Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne
Portrait of Montaigne, 1570s
Born	28 February 1533 Château de Montaigne, Guyenne, Kingdom of France
Died	13 September 1592(1592-09-13) (aged 59) Château de Montaigne, Guyenne, Kingdom of France
Education	College of Guienne
Era	Renaissance philosophy 16th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Counter-Reformation[1] French Renaissance Nouveaux Pyrrhonism[1] Renaissance humanism Renaissance skepticism
Main interests	Christianity classical studies ethics human nature pedagogy philosophy of science poetry political history sociability virtue
Notable ideas	Common herd Essay-writing Montaigne's wheel argument[2]
Signature

Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne (/mɒnˈteɪn/ mon-TAYN;^[4] French: [miʃɛl ekɛm də mɔ̃tɛɲ]; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592^[5]), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes^[6] and autobiography with intellectual insight. Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous Western writers; his massive volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.

During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt that began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, ''Que sçay-je?" ("What do I know?", in Middle French; now rendered as "Que sais-je?" in modern French).