Monsieur de Montaigne, Epistemocrat At the age of thirty-eight, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne retired to his estate, in the countryside of southwestern France. Montaigne, which means mountain in Old French, was the name of the estate. The area is known today for the Bordeaux wines, but in Montaigne’s time not many people invested their mental energy and sophistication in wine. Montaigne had stoic tendencies and would not have been strongly drawn to such pursuits anyway. His idea was to write a modest collection of “attempts,” that is, essays. The very word essay conveys the tentative, the
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