Lesson · 4 min Stretch
What Do I Know?
In one line Montaigne made himself the subject of his essays, testing his judgment on everything and finding honest doubt freeing.
Michel de Montaigne was a French nobleman who, in 1571, retired to a tower library and began writing. He called his pieces essais, trials or attempts, and in them he tested his judgment on everything: friendship, cruelty, cannibals, sleep, death and his own failings. He said that he himself was the matter of his book.
His motto was a question: What do I know? Drawing on the Pyrrhonists, he noticed how customs that seem natural at home look strange abroad, and how reason can argue either side. In an essay on cannibals, he observed that each people calls barbarous whatever is not its own custom.
His doubt did not make him gloomy. It made him tolerant, curious and at ease with himself, ready to live well without needing certainty.
Go deeper
Montaigne wrote that to philosophize is to learn to die, but later essays turn toward living well and accepting the body and its limits. His honest self-portrait influenced Shakespeare, Pascal and Emerson, and he is often seen as the inventor of the essay. He lived through France’s bloody religious wars, which sharpened his distrust of anyone too sure of being right.
The late dinner
On a trip abroad, Kai is surprised that people eat dinner at ten at night and greet strangers with a kiss. At home, he would call it rude or odd.
Then he imagines a visitor watching his family eat at six in silence in front of the television. Montaigne’s question helps: what do I know about which custom is natural? Kai comes home less sure, and more curious.
Try this today Write a short paragraph about one opinion you hold. Then add one sentence on how you might be wrong.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “What Do I Know?.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/what-do-i-know. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Michel de Montaigne” — Covers his skepticism, the essays and his ethics.
- Michel de Montaigne, Essays, trans. Charles Cotton (Project Gutenberg) — The public-domain translation of the complete essays.