Library Notes
Rebecca Hyde


The question could be “Can you tell me about yourself?” or “Why did you (or could you) do that?” or “What are my options?” Our answers may or may not come easily. Understanding why we think the way we do (our personal philosophy) is difficult for most of us. Why make the effort? Our philosophy can help or hinder us. As Lou Marinoff says, in “Plato not Prozac,” we need to “evaluate the ideas we hold to craft an outlook that works for us, not against us.”

A famous and engaging example of one who lived a “well-examined” life is Michel de Montaigne. He was as curious as a cat, absorbed in his task of learning “how to live well.” As Phillip Lopate says (“The Art of the Personal Essay”), “Montaigne’s circling, minute self-observations … remind one more of a cat examining its fur.” And what was life like for Montaigne?

Montaigne lived in a time of war and treachery (France, 1533-1592). He was a political advisor, officeholder, landowner, and head of household. He lived in dread of the “kidney stone,” a particularly painful disease from which his father had died. And he never ceased to mourn the death of a dear friend (Etienne de La Boetie, author of a moving treatise against tyranny). Montaigne’s affairs with women and his tedious duties in local government could not divert him from his need to come to terms with grief, pain, and fear of death. So he began a lifelong examination of the human condition and a struggle to accept it through self-study. This very personal endeavor produced the “Essais” (“attempts” or “trials” in French), and Montaigne is commonly referred to as “the first great essayist” or “greatest essayist.” In any case in the “Essays” are found the elements of the personal essay as a literary form: a reflexive conversation, an intimate and relaxed discussion of life/reality as experienced by the “I” author.

In “The Art of the Personal Essay,” Lopate chose to include three of the hundred or so “Essais.” In “Of Books,” Montaigne the critical reader speaks his mind freely because his opinion is the measure of his personal insight, not the measure of things. He reads for pleasure, or for knowledge that “instructs me in how to die well and live well.” The two other selections reveal an individual who is tolerant yet curious about the differences among human beings (“Of a Monstrous Child”) and rather egalitarian when examining the sexuality of men and women (“On Some Verses of Virgil”). Skeptical, undogmatic, with a generous dose of self-forgiveness, Montaigne insists that we look at our own personal experience and try to learn from it.