Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, has always been acknowledged as a great literary figure but has never been thought of as a philosophical original. This book treats Montaigne as a serious thinker in his own right, taking as its point of departure Montaigne's description of himself as [...]
Montaigne's "Essays" are rightfully studied as giving birth to the literary form of that name. Ann Hartle's "Montaigne and the Origins of Modern Philosophy" argues that the essay is actually the perfect expression of Montaigne as what he called "a new figure: an unpremeditated and accidental philoso[...]