Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete.

Few books feel as much like the company of a wise, unguarded friend as this one, in which a sixteenth-century French nobleman set out simply to think aloud on the page.

What it's about

This complete collection gathers the whole of Michel de Montaigne's Essais, the sprawling, revisited body of work in which he examined everything that crossed his mind, friendship, fear, education, cruelty, custom, sleep, death, the workings of his own memory and moods. Coining the essay as a form of trying-out, testing an idea rather than proclaiming it, he made himself his chief subject, insisting that in studying one honest man closely he was studying the whole human condition.

Themes

Montaigne returns again and again to the limits of certainty, the fickleness of the self, the pull of habit, and the art of living well in the face of death. He prizes tolerance, self-knowledge and moderation, and he trusts experience over dogma. Above all he cultivates a humane skepticism, a willingness to hold judgments lightly and to keep asking, in his famous question, "What do I know?"

Why it still matters

Nearly every personal essayist since writes in Montaigne's shadow. His candour about the body, doubt and ordinary contradiction feels startlingly modern, and his refusal of easy answers is a tonic in any age of loud certainties. To read him is to be given permission to think honestly, digress freely and forgive oneself for being human.

Who it's for

Lovers of the essay, students of philosophy and history, and any reader seeking a wise, companionable book to live with and return to over a lifetime.