Category:Post-Renaissance Personages

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Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592, French essayist) retains atomism not to be demonstrated, and refuses autosuggestion attempts to relieve pain; he suffered renal colic: "We are enough upset by pain, without upsetting ourselves by these superfluous etiquette too"; "Closer to my style (Epicurus) advises to shift thoughts from displeasing to pleasant things"; he speaks ironically on some vain hopes about wisdom in general terms: "...back to front of that saying, he who has been fully mad won't be sage again "; “to some extent we can be erudite through other people's learning, wise we can be only through our own wisdom” [I, 25]; but is acquainted and empathetic with Lucretius (quotes about are innumerable, more than 140, and continual notes in his DRN book's margins, edited by M. A. Screech), Diogenes L., Horace, Seneca, Latin elegiac poets, and he does live as an Epicurean. "Doubting is one's own business of philosophers", against vain hopes, excesses, metaphysical fancies ; "[Epicureanism] is actually a Pyrrhonism under solution formula" (Epicurus did amend his youthful Pyrrhonism in the Letter to Milesians), he guesses right the antidogmatic Epicurus' epilogismós/ more-or-less - better than Lucretius and Diogenes L., perhaps from Horace - and his maxim "que sais-je?" (What can I know?: unlike dogmatic... skepticism, which excludes a consistent answer about it; cfr. Lucr. IV 648-), was a starting point for his quotes' avalanche about ancient world (he learned Latin before French). The very Lucretius/Epicurus' quote (DRN 5.526) "We aren't able to be sure of the decisive cause; we pile up manifold ones" [Essays III, 6,On Coaches], cannot be dogmatic.
He declares and writes dozen of small Essays for his own personal use; their literary value being but recognized , so they were edited but banned. He don't search for coherent exposition; he is interested in his doubts in a personal capacity; when he overcomes them he speaks something else, but he isn't more skeptical than other frank thinkers, and has more certainties. than orthodox thinker consider. «All knowledge penetrates into us through sensations: they are our guide» [Apologie]. He describes in detail all - good and evil - of himself, as an independent character; he guess right parrhesias and "placing in front of eyes", as a creative writer. He is plainly Epicurean in the last essays; with pupils: a young lady will be his editor, easily with shears. Later on a journal was discovered. After inheritance of estate and castle he retired at an early age (35) from offices - as Seigneur de Montaigne- and withdrew into his library in a tower (covered with maxims), where he wrote down thoughts "which render not more eloquent but more sage", to the point where in the conclusion [III, 13] he practices katapyknôsis meditation: " sweetness of a gratification [...] needs to be parceled out, savored, ruminated [...] I whiz over time when it's wicked and uncomfortable; when it's good, I don't want pass the time, I taste it again, I cling to". Book III, ch. 5 touch even upon 'titillations' - so much and by many ancient evidences blamed in Epicurus' writings. We have yet to read it between the lines and enjoy metaphors. In ancient and Christian eras people did it, but must not write for (see Ovid's banishment).
He will also decline later to be counselor of the friend and now king Henri IV. "The best thing of society is being good... to belong to oneself: when one has more than enough to live for the others... let's live for ourselves."He is plainly Epicurean in the last essays.

"All world's opinions are able to grasp that pleasure is our end, though they get it under different ways". "I believe no doubt that (Cato) felt pleasure and rapture in so noble deeds". "This pleasure, tough heroic, tense, strong, it's anyway pleasurable but only more seriously".
"Often one believes himself to have dropped business, but he has only replaced them. Ambition, greed, indecision, fear and longings don't slacken us off as we have changed district. We bring our chains with us. "Man goes on with ordering himself to be consistently wrong". "To speak openly, isn't man a poor animal, is he? Barely he is able through his natural faculties to enjoy some whole and pure pleasure, some more he begins to find it fault by questions: isn't he enough frail, if he isn't rampant intentionally on his troubles?".

He experienced a very real friendship with the writer La Boethie (died young), but with common people he hold "you are to walk with bridle in your hand, with prudence and circumspection, for in them the knot is not so sure that a man may not half suspect it will slip. "Love him," said Chilo, [Aulus Gellius, I, 3.] "so as if you were one day to hate him; and hate him so as you were one day to love him." This precept, though abominable in the sovereign and perfect friendship I speak of, is nevertheless very sound as to the practice of the ordinary and customary ones, and to which the saying that Aristotle had so frequent in his mouth, "O my friends, there is no friend," may very fitly be applied ". "If we keep to exhaust - to our own damage due to a conceited generosity - what we had heaped up with endurance, we do let people possibility to be ungrateful, going to lose what attract them to us, and to relate them to themselves". [I, 27, On Friendship].

"It's there nothing to say about death, not as we lack faculties and tendency to speak about it, but as, speaking with clarity, nobody may experience it". "Life doesn't better if it's long, death is better if it's not long". “He who desires to become angel, does nothing for himself, and would not live better… Really, as nobody is there any longer, who will gladden and benefit in place of him for this improvement?” "Release of evils at the cost of dying brings forward no advantage [...] he who doesn't cease exertion has no grounds to enjoy relaxation".
"Loftiness of soul isn't going above nor coming in first, but keeping the line and setting one's own limits. That is great what is enough. [...] Nothing is so fine and rightful as doing well and properly one's man's trade, nor science is so challenging as being able to live the present life. Among illnesses the rudest is despising one's own nature."
The most part of rules and precepts of the world are bringing this track, pushing off of our own and chucking in the crowd for public manipulation. [...] We mustn't make mask and look grow into an actual identity [...]" "Laws still are having credit not as they are just, but as they are positive. They are oft-times made by incompetent persons, more frequently by people who, being repugnant to equality, are needing order; anyway they are a work of men, layabout and irresolute fellows".
"If simplicity of life initiates not to undergoing evil, it initiates to a stationary condition according to our nature. But we mustn't depict it so straight down as it be wholly without sensation". "And when come I face to face with some stable position...? Is there some delight which titillate me? I don't agree it have good time together with senses, I join to enjoy it, not to get lost but to find way about. [...] We look for other positions as we don't get use of ours." "There is a craft of being delighted: I enjoy life twice as other persons: sure enough as width in enjoyment is the result of concentration we implement in it ". "About titillating pleasures, if nature is inciting, Epicurus retains them to be valued not under position or class, but under loveliness, age, character. Incontinence is a condition of continence, fire is got under control by fire". [The best way in order to get body's urges out of one's head is fulfilling it].
"He who is scared by suffering, is suffering as he is scared". "Death is felt only on account of words, whereas it's issue of one instant". "Fool's life is ungrateful, it is worried, wholly projecting into the future: I get ready to lose it without regret, but as losable for his term, not as annoying and unwelcome. It suits properly to dislike death but to them who like life".
How is our opinion giving quality to some things, we can see it about the many ones which we are looking at not only for rating but for thinking just to ourselves; we consider neither their quality nor their usefulness but only their costs, as though was that a part of their substance; we call value not what they are bearing but what we are bearing to them.
"On highest throne in the world, we're sitting on our buns"