Quotation
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“It is an absolute perfection, and as it were divine, to know how to enjoy our being rightly.”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism · Renaissance · 1588
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the positive end of his scepticism: not a system, but a just way of enjoying the life one actually has, including the body. Rightly does the moral work. Enjoyment without that adverb would be the grossness he has been mocking in others. A rival reading hears a blessing of comfort, as if pleasure were the divine thing by itself; The line comes at the end of On Experience, after pages on illness, habit, and the failure of abstract rules.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation from the close of On Experience, Essays book three, chapter 13. Montaigne is praising a just enjoyment of ordinary life, not a mystical escape from it. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Essays III.13
Approximate date: 1588.
How to use it
A free Saturday in a flat in Newcastle can be spent in a way that uses the day, a meal, a walk, a conversation, or in a way that only gets through it while resenting the body that needs feeding. He thinks knowing how to enjoy being, rightly, is a high art precisely because it is ordinary. Rightly excludes using other people as the meal; It does not exclude the meal.
A mindset reading
Perfection is a dangerous word in his mouth, and he immediately qualifies it. The art is not a heroic project of self-creation and not a sermon against pleasure. People who hate the body will find the essay too fleshly; People who think any pleasure is self-justifying will find the word rightly in the way; Both reactions are part of how the sentence should be read.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is enjoyment of our being, a knowledge of how to live the human animal life without contempt and without frenzy. On Experience has argued that experience outruns the neat rules of scholars and physicians. The closing praise is the practical residue of that argument. Screech's as it were divine keeps the hesitation in the French; The perfection is a way of living, not a status above other people.
- happiness
- self
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the positive end of his scepticism: not a system, but a just way of enjoying the life one actually has, including the body. Rightly does the moral work. Enjoyment without that adverb would be the grossness he has been mocking in others. A rival reading hears a blessing of comfort, as if pleasure were the divine thing by itself; The line comes at the end of On Experience, after pages on illness, habit, and the failure of abstract rules.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation from the close of On Experience, Essays book three, chapter 13. Montaigne is praising a just enjoyment of ordinary life, not a mystical escape from it. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Essays III.13 Approximate date: 1588.