Montaigne Life without Law

Pierre Manent, "Montaigne: Life without Law "
English | ISBN: 0268107815 | 2020 | 288 pages | PDF | 18 MB
In Montaigne: Life without Law, originally published in French in 2014 and now translated for the first time into English by Paul Seaton, Pierre Manent provides a careful reading of Montaigne's three-volume work, Essays. Although Montaigne's writing resists easy analysis―Montaigne includes seven essays before he even explicitly states the purpose of the Essays―Manent finds in it a subtle unity, and demonstrates both the philosophical depth of Montaigne's reflections and the distinctive and even radical character of his central ideas. To show Montaigne's unique contribution to political discourse, Manent compares his work to other influential modern philosophers, including Machiavelli, Hobbes, Pascal, and Rousseau. For example, whereas Hobbes proposed the modern state as necessary because of humanity's supposedly natural condition in a "war of all against all," Montaigne did not see the state as the remedy to civil-religious discord. But in fact, speculation on the state does not play a large role in the Essays. Rather, Montaigne's philosophical reflection focuses on the concept of what he calls