Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, has always been acknowledged as a great literary figure but has never been thought of as a philosophical original. This book treats Montaigne as a serious thinker in his own right, taking as its point of departure Montaigne's description of himself as 'an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher'. Whereas previous commentators have treated Montaigne's Essays as embodying a scepticism harking back to classical sources, Ann Hartle offers an account that reveals Montaigne's thought to be dialectical, transforming sceptical doubt into wonder at the most familiar aspects of life. This major reassessment of a much admired but also much underestimated thinker will interest a wide range of historians of philosophy as well as scholars in comparative literature, French studies and the history of ideas.

The Comic Element of Montaigne's Style@@@Montaigne gentilhomme et essayiste

The Comic Element of Montaigne's Style@@@Montaigne gentilhomme et essayiste

Citations

Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher

Michel de Montaigne: The Latent Metaphysics of Accidental Philosophy

Michel de Montaigne: Bending and Stretching the Categories of Traditional Metaphysics

Michel de Montaigne: The Circular Dialectic of Self-Knowledge

Michel de Montaigne: What He Learned in the Nursery: Accidental Moral Philosophy and Montaigne's Reformation

Related Papers (5)

Treatise on law : Summa theologica, questions 90-97 ; On truth and falsity : Summa theologica, part I, questions 16-17 ; On human knowledge : Summa theologica, questions 84-88

Philosophy in Question: Essays on a Pyrrhonian Theme

The Ordinary Transformed: Karl Rahner and the Christian Vision of Transcendence

Writing Cogito: Montaigne, Descartes, and the Institution of the Modern Subject

Les commerces de Montaigne: Le discours economique des Essais.