Montaigne's Essays
Photo credit: Paul D. Stewart / Photo Science Library
This Spring term, the Theory Center devotes itself to the study of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne, first published in 1580, a work that continues to enlarge the space of thinking. These essays are difficult to define. They are, as Montaigne notes, “a record of various and changeable occurrences, of irresolute and, when it so befalls, contradictory ideas”— experiments in the original sense of the word essai. A conflation of autobiography, anthropology, and ethical reflection, they were crucial for Bacon, Descartes, and Pascal, as later for Emerson, Nietzsche, and Lacan. For all their difficulties, the Essays testify to their author’s remarkable vitality. They are a joy no less than a challenge to read and ideally suited to collaborative interpretation.
The work of the weekly reading group culminates in symposium with distinguished scholars on Friday, April 3, 2026.
