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

by Sarah Bakewell

as close as Montaigne ever came to a final or best answer to the question of how to live. Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself. 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 Skeptics 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 teaches is simply himself, an ordinary example of a living being.