“Consider the simple reasonings of philosophy”. Montaigne and the care of the self (and of the others)

Abstract

Taking, as its starting point, a fortuitous little volume by Antoine Compagnon, entitled Un été avec Montaigne, this article ponders some of the key points in the thinking of Michel di Montaigne, around which his vision of philosophy is constructed. The article highlights the fact that philosophy, in the light of Montaigne’s Essais, develops not as theoretical-abstract knowledge, but rather on the ethico-practical plane. It must shape the intellect and the customs and, thus, the moral and intellectual autonomy of the individual, as an exercise performed throughout one’s entire existence. In this way, we can, perhaps, perceive in the Essais another incarnation of the souci de soi explored by Michel Foucault, to be understood not as a theoretical-abstract rule, but as a concrete, repeated activity, a set of commitments and exercises, as it were, that the individual must perform, one of which is to make notes about oneself to the extent that the act of writing intensifies the experience of the self.