Quotation
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“Each man bears the entire form of the human condition.”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism · Renaissance · 1588
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the warrant for the Essays themselves: one particular life, carefully watched, carries the form of being human, so self-description is not a private hobby. He is not saying that every opinion is universal. He is saying that the human pattern shows up in a single case. A rival reading hears a boast that his tastes are everyone's, which would make the book's love of variation unintelligible; The line is in the essay on repentance, where he also says he paints a passing, not a being.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Repentance, Essays book three, chapter 2. Montaigne is defending the study of an ordinary life as philosophically enough. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Essays III.2
Approximate date: 1588.
How to use it
A diary kept on a bus through Sheffield is not, on this claim, trivial because the day was ordinary. The form of needing, fearing, changing one's mind, and dealing with other people is in the ordinary day if it is looked at without costume. The claim does not make one commuter the spokesman for a nation; It makes the commuter's condition a place where the human pattern can be seen.
A mindset reading
The sentence can be used to silence difference, as if one man's form were the rule for every life, including lives he never met. He pairs it with a relentless attention to how he differs from the examples in his books. Bearing the form is not the same as being the standard; A portrait can be local and still be about the species.
Understand the philosophy
On Repentance argues that reform of life is real but that he will not pretend to a repentance that erases what he has been. The key term is form, the pattern of the human condition borne by each person, which is why a portrait of one man can be a philosophical book. Screech's English is the guide. The next movement of the same essay, that he paints passing rather than being, keeps the form from freezing into a statue.
- self
- knowledge
- meaning
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the warrant for the Essays themselves: one particular life, carefully watched, carries the form of being human, so self-description is not a private hobby. He is not saying that every opinion is universal. He is saying that the human pattern shows up in a single case. A rival reading hears a boast that his tastes are everyone's, which would make the book's love of variation unintelligible; The line is in the essay on repentance, where he also says he paints a passing, not a being.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Repentance, Essays book three, chapter 2. Montaigne is defending the study of an ordinary life as philosophically enough. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Essays III.2 Approximate date: 1588.