All Pyrrho renounced, according to Montaigne, was the pretension most people fall prey to: that of ‘regimenting, arranging, and fixing truth’. This was what really interested Montaigne in the Sceptical tradition: not so much the Sceptics’ extreme approach to warding off pains and sorrows (for that, he preferred the Stoics and Epicureans, who seemed more closely attuned to real life), but their desire to take everything provisionally and questioningly. This was just what he always tried to do himself.
