Philosophy
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My Summer with Montaigne—Update.
Montaigne, “the greatest writer of any time, anywhere.” Orson Welles First a little housekeeping. With Labor Day behind us, you are perhaps wondering about my summer project, is it coming to an end? After all, I titled it, “My Summer with Montaigne”. Truth be told, I feel as if I’ve hardly scratched the surface. Continue reading
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My Summer with Montaigne–“Of Repentance”
“In all affairs, when they are past, however they have turned out, I have little regret.” III.2 Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine that you have come to the end of your life, and as you lie on your death bed, about to expire, you are approached by some sort of spectral demon who tells you Continue reading
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My Summer with Montaigne: “When I dance, I dance…”
Let me give you the full quote from the snippet above: “When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. And when I am walking alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are sometimes preoccupied, the rest of the time I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness 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
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My Summer with Montaigne
Let’s talk about the essays. Montaigne’s book was titled Essais, meaning, in the Middle French of the day, “tests” or ”attempts.” 1. The literary form we refer to today as the “essay” did not exist. E.B. White wrote essays for the New Yorker. Susan Sontag wrote essays. Even I write an essay every once and Continue reading
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My Summer with Montaigne: “Of Anger”
“It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience.” – Emerson on Montaigne’s Essays Anger “moves us; our hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds us, we do not hold it.” I am slow to Continue reading
...the house I live in... 