Books
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My Year with Montaigne: Montaigne, the Traveler
“It is not my deeds that I write down; it is myself, it is my essence.” II.6 Imagine: Western Europe, the year is 1580. Plague is rampant; war is ceaseless; roads, such as they are, are not only dangerous, but muddy, without signage, and peppered with dubious lodgings; traveling alone is too dangerous to risk; Continue reading
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My Year with Montaigne–On Mindfulness
“Montaigne practiced a form of what we today call mindfulness through his essay writing. His quest in writing was to find out how to be ‘fully human” (sic) he tried to recognize when his thoughts went to ‘extraneous incidents.” He would then work to bring this thinking back to the here and now and the Continue reading
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My Year with Montaigne–a “Spiritual Teacher”
“Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.” To recap: My use of the word spiritual: the means by which the individual strives to be a better human being. To recap: Montaigne’s discipline of attention is extraordinary, especially related to self-reflection. Nietzsche said that all philosophy reflects the philosopher’s biography.1. One of the aversions Continue reading
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My Year With Montaigne: Of Time & Attention
“We must run through the bad and settle on the good.” III.13 Earlier in this series I discussed Montaigne’s famous chapter, “That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die.” Without being redundant, that chapter reflects the young Montaigne’s Stoic influences. Death awaits us, and to deeply contemplate this reality is to take away its power. Continue reading
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My Year With Montaigne–On Change
“There is nothing that abides and is always the same.” II.12 Let’s talk about change. We acknowledge it, and supposedly, sometimes begrudgingly, accept it. We even have pithy little mantras to toss around to prove we’re onboard with it: The only constant is change. “Change in all things is sweet.” (Aristotle) “Everything flows.” (Heraclitus) “Every Continue reading
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My Summer with Montaigne—“Que sçais-je”
“He will calm you…You will love him, you will see.” – Flaubert on Montaigne “I have little control over myself and my moods. Chance has more power here than I.” (Book I, Chapter 10) With these two little sentences Montaigne sets a course that is unique, both to him and the world in which he Continue reading
...the house I live in... 