Heroes Not Zombies

….and Montaigne engage constantly with a world which always generates more things to write about – so why stop? This makes them both accidental philosophers: naturalists on a field trip into the human soul, without maps or plans, and having no idea where they will end up, or what they will do when they get there.

I love that concluding paragraph to this chapter which is about how Montaigne’s style of writing became popular in England. He just couldn’t stop writing once he’d started. He added to his essays over many, many years, re-reading, revising and adding more. He didn’t remove what he’d written but he did add to a lot of it. If he’d lived longer he would have written even more.

He understood that he would never completely understand himself, that he would never be done discovering new things, and changing his opinions and views, but he didn’t erase those past insights because they were appropriate at the the time of writing. This gives an uncommonly holistic view of his psyche. Not only was he prepared to reflect on absolutely any aspect of his experience, but he was prepared to show the threads and themes as they developed over his lifetime.

And yet, it’s important to see that he didn’t spend his life thinking all the time. He was most heavily invested in the experiences of life. His “accidental philosophising” emerged through his writing. That might seem a small point, but I reckon it’s an important one. There is, of course, a constant feedback loop connecting thought and behaviour, but I’m pretty clear that what Montaigne showed us was how daily experience can teach us how to think, and that by writing down what we think and experience we can enrich and expand our lives.