How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer

by Sarah Bakewell

Fortune had handed him the perfect opportunity to test the philosophical consensus about death. But it was hard to be sure that he had learned the right answer. The Stoics would certainly have looked askance at his results.

that idleness and isolation could bring to the fore all the consequences of having lived life in the wrong way, consequences that people usually avoided by keeping busy – that is, by continuing to live life in the wrong way.

‘How does one achieve peace of mind?’ On the latter point, Plutarch’s advice was the same as Seneca’s: focus on what is present in front of you, and pay full attention to it.

Monluc was disfigured by an arquebus shot. For the rest of his life, he never went out without covering his face to conceal the scars. One can imagine the disconcerting effect of an actual mask on top of the inexpressive mask-like face of a cruel man whom few people dared to look in the eye.

It emphasises inner freedom as a path to political resistance: a Montaignean position.

Once, he used an elaborate trick to help a friend who suffered from impotence23 and was afraid a spell had been cast on him. Instead of reasoning him out of it, Montaigne gave the friend a robe and a magical-looking coin engraved with ‘celestial figures’. He told him to perform a series of rituals with this medallion whenever he was about to have sex,

The three most famous such systems of thought were Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism: the philosophies collectively known as Hellenistic1 because they had their origins in the era when Greek thought and culture spread to Rome and other Mediterranean regions, from the third century BC onwards.

Stoics and Epicureans shared a great deal of their theory, too. They thought that the ability to enjoy life is thwarted by two big weaknesses: lack of control over emotions, and a tendency to pay too little attention to the present.

Do not seek10 to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene.

Lycas,13 who went about his daily life and successfully held down a job while believing that everything he saw was taking place on stage, as a theatrical performance. When a doctor cured him of this delusion, Lycas became so miserable that he sued the doctor for robbing him of his pleasure in life.

it supports Sebond ‘as the rope28 supports the hanged man’.

Montaigne would probably interpret the message for humanity in Christ’s crucifixion as being ‘Don’t crucify people.’

Fideism produced odd bedfellows indeed: extremists and secular moderates were brought together by a shared desire to marvel at their own ignorance.

Pyrrhonian Scepticism was almost impossible to fight. Any attempt to quarrel with it only strengthened its claim that everything was open to dispute, while if you remained neutral this confirmed the view that it was good to suspend judgement.

‘In truth, in this delight the pleasure I give tickles my imagination more sweetly than that which I feel.’

Habit makes everything look bland; it is sleep-inducing. Jumping to a different perspective is a way of waking oneself up again. Montaigne loved this trick, and used it constantly in his writing.

Romantics did blinding brilliance; they did melancholy; they did intense imaginative identification. They did not do irritation.

Some groups were composed mainly of women or children. Catholics interpreted4 the presence of the latter as a sign that God Himself was in favour of the massacres,

This is why Catholics celebrated the St Bartholomew’s massacres so joyfully: they saw them as a genuine victory over evil, and as a way of driving countless misled individuals back to the true Church before it was too late for them to save their souls.

Unfortunately, the one piece of common ground that really brought extreme Catholics close to extreme Protestants was hatred of politiques.

held up as the first truly modern writers, capturing that distinctive modern sense of being unsure where you belong, who you are, and what you are expected to do.

I set forth a humble and inglorious life1; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff.

Life should be an aim unto itself,7 a purpose unto itself.

conflict. It needs his conviction that no vision of heaven, no imagined Apocalypse, and no perfectionist fantasy can ever outweigh the tiniest of selves in the real world.

‘gratify heaven and nature by committing massacre and homicide, a belief universally embraced in all religions’.