- Lived:
- 1533–1592 · Château de Montaigne, near Bordeaux, France
- Tradition:
- Renaissance humanism; revived ancient skepticism; inventor of the essay
- The Big Idea:
- The honest examination of one ordinary self — doubts, digestion, cat and all — is a complete philosophical project, because every person carries the whole form of the human condition.
- In their words:
- "When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?"
- If you remember one thing:
- He retired to a tower at thirty-eight to write about himself, and in doing so invented both a literary form — the essay, the attempt — and a way of being a skeptic that is friendly instead of corrosive.