Either this is not an answer at all, or it is the only possible answer. It has the same quality as the answer given by the Zen master who, when asked ‘What is enlightenment?’, whacked the questioner on the head with a stick. Enlightenment is something learned on your own body: it takes the form of things happening to you. This is why the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics taught tricks rather than precepts. All philosophers can offer is that blow on the head: a useful technique, a thought experiment, or an experience – in Montaigne’s case, the experience of reading the Essays. The subject he
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