Sadly, the cultural impact from Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) has been mostly detrimental. Why? Because intellectuals have retained the worst part of Montaigne’s ideas and forgotten his valuable insights.

Am I exaggerating in my assessment? I do not think so. Let us look at three wrong Montaigne’s ideas that have taken root in popular culture, and that many people regard as indisputable truths.

[1] Lack of intellectual structure is a severe deficiency that undermines Montaigne’s essays. It shows in his inability to tell apart the crucial elements from the accessories.

If we talk indistinctly about entertainment, hobbies, games, and philosophical truths, there is a degradation of the latter. If we place trivialities and important things at the same level, we are degrading the latter.

Montaigne’s essays lack plan, structure and proportion; they present philosophical discussions side by side with trivialities. As an example, I point to Montaigne’s essay “On Diversion.”

Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On Diversion”

In this essay, Montaigne explains the advantages of hobbies and other leisure activities, but says nothing that the average reader would not have already figured out himself.

The fact that Montaigne uses Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) as an example doesn’t add any depth to the arguments. It is nice to know that Cicero enjoyed reading poetry, but what practical knowledge can we draw from such anecdote? None.

Montaigne also points out that, in Ancient Rome, people loved to attend theatre performances, in particular of comedies written by Plautus (254-184 BC).

I would compare Plautus’ comedies those to the soap operas that fill TV cable channels in the morning. Indeed, numerous people watch those soap operas, but what’s the point? There is nothing to be learned from those nor from Plautus’ plays.

By choosing trivial subjects, Montaigne wasted the readers’ time and patience. Sadly, some magazines, radio stations, and TV channels today have adopted the same practice.

By turning trivialities into their main fare, they are steering away from important subjects. I regret that this cultural trend, initiated by Montaigne, has reached enormous proportions.

[2] In his essays, Montaigne is often to blame for moral and terminological confusion. I don’t think that he did it on purpose but the fact is that he never corrected those errors.

His literary revisions consist of adding a few sentences here and there, for instance, by interpolating an additional anecdote from Ancient Rome or Ancient Greece. Those revisions fail to remove the moral and terminological confusions.

Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On Glory”

For example, Montaigne’s essay titled “On Glory” is mixing up the concepts of glory (fame, reputation, popularity) with the concept of ambition (initiative, hard work, goal orientation).

In the eyes of Montaigne, the pursuit of glory is frequently counterproductive. As examples, he mentions Emperor Nero (37-68 AD) and Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), who ascended to power in Ancient Rome. Eventually, Nero became a tyrant, and Caesar was assassinated.

Montaigne proves unable to tell the difference between bad and good pursuits. He mixes up a malevolent, superficial, evil pursuit of fame with the pursuit of legitimate achievements.

As a result, Montaigne’s conclusions are false. He wrongly ends up condemning all ambitions as detrimental, but instead, he should have praised initiative and hard work in the pursuit of good goals.

Montaigne’s blanket attack against all pursuits of glory does not make sense; he is making a severe epistemological mistake by mixing up two separate concepts.

Unfortunately, Montaigne’s terminological errors have been expanded and perpetuated. Some of today’s magazines, radio stations, and TV channels are repeating his mistakes.

I can only rate Montaigne’s cultural influence in this respect as detrimental. When reading, listening or watching media, we should stay alert and keep terminological confusion at bay.

Critique of Montaigne’s idealisation of antiquity

[3] Montaigne’s indiscriminate admiration of ancient times, in particular Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, is to blame for spreading an exaggerated respect for ancient literary sources.

He quoted Socrates (469-399 BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC), and Plutarch (46-120 AD) dozens of times, idealising the life and ideals of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

In doing so, Montaigne ignored the dark side (exploitation, poverty, slavery) of ancient cultures. By invoking an idealised world that had never existed, Montaigne wanted to add weight to his arguments, but in practice, he was weakening them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) expanded Montaigne’s errors to infinity. He did not even bother to quote sources from antiquity. Instead, he made up a pre-societal period of history, a period in which all human beings lived in harmony.

Montaigne had exaggerated the virtues of ancient thinkers and historical figures, but at least, he had taken the trouble to consult the sources. Rousseau simply made up those sources to support his convoluted arguments.

Their mistakes, based on a naive historical interpretation, are now part of our culture. It takes lots of energy to dig into those ideas and examine their contradictions. I wish that Montaigne had not initiated this trend, but for better or for worse, we are still under this influence.

If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all sort of situations, I recommend you my book “Against all odds: How to achieve great victories in desperate times.”