Ad Cor Rerum

For good works, time is an ally. Four hundred and forty-six years removed from its first publication, the Essais continue to present themselves as worthy of study. Underlying the ephemeral and increasingly rapid cycles of the modern world is the unchanging human condition. Michel de Montaigne, who, when faced with his own discontinuity, generated perennial thought still relevant (and amusing) for us moderns.

The Essais are a chronology; the reader witnesses Montaigne adapt his understanding as he revisits works from earlier in his life. The summation: an openhanded humanist with elusive equanimity despite the chaos of the civil war around him.

This project is an attempt to get to the heart of the Essais; a personal journal of my rereading of the Donald Frame translation. It is not comprehensive but an evaluation of each essay, with the wide-ranging subject matter, as expected of the author.

And in the spirit of Montaigne:

“What I write here is not my teaching, but my study; it is not a lesson for others, but for me. And yet it should not be held against me if I publish what I write. What is useful to me may also by accident be useful to another.”Of Practice · Essais II.6