How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you loveβsuch questions arise in most peopleβs lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy?
This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them βessays,β meaning βattemptsβ or βtries.β Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dogβs ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigneβs honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainmentβand in search of themselves.
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