Thinkers
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Montaigne in a Selfie Culture, part 1.
“Would Socrates, I wonder, take a selfie in the Agora?” Continue reading
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My Year with Montaigne: Montaigne, the Traveler pt III
We glean from studying the travel journals a man who sloughed off his national and cultural trappings with aplomb. He was open minded and interested, willing to go out of his way, sometimes to the dismay of others in his party, to investigate something that struck him as interesting. His ancient hero, Socrates, considered himself Continue reading
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My Year with Montaigne: Montaigne, the Traveler pt II
“Monsieur de Montaigne drank of the said water eleven mornings, nine glasses each for eight days and seven glasses each for three days, and bathed five times. He found the water easy to drink and always passed it before dinner.” The first third of so of the travel journals were written by Montaigne’s secretary, an Continue reading
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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–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
...the house I live in... 