One of the best investments that I ever made was when I was 16/17, I subscribed to "The Classics Club". These are the books with sage cloth, red/gold black bindings or the beige vinyl books with the gold and read spines you see in movie props. I think that they came every other month or so. I have about 50 or so, and at one point in my life made good progress in plowing through them. As I reflected on Russell's post and remembered my book, I am reminded by looking at the chapters below of the great wisdom in those tomes. I've got my eye on a couple of chapters. More later.
Here are the chapters in my book:
Book I
- Of Idleness
- Of the Education of Children
- It is Folly to Measure the True and False by our Own Capacity
- Of Friendship
- Of Cannibals
- Of Solitude
- Of Democritus and Heraclitus
- Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions
- Of Presumption
- Of Giving the Lie
- Of Repentance
- Of Three Kinds of Association
- Of Vanity
- Of Experience
4 comments:
My Montaigne is a paper back "Complete Essays" that is just under 900 pages that I bought at a used book store for $11.
My Book 1 has 57 chapters, Book 2 has 37 with one of them being the very long "Apology for Raymond Seaborn" and Book 3 is a relatively slender 13 chapters.
Some of what your missing is very period specific: "Whether the Governor of a Besieged Place Should Go Out to Parley". But some seem interesting: "Of the uncertainty of our Judgment."
I am currently working on Chapter 19 of Book 1: "That Our Happiness Must Not Be Judged Until After Our Death (page 52). LOL-I have a little way to go.
I'm sure that I have just a smattering of his essays in my book. It is not his complete essays. I did settle down with a few chapters. I was quickly reminded of the disdain that men of that period had for the intellectual powers of my sex. Well, they really didn't think we had any intellectual powers, but perhaps we could be counted on for some reasonably pleasant conversation--tolerated only for the hope of engaging in more scintillating diversions. (sigh) Yes, the Virginia Slims, "You've coma a long way baby!" ad slogan rings clear.
I regret that I do not have "That our Happiness Must Not be Judged....
A set of the complete essays is here: "That Our Happiness..." is interesting.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm
It is said that Montaigne invented the essay. Montaigne is very modern in some of his thinking, but you have to realize that the society he came from is incredibly different in its outlook then our own. He mentions in one essay that hoarding away money for future eventualities is pointless. But given the chaos and danger he lived in the "stored" wealth would act more as an anchor and chain then as an asset.
Given the complete lack of education that rural French society would have it would be more proper to say that almost everyone was of limited intellectual powers. As Peter Bernstein noted in "Against the Gods" the advanced math that Leonardo De Vinci was struggling with was our third grade fractions. My rule of thumb is to hold historical figures accountable to the standards that they tried to set for themselves. Montaigne was very open minded and probably would have retraced his thinking on womens intellect if he had been given a proper demonstration of it. My guess is that he knew intelligent woman, but that he compartmentalized them as being exceptional not the rule.
Well, I was not trying to excise Montaigne out of his context, but that context lingered for a long time.
The Gutenberg project is awesome. I had so many cool links and then my hard drive crashed. I forgotten some of my treasured resources. Thanks for this.
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