It is traditional in the literature on Pierre Bayle to make some refer ene e to iVlontaigne as one of the masters of skepticism in whose tracks he follows, albeit hardly so eloselyas Charron had. Time and again critics feel the need to mention Montaigne and Bayle in the same context, sometimes to contrast their brands of Pyrrhonism, more often to explain similarities in their ideas and methods, which have frequent ly been regarded as important steps in the gradual evolution of un Christian, even anti-Christian, thought. Their names were already associated during Bayle's life, for example, in the mediocre work by Dom Alexis Gaudin, La Distinction et la Nature du Bien et du MaI, Traite ou l'on combat l'erreur des Manicheens, les sentimens de Jvfontaigne & de Charron, & ceux de J. Vfonsieur Bayle. In the nineteen th century, the author of the Dictionnaire historique et critique wa~ generally elassified as a skeptic; and his name was inevi tably linked with the essayist's. In his Port-Royal, Sainte-Beuve pictured Bayle as one of the avowed skeptics in Montaigne's funeral cortege and spoke of both men as "d'autant pIus fourbes qu'ils ne le sont pas toujours." His later works show that he revised his opinion on each somewhat, l but in this he was unusual for his century.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Table of contents

In his Essais, Montaigne stresses that his theoretical interest in philosophy goes hand in hand with its practicality. In fact, he makes it clear that there is little reason to live our lives according to doctrine without proof that others have successfully done so. Understanding Montaigne’s philosophical thought, therefore, means not only studying the philosophies of the great thinkers, but also the characters and ways of life of the philosophers themselves. The focus of Montaigne and the Lives of the Philosophers: Life Writing and Transversality in the Essais is how Montaigne assembled the lives of the philosophers on the pages of his Essais in order to grapple with two fundamental aims of his project: first, to transform the teaching of moral philosophy, and next, to experiment with a transverse construction of his self. Both of these objectives grew out of a dialogue with the structure and content in the life writing of Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, authors whose books were bestsellers during the essayist’s lifetime.

The second volume of a major two-volume study of the fortunes of Michel de Montaigne's Essais in both the early modern (1580-1725) and modern periods (1900-2000). Volume Two focuses on the reader/writers across Europe who used the Essais to make their own works.

Brian C. Ribeiro’s Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers invites us to view the Pyrrhonist tradition as involving all those who share a commitment to the activity of Pyrrhonizing and develops fresh, provocative readings of Sextus, Montaigne, and Hume as radical Pyrrhonizing skeptics.