But there’s one philosopher, born in France in 1533, with a refreshingly different take. Michel de Montaigne was an intellectual who spent his writing life knocking the arrogance of intellectuals. In his great masterpiece, the Essays, he comes across as relentlessly wise and intelligent – but also as constantly modest and keen to debunk the pretensions of learning. Not least, he is extremely funny…: ‘to learn that we have said or done a stupid thing is nothing, we must learn a more ample and important lesson: that we are but blockheads… On the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.’ And, lest we forget: ‘Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.’ (SoL/BoL continues)
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How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell...
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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). It is still, tragically, sometimes assumed that the best way to cheer someone up is to tell them that everything will turn out all right; to intimate that life is essentially a pleasant process in which happiness is no mirage and human fulfilment a real possibility.
However, we need only read a few pages of the book known as the Pensées by the great French 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) to appreciate how entirely misguided this approach must be, because Pascal pulls off the feat of being both one of the most pessimistic figures in Western thought and simultaneously one of the most cheering. The combination seems typical: the darkest thinkers are, paradoxically, almost always the ones who can lift our mood. (SoL/BoL continues)
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to René Descartes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Stephan Zweig, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau... his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sais-je?" ("What do I know?").
Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. g'r
Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. g'r
- “The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. ”
- “I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”
- “He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
- “The thing I fear most is fear.”
- “The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”
- I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). It is still, tragically, sometimes assumed that the best way to cheer someone up is to tell them that everything will turn out all right; to intimate that life is essentially a pleasant process in which happiness is no mirage and human fulfilment a real possibility.
However, we need only read a few pages of the book known as the Pensées by the great French 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) to appreciate how entirely misguided this approach must be, because Pascal pulls off the feat of being both one of the most pessimistic figures in Western thought and simultaneously one of the most cheering. The combination seems typical: the darkest thinkers are, paradoxically, almost always the ones who can lift our mood. (SoL/BoL continues)
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French mathematician and theologian. A member of the community at Port-Royal, Pascal in the Lettres provinciales (Provincial Letters) (1657) defended his Jansenist friends against the persecution of the Jesuits. In Les Pensées (Thoughts) (1665), Pascal defended a fideistic approach to religion, according to which "Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point." ("The heart has its reasons that reason does not know at all.") Pascal's work with Fermat on the nature of probability presaged the development of modern decision theory, on the basis of which he argued that belief in god, although not rational, is a clever wager... Phil PagesRene Descartes (1596-1650). After receiving a sound education in mathematics, classics, and law at La Flèche and Poitiers, René Descartes embarked on a brief career in military service with Prince Maurice in Holland and Bavaria. Unsatisfied with scholastic philosophy and troubled by skepticism of the sort expounded by Montaigne, Descartes soon conceived a comprehensive plan for applying mathematical methods in order to achieve perfect certainty in human knowledge. During a twenty-year period of secluded life in Holland, he produced the body of work that secured his philosophical reputation. Descartes moved to Sweden in 1649, but did not survive his first winter there... Philosophy Pages...
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Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio
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