How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer Paperback – September 20, 2011

Sarah Bakewell is a genius. In this book she gives us a moving biography of Montaigne, a history of the genesis and contents of his marvelous essays, an introduction to the history of editing his great masterpiece, and a lively and fascinating narrative of informed and popular responses to his book in successive eras. Montaigne very much feels like real presence in this book, one with a distinctive personality that is vividly represented by the author. One feels that Bakewell, along with hundreds or thousands of earlier readers have developed a personal relationship with the great writer, and Bakewell helps explain why this in the case even though an overwhelming share of readers of his essays of course have had no contact with him, except through his essays. Bakewell also does a wonderful and interesting job of explaining the very different critical reception Montaigne's essays received among his contemporaries and in succeeding generations of readers, both in France and elsewhere.

The ingenuity of the biography helps explain why critical reception of Bakewell's own book was so positive. But the plain fact is that Bakewell is also a stylish writer, capable of holding our fascinated (and occasionally amused) attention, even when she is discussing the minutiae of successive editions or of obscure editorial quarrels. The book was warmly recommended to me by a friend who said flatly it was the best book he'd read in a year or, indeed, in any recent year. You'll probably find this kind of enthusiasm in many of the Amazon reviews. If you're interested in philosophy or in a charismatic writer and thinker in a long bygone, tumultuous era, and if you care about artful construction and stylish writing, this might be the book for you. It certainly was for me.

P.S., I simultaneously read the Kindle version of the book and listened to the Audible version beautifully read by Davina Porter.

For Montaigne, skepticism is the first step toward truth. Skepticism of ancient Greek origins was rediscovered in the middle ages and has been important ever since to scientific, religious, political and ethical thought since that time. Montaigne lived and wrote at a pivotal time European history, at the commerce of three seminal changes in perspective. By the first half of the sixteenth century, the Medieval consensus that kept the Catholic Church together was coming undone. In 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, and the theological crisis crashed headlong into the budding scientific revolution and discovery of what for us would be tantamount to the discovery of intelligent life another planet, the discovery of North America.

Philosophical skepticism is not simply the denial of an orthodox or majority view, this is the common, everyday use of the idea, simply the expression of disagreement. The philosophical skepticism of Montaigne is about doubt, not mere disagreement. Philosophical skepticism is a general view, not disagreement with specifics or over particulars.

Sarah Bakewell shows how Montaigne chose philosophical skepticism, doubt, as the best way to remain un-dogmatic which is the path to tranquility. Skepticism means freedom of thought for Montaigne where nothing in the world is more this than or that in the tradition Pyrrho. This leads first to indifference, then to the suspension of judgment, hence to tolerance and finally to peace of mind as Sarah Bakewell shows was most often the case with Montaigne. We must recall that in the original Greek, skepticism meant investigation which could lead to modesty about the knowledge and relativism about values. Socrates provided the ancient model for modesty about knowledge when he said, “what I do not know, I do not think I know”. The original model for relativism was in the ancient Greeks finding that what looked like universal values and principles were just local conventions, customs and practices specific to time and place.

In Montaigne’s time, skeptical arguments were used to rationalize religions belief, not cast doubt upon it. The target of the doubt was the emerging and yet untested secular, rational and scientific knowledge. Doubt was cast on the human ability to truly understand the nature of existence independent of revelation and belief in God and was thus endorsed by religious authorities of the time. That is, skepticism undermines faith in the powers of human reason. It was also a powerful weapon in the hands of the Catholic Church against the Protestant and Lutheran 'upstarts' of the sixteenth-century. Sarah Bakewell traces how Montaigne falls out of favor in the succeeding century when secular, rational and scientific knowledge becomes much more secure and Montaigne's type skepticism boomeranged upon revelation and religious belief. The skepticism once was used to rationalize religious belief rather now becomes the powerful tool for casting doubt about religious belief. This is what I mean by the skeptical boomerang. The seventeenth-century was an era in which certainty was sought as shown in the philosophical inquires of Descartes and Pascal who despised Montaigne as did the Catholic Church of the seventeenth-century. Descartes is famous for his skeptical doubt but for Descartes skepticism is not the way to tranquility and peace of mind, it is something to be overcome. Skepticism is not a value, it is only instrumental. Descartes used skepticism, not without controversy, to build a rational foundation for religious faith, not call it into doubt. In a sense, Descartes was an anti-skeptic. Faith and skepticism are thus forever intertwined. With the 'Cogito' argument the conception as human beings as 'res cogitans', Descartes provided the exaggerated rationalistic formula to prevent his world from falling apart but in so doing created a island of subjective mentality that ignored the social context of human existence. In his quest for certainty, Descartes forgot what Montaigne knew, that philosophical thinking is the tool by which we address the uncertaintyies and deep existential questions presented by existence itself, not to banish them from existence.

Montaigne's understanding of skepticism is that for every proposition, there is a counter proposition. He lived through very brutal religious wars in France where he saw people killing each other over the things that they believed, which were the result of dogmatism. As Montaigne put it, dogmatism does not allow us not to know what we do not know. That is, dogmatism forces people to take sides and is very polarizing. Skepticism was the tool Montaigne used to defuse this noxious mix of belief, polarization and dogmatism.

Consider this move made by Augustine. I feel that it is cold, the skeptic can rejoin me and tell me that I only feel that it is cold but how do I know that it really is cold? This being the case, I can still know that I feel it is cold. I can know my own feeling. That is, skepticism cannot dissolve my first person subjective experience of existence without dissolving existence itself. Montaigne understood that to be skeptical one must presuppose existence, not skeptically dismiss it.