Are essays a good way to do philosophy? What if they’re full of digressions and contradictions? Could that possibly make themmorephilosophical, not less? What does the essay reveal about what we can or cannot know? This week, we’re thinking about Michel de Montaigne and “The Art of the Essay.”

蒙田对哲学的伟大贡献之一是他发明了散文形式。在16世纪后期的20年里，他写了(并改写了)107篇文章，将个人的思考、轶事与哲学论证和推测结合起来。

这些著作引人入胜，才华横溢，但同时也是出了名的一团糟。这些主张有时相互矛盾——讨论是好是坏?哲学是关于学会面对死亡的吗?还是说根本不可能面对死亡，而这种努力只会毁掉你的生活?——他的写作经常离题:一会儿蒙田还在谈论人类知识的极限，一会儿他又在告诉你打喷嚏、拇指或他自己的雕刻技巧。(如果你想知道，这些技能并不伟大。)

So does that just make the论文bad philosophy? Contradictions and digressions are definitely not always a virtue in philosophical writing, and in my view they usually tend to be a sign that something has gone wrong. But Montaigne is arguably a special case. He says at one point that his (apparent) digressions are deliberate: “I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.… It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I.” The burden is on us to understand the hidden logic behind each essay, the method behind its madness.

And the contradictions are deliberate too. “I may indeed contradict myself now and then,” Montaigne writes, “but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict. If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions.” The word essay literally means “attempt,” and Montaigne’s aim, in inventing the form, was to try things out, to explore ideas he wasn’t yet sure of.

这种随笔形式也让蒙田弄清楚了自己是谁，从碎片中塑造出某种稳定的自我。(有句名言是这样说的:“我造就了我的书，就像我的书造就了我一样。”)但更重要的是，文章写作让蒙田保持诚实——“真理，就像德马德斯说的，我不反驳”——包括关于他知识的局限。(Another of Montaigne’s most famous lines: “What do I know?”)

蒙田是在法国宗教战争期间写作的，这场战争是天主教徒和新教徒之间的战争，这场战争夺走了大约300万人的生命。All because each side believed it knew for certain not just that Christianity was the right religion but whichversionof Christianity was the right religion. That, to put it mildly, was a case of lethal overconfidence. And to counter it, Montaigne thought, we need a healthy dose of skepticism. We need to acknowledge how hard it is to know things, and how dangerous it can be when we think you know more than we actually do.

So perhaps that’s why the essay form made so much sense for Montaigne. It allowed him to remind himself how unstable, uncertain, and changeable his opinions were. He repeatedly revised his essays, but never deleted anything: “I add,” he said, “but I do not correct.” And so, once the essays were out in print, he couldn’t fool himself into believing his opinions had never changed. (“This public declaration obliges me to keep on my path, and not to give the lie to the picture of my qualities.”) The book served as a reminder for him of just how confused he was, just how little he knew. It was a recipe for a salutary humility, and one that allowed him, among other things, to separate himself from the prejudices of his moment: while he argued against fomenting unrest (he’d seen enough of it), he deplored the Religious Wars, preached the equality of women, and bitterly lamented the barbarity of imperialism.

Montaigne’s creation of the essay form offers us a really interesting way to understand the value ofwriting—as opposed tothinking在哲学生活中，我们可以在头脑中这样做。这也是一种有趣的方式来理解哲学是什么，它的目的是什么。如果我们假设哲学的目的是达成一套正确的信念，那么矛盾和离题就不是一个好主意。但是，如果我们像古代怀疑论者和斯多葛学派那样认为，哲学就是过正确的生活，那么从蒙田的书中学习一页，也许现在比以往任何时候都有更多的人在这样做，这可能对我们所有人都有好处。

Our guest this week is Stanford’s Cécile Alduy, an expert on Montaigne, the French Renaissance, and political polarization. Join us for a discussion on Montaigne’s essaying, his philosophy, and his politics. I think it will be fascinating. But then again, what do I know?

Photo byAaron BurdenonUnsplash