Philosophy : Michel de Montaigne The Complete Essays Penguin Classics
The Praise of Folly and Other Writings (Norton Critical Editions) | 
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- ISBN13: 9780140446043
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 Buy the Penguin version!
The Kindle edition by mobi lacks a decent table of contents. Although there is one, with links to all the individual chapters, no title is given to them, only their respective roman numbers! A very hard way to navigate this gigantic book!
 I'm in the minority
I didn't have to read this book for a course, but I'd heard good things about it. What can I say? I finished it but it wasn't particularly interesting and a week after I finished it I couldn't remember what any of it was about.
 During Reading, Montaigne Becomes A Light-Hearted, Warm, Beneficially Critical and Thought-Provoking Friend
Montaigne was a truly astounding soul and intellect. His essays are at once rapturous, skatter-brained, focused and convincing. He writes about, literally, everyting- from war to sex, from love to solitude. And his insights truly create synaptical connections in each reader's brain that change your viewpoints on life, and how you live. It's like having a great two-year conversation with a very, very valuable friend.
What surprises me most of all about his work is how modern and penetrating his thoughts and rationality still seem, some hundreds of years later. These essays a truly a testament to how revolutionary the Renaissance was, and an early milestone in the increasing rational objectivism and inquiry of science. There is wisdom for the ages, here. Highly, highly, highly recommended.
The Shakespeare of Essayists
If he had a more manageable name, there should be an equivalent to "Shakespearean" for Michel de Montaigne, and the label to refer to essayists of his level. As with Shakespearean, you have to pay attention lest the dense, meaningful sentences fly past. And frankly, there are times, and moods, when he's too dense for me to appreciate, or I'm too dense and have to put him aside.
Like another wonderful essayist, William Hazlitt, Montaigne often takes a circuitous path, following the associations of his fertile, discursive mind, to touch upon all manner of things, before coming back to his point(s) with new, expanded insights. Or bringing up other, entirely unexpected points, altogether. Again, requiring an attentive reader, and one not looking for a point, but patiently waiting for the next rewarding chunk of writing to come, as it always does.
In a frame of mind to focus and leave the world and its distractions behind, Montaigne is the most rewarding of writers. Take, for example, this (among so many other passages), from the essay "On Cruelty":
"Virtue demands a rough and thorny road: she wants either external difficulties to struggle agains ... by means of which Fortune is pleased to break up the directness of her course for her, or else inward difficulties furnished by the disordered passions and imperfections of our condition."
And this, from "On Repenting," capturing his straightforward honesty and self-assurance, without self-aggrandizing pride:
"I have hardly cause to blame anyone but myself for my failures or misfortunes, for in practice I rarely ask anyone for advice save to honor them formally; the exception is when I need learned instruction or knowledge of the facts. But in matters where only my judgment is involved, the arguments of others rarely serve to deflect me, though they may well support me; I listen to them graciously and courteously--to all of them. But as far as I can recall, I have never yet trusted any but my own." I Think, Therefore Who Am I?
 A Sexist
I had to read this book in one of my English literature classes. I find this man has some interesting things to say that our flesh and bodies are married together forming one unity. But he is a bit on the perverted side in mentioning that his cock is too hard in one chapter and that woman are like play objects. However, his theories are negative and a bit sexist. I do not see the point that he is trying to convey.
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