Personal reflections can render essays colourful and lively, but cannot guarantee correct judgement. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) made dozens of personal reflections in his essays, but more often than not, he drew trivial or wrong conclusions.

Nonetheless, his essays remain worth reading because they prompt us to think. They confront us with numerous arguments favouring or opposing a thesis, or numerous answers in reply to a question. Montaigne’s faulty logic challenges the readers’ philosophical skills.

Which messages is Montaigne conveying in those personal reflections? Self-justification is the only recognizable pattern. I mean that Montaigne is just looking for arguments that justify choices he has already made.

For example, his essay “On solitude” is recommending the daily practice of retiring from the world, a practice that aims at protecting one’s sanity and serenity. Montaigne followed such practice for the last two decades of his life, and attributed great benefits to it.

I must however ask for proof of Montaigne’s assertions: two decades of daily solitude periods constitute a long experiment, but Montaigne’s biography does not show the benefits.

If daily periods of solitude are supposed to be beneficial, I would expect to see improvements in Montaigne’s lifestyle in those twenty years. I would expect to see tangible changes that arise from his daily reflection periods. Yet, I see none. The fact is that Montaigne kept doing pretty much the same every day.

Montaigne’s approach to coping with pain

Montaigne’s essay “On practice” serves the same purpose of self-justification, this time, for Montaigne’s approach to coping with illness.

Since he was suffering from kidney stones, Montaigne tried out various treatments, but they proved to no avail. Eventually, he gave up his attempts at finding a remedy, and concluded that “humans must learn to suffer pains that are unavoidable.”

Really? When confronted with burning issues, I never relent in my efforts to solve them. I think about them incessantly and keep looking for solutions. The idea of giving up does not even cross my mind.

Instead, Montaigne gave up after failing to find a solution. I acknowledge his effort in travelling abroad for a thermal water cure, but when the cure failed, he returned home and left the problem unsolved.

Despite the difficulties in dealing with kidney stones in the sixteenth century, Montaigne’s conclusion is wrong. He advises readers to accept pain and stop complaining. He is telling us to give up our attempts to improve our lives.

When it comes to personal relations, Montaigne provides a large number of personal reflections, but more often than not, those provide little practical help.

Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On friendship”

Montaigne’s essay “On friendship” revolves around his best friend Etienne de La Boetie, who had died young. The essay is looking back at their friendship, trying to explain why it began and developed.

Readers would be well served if Montaigne gave answers to the key questions about friendship. How does one find friends? What makes people befriend each other in the first place? Why do some acquaintances grow into friendships, and others don’t?

Unfortunately, Montaigne falls again into self-justification. I would have expected some useful lesson from the review of Montaigne’s friendship with Etienne de La Boetie, but I did not get any.

Instead of deep philosophical or psychological analysis, we only get from Montaigne a trivial conclusion. “If someone asks me why we became friends, I can only answer that he was he, and I was I.”

That’s the ultimate failure to draw any useful lessons from experience. Montaigne could have referred to shared cultural interests, shared values, similar education, common profession, and other elements. Readers might have benefited from those observations.

Montaigne’s philosophy explains why his reflections are far from enlightening. He was sceptical and stoical, not confident and determined. His default response to challenges was to step back, take refuge, and wait for the tide to change.

Perspective in Montaigne’s personal reflections

His confused philosophy explains why, in the essay “On the art of living,” Montaigne is encouraging short-term thinking. I consider it crucially important to think in terms of a lifespan, but Montaigne does exactly the opposite.

Montaigne is recommending a lifestyle enabling us to tell ourselves every night before we go to sleep that “I have lived; the work is done.”

If we follow Montaigne’s advice, we would not be able to carry out any long-term projects. In those, we cannot say every night that “the work is done.” Maybe a little slice of the work is done, but that’s just a little slice.

Similarly, Montaigne’s statement “I have lived” is giving a totally wrong perspective. What’s the point of considering each day as the last day of one’s life?

Montaigne’s short-term focus generates unnecessary stress and anxiety. Major achievements take decades, not days. If the average lifespan is ninety years, what’s the point of stating “I have lived” at the end of each day?

If we live only for the day, we will inevitably adopt a short-term view. A long-term perspective is far preferable because it helps people deal with obstacles, opposition and setbacks.

Montaigne’s personal reflections are entertaining and supply interesting insights into life in the sixteenth century, but do not earn the mark of solid philosophy. Let us enjoy them for what they are, but assessing their validity each time.

If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all kind of situations, I recommend you my book titled “The 10 principles of rational living.”