more barbarity in eating a man
alive than in eating him dead, and in tearing by tortures and the rack
a body still full of
 feeling (...)."[50]
 The meaning of the word "barbarity" is not merely
relative to a culture or a point of view, since *there are*
degrees of barbarity. Passing a judgment on cannibals, Montaigne also
says: "So we may well call these people barbarians, in respect
to the rules of reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass
them in every kind of
 barbarity (...)."[51]
 Judgment is still endowed with the possibility of postulating
universal standards, such as "reason" or
"nature", which help when evaluating actions and
behaviors. Although Montaigne maintains in the "Apologie"
that true reason and true justice are only known by God, he asserts in
other chapters that these standards are somehow accessible to man,
since they allow judgment to consider customs as particular and
contingent
 rules.[52]
 In order to criticize the changeable and the relative, we must
suppose that our judgment is still able to "bring things back to
truth and
 reason".[53]
 Man is everywhere enslaved by custom, but this does not mean that we
should accept the numbing of our mind. Montaigne elaborates a
pedagogy, which rests on the practice of judgment itself. The task of
the pupil is not to repeat what the master said, but, on a given
subject of problem, to confront his judgment with the master's
one. Moreover, relativistic readings of the *Essays* are forced
to ignore certain passages that carry a more rationalistic
tone. "The violent detriment inflicted by custom" (I,23)
is certainly not a praise of custom, but an invitation to escape
it. In the same way that Circe's potion has changed men into pigs,
custom turns their intelligence into stupidity. In the toughest cases,
Montaigne's critical use of judgment aims at giving "a good
whiplash to the ordinary stupidity of
 judgment."[54]
 In many other places, Montaigne boasts of himself being able to
resist vulgar opinion. Independence of thinking, alongside with
clear-mindedness and good faith, are the first virtues a young
gentleman should acquire. 


## 6. Montaigne's Legacy from Charron to Hobbes



 Pierre Charron was Montaigne's friend and official heir. In *De
la sagesse* (1601 and 1604), he re-organized many of his master's
ideas, setting aside the most disturbing ones. His work is now usually
dismissed as a dogmatic misrepresentation of Montaigne's
thought. Nevertheless, his book was given priority over the
*Essays* themselves during the whole XVIIth century, especially
after Malebranche's critics conspired to have the *Essays*
included in the Roman Index of 1677. Montaigne's historical influence
must be reckoned through the lens of this mediation. Moreover,
Charron's reading is not simply faulty. According to him, wisdom
relies on the readiness of judgment to revise itself towards a more
favorable
 outcome:[55]
 this idea is one of the most remarkable readings of the
*Essays* in the early history of their reception. 



The critical conception of the essay was taken up by the English
scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon, who considered his own Essays
as "fragments of [his] conceits" and "dispersed meditations", aiming
to stimulate the reader's appetite for thinking and knowledge rather
than satisfying it with expositions of dogmas and 
methods.[56]
 Even in his more scientific works, such as *The Advancement of
Learning*, Bacon's writing was inconclusive. He posited that this open
and fragmentary style was the best way to inspire further thought and
examination: "Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite
men to inquire 
 further".[57]
 Bacon's reflections allow us to appreciate
the scientific value of Montaigne's Essays, insofar as they are
incomplete works, always calling for subsequent reflections by the
author and the reader, thus inspiring and promoting the development of
ideas and the advancement of research.



 The influence Montaigne had on Descartes has been commented upon by
many critics, at least from the XIXth century on, within the context of
the birth of modern science. As a sceptic, calling into question the
natural link between mind and things, Montaigne would have won his
position in the modern philosophical landscape. The
scepticism in the "Apologie" is, no doubt, a main source
of "solipsism", but Descartes cannot be called a disciple
of Montaigne in the sense that he would have inherited a
doctrine. Above all, he owes the Perigourdin gentleman a way of
educating himself. Far from substituting Montaigne for his Jesuit
schoolteachers, Descartes decided to teach himself from scratch,
following the path indicated by Montaigne to achieve independence and
firmness of judgment. The mindset that Descartes inherited from the
*Essays* appears as something particularly obvious, in the two
first parts of the *Discours de la methode*. As the
young Descartes left the College de La Fleche, he
decided to travel, and to test his own value in action. "I
employed the rest of my youth to travel, to see courts and armies, to
meet people of varied humors and conditions, to collect varied
experiences, to try myself in the meetings that fortune was offering
 me (...)."[58]
 Education, taken out of a school context, is presented as an essay
of the self through experience. The world, as pedagogue, has been
substituted for books and teachers. This new education allows
Descartes to get rid of the prejudice of overrating his own customs, a
widespread phenomenon that we now call ethnocentrism. Montaigne's
legacy becomes particularly conspicuous when Descartes draws the
lesson from his travels, "having acknowledged that those who have
very contrary feelings to ours are not barbarians or savages, but that
many of them make use of reason as much or more so than we
do". And also : "It is good to know something of different
people, in order to judge our own with more sanity, and not to think
that everything that is against our customs and habits is ridiculous
and against reason, as usually do those who have never seen
 anything."[59]
 Like Montaigne, Descartes begins by philosophizing on life with no
other device than the a discipline of judgment: "I was
learning not to believe anything too firmly, of which I had been
persuaded through example and
 custom."[60]
 He departs nevertheless from Montaigne when he will equate with error
opinions that are grounded on
 custom.[61]
 The latter would not have dared to speak of error: varied opinions,
having more or less authority, are to be weighed upon the scale of
judgment. It is thus not correct to interpret Montaigne's philosophy
as a "criticism of prejudice" from a Cartesian
stance. 



In recent years, critics have stressed the importance of the
connection between Montaigne and Hobbes for the development of a
modern vision of politics, rooted in a criticism of traditional
doctrines of man and society. At the time when Shakespeare was writing
his plays, the first English translation of
Montaigne's *Essays* by John Florio (1603) became a widely-read
classic in England. As a former student of Magdalen Hall (Oxford) and
Saint John's College (Cambridge), and as a young tutor and secretary
to aristocratic and wealthy families, Thomas Hobbes had many
opportunities to read Montaigne in the libraries he frequented. In his
capacity as tutor, he traveled widely in Europe and spent several
sojourns in France, before the English Civil War forced him into exile
in Paris (1641-1651). During this period, Hobbes moved in skeptical
and libertine circles and met scholars such as Sorbiere, Gassendi, and
La Mothe Le Vayer, all influenced by a shared reference to Montaigne's
skepticism. Historical documents and comparative research confirm the
relevance of Montaigne's influence on Hobbes's work, from *Elements
of Law* to 
 *Leviathan*.[62]
 The two authors share a
philosophical conception of man as driven by desire and imagination,
and relentlessly striving for self-conservation and power. Montaigne
identified human life with movement and instability, and pointed to
the power that our passions have to push us toward imaginary future
accomplishments (honor, glory, science, reason, and so 
 on).[63]
 In *Leviathan*, Hobbes builds on this position to assert, as
a general inclination of all mankind, "a perpetual and restless desire
of power after power, that ceases only in 
 death".[64]
 This shared
anthropology shows the extent to which Montaigne and Hobbes refute the
Scholastic and Renaissance anthropocentric idea of man as a rational
being at the summit of creation. On the contrary, they underline his
instinctive and passionate nature, which eventually leads to violence
and conflict wherever the political community collapses. This negative
anthropology is to be understood in the light of the historical
experience of the civil wars upsetting both their 
 countries.[65]
 The threat of political turmoil imbued both Montaigne and Hobbes'
lives. Whereas Hobbes quoted the ancient saying *homo homini
lupus*, and described the human condition outside the civil state
as a war "where every man is enemy to every
 man",[66]
 Montaigne seemed to
go further, "having learned by experience, from the cruelty of some
Christians, that there is no beast in the world to be feared by man as
 man".[67]
 In order to avoid the outburst of violence, they both recognize
the necessity of laws and obedience, a necessity that does not rely on
any ontological or moral foundation. The normative force of law
results from its practical necessity, as it is the rational condition
of life in
 society.[68]
 As Montaigne wrote: "Now laws remain in credit
not because they are just, but because they are
 laws".[69]
 Questioning the Aristotelian vision of politics as a natural goal for humanity,
Montaigne and Hobbes pointed out the man-made nature of civil
authority, as founded in the need to preserve life and peace, avoiding
violence and war.


## 7. Conclusion


Montaigne cultivates his liberty by not adhering exclusively to any
one idea, while at the same time exploring them all. In exercising his
judgment on various topics, he trains himself to go off on fresh
tracks, starting from something he read or experienced. For Montaigne
this also means calling into question the convictions of his time,
reflecting upon his beliefs and education, and cultivating his own
personal thoughts. His language can be said to obey only one rule,
that is, to be "an effect of judgment and 
sincerity,"[70]
 which is the very one that he demands from the pupil. His language 
bears an unmistakable
tone but contradicts itself sometimes from one place to another,
perhaps for the very reason that it follows so closely the movements
of thought.


If being a philosopher means being insensitive to human frailties
and to the evils or to the pleasures which befall us, then Montaigne
is not a philosopher. If it means using a "jargon", and
being able to enter the world of scholars, then Montaigne is not one
either. Yet, if being a philosopher is being able to judge properly in
any circumstances of life, then the Essays are the exemplary testimony
of an author who wanted to be a philosopher for good. Montaigne is
putting his judgment to trial on whatever subject, in order not only
to get to know its value, but also to form and strengthen it.


He manages thus to offer us a philosophy in accordance with life. As
Nietzsche puts it, "that such a man has written, joy on earth has truly
increased...If my task were to make this earth a home, I would attach
myself to him." Or, as Stefan Zweig said, in a context which was closer
to the historical reality experienced by Montaigne himself : "Montaigne
helps us answer this one question: 'How to stay free? How to preserve
our inborn clear-mindedness in front of all the threats and dangers of
fanaticism, how to preserve the humanity of our hearts among the upsurge of
bestiality?'"