How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

by Sarah Bakewell

Life is complicated; there is no one track to follow.

amor fati: the cheerful acceptance of whatever happens.

Freedom is the only rule, and digression is the only path.

No wonder he himself was driven to say that “every abridgment of a good book is a stupid abridgment.”

In Montaigne’s case, amor fati was one of the answers to the general question of how to live,

“Oh Lord,” one might imagine Montaigne exclaiming, “by all means let me be misunderstood.”

nature does everything for you, and there is no need to trouble your head about anything. It leads us by the hand, he wrote, as if “down a gentle and virtually imperceptible slope, bit by bit.” We hardly need to look where we are going.

Old age provides an opportunity to recognize one’s fallibility in a way youth usually finds difficult. Seeing one’s decline written on body and mind, one accepts that one is limited and human. By understanding that age does not make one wise, one attains a kind of wisdom after all. Learning to live, in the end, is learning to live with imperfection in this way, and even to embrace it.

Learning to live, in the end, is learning to live with imperfection in this way, and even to embrace it.

Q. How to live? A. Let life be its own answer

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

It is unthinkable to Montaigne that one could ever “gratify heaven and nature by committing massacre and homicide, a belief universally embraced in all religions.” To believe that life could demand any such thing is to forget what day-to-day existence actually is. It entails forgetting that, when you look at a puppy held over a bucket of water, or even at a cat in the mood for play, you are looking at a creature who looks back at you. No abstract principles are involved; there are only two individuals, face to face, hoping for the best from one another.