How to Doubt Everything – Montaigne’s Essais

Catalog description

Why is it important to doubt? How do we doubt? And if we doubt what we think and what we should ‘do,’ then how can we know ourselves? How much can/should we doubt and when (if at all) should we stop? These are (some of) the questions central to this course, to be explored by careful reading, analysis, and discussion of a significant number of the chapters that make up Montaigne’s unique book, the Essais (1580-92)—whose English title should really be The Trials. In this work, which the author continued to expand and modify with each new edition, Montaigne fashions a new style of writing that functions not to communicate knowledge, but to constantly question and confound what we think we know—and, doing so, he creates a new kind of self-portrait and understanding of individual and collective identity.