Book Review-How to Live or A Life of Montaigne (In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer) by Sarah Bakewell

I had always been interested in the Essays by Montaigne but have been intimidated by the task of reading the tome. As it turns out, my hesitancy was warranted, as Sarah Bakewell explains in this extraordinary book, as Montaigne apparently continually edited the book during his lifetime, amending the Essays over his entire lifetime. To add further complications, the different editions of the Essays were completed at the discretion of many different publishers, with many varying agendas. The book has also gone through many cycles of popularity, ranging from complete public adoration to banishment, riding on the waves of popular opinion throughout European history. It had also appeared on the Catholic church’s list of banned books at one time. This book approaches the subject of Essays and the author Montaigne from multiple points of departure: it is at once a history of the Essays; a biography of Montaigne, his family, and those who were close to him; a travelogue detailing the places that Montaigne had visited; a history of the Dordogne region and France during Montaigne’s time living there; a concise explanation of the Greek philosophies that inspired Montaigne: Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism; and finally a work of philosophy which tries to encapsulates Montaigne’s guiding principles of life. It is no wonder that this book has met with critical success: the prose is welcoming to any level of reader, the historical backgrounds that is necessary to understand the story is included in the text, so the reader will not be lost in the narrative due to a lack of supporting information, and the multiple threads of topics have been interwoven skillfully to maximize reader interest. When I first started reading the book, I took it upon myself to glean the philosophical lessons that is presented by Bakewell, and there are plenty, twenty to be exact; but that is the worst way to read this book. It wasn’t until I was well into the book that I proceeded to relax while reading and took in those stories that Bakewell had included as the nuggets of gold to be enjoyed rather than extraneous information that pads the text. Once I came to that realization, I learned to love the style of the book and I was able to allow myself to fall in love with this great story, as well as learn lessons in history in Montagne’s time, philosophy, and history of philosophy. Indeed, it was Bakewell’s skillful weaving of all the multiple threads into the narrative that seduced me into the book. The twenty answers which made up the chapters melted into a natural progression of Montaigne’s story, which made their philosophical lessons even more cogent. I wish now that I were not so dogmatic in my zeal to view the book as solely a work of philosophy, I wish that I were open minded to what Bakewell was trying to do. She was entirely successful in what she had plotted, it was just that I was initially a fool to impose my sense of structure to the book. The lesson is that I needed to let the author lead me through the book the way they want to tell the story. I have learned my lesson and I will willingly let Sarah Bakewell lead me through anything she writes.

Book Review-How to Live a Good Life. Edited by: Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary, and Daniel Kaufman

The book is also subtitled: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy. I was unaware that the personal philosophy was important to me until a few years ago when I read another book by Massimo Pigliucci on the ideas of stoicism. I enjoyed it as it made a massive impact on how I viewed my life and how I am to conduct my daily existence. It was natural that when I saw that he had written another book about personal philosophy, I was interested and seeing what else he had to say. 

This book, however, lays out the many different possible personal philosophy that one can choose as their own. It consists of series of essays written by the practitioners of each one of these philosophies. The authors are also scholars in each of these areas in order to ensure that the scholarship is sound and complete in order to make a good argument in favor of each of the philosophies. The idea is for the reader to go through the entire book in order to be swayed by each of the authors to their preferred personal philosophy. Their job is constrained in a very short format, they are to layout the main tenets of the philosophies that they espouse and to make argument on why we should choose that philosophy as our own. The book is split up into four main parts. 

 Part 1 is split amongst the ancient philosophies from the East. It consists of the big three: Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism . 

 Part 2 is a regarding the ancient philosophies from the West: Aristotleanism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism. 

Part 3 consists of five religious’ traditions: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Progressive Islam, and Ethical Culture. 

Part 4 is the modern philosophies: Existentialism, Pragmatism, Effective Altruism, and Secular Humanism. 

I found Parts 1 and 2 to be the most compelling, partly because I am familiar with the philosophies within those two parts. The ancient philosophies of the East are my cultural reference, so the concepts and the argument are well known to me. I particularly enjoyed Owen Flanigan’s essay on Buddhism. 

The ancient philosophies from the West is something that I have spent some time learning and I have some understanding of these philosophies. Even though they did not cover all of the western philosophies, which I found curious. Perhaps they felt that the ancient philosophies are similar enough that they had the coverage that they needed. Pigliucci made a much more convincing case in his own book, of course making his case in a much shorter form is very constraining. Part 3 is what most readers would be the most familiar with, since the Judeo-Christian religions are the major part of the western Canon of religion. Less is known in the West about Hinduism or Progressive Islam but both those essays are quite well written. I personally thought that the Ethical Culture essay was the least convincing of the four in that part of the book. It just did not read like there was enough underlying philosophy to make it a viable and strong personal philosophy. Same could be said for Effective Altruism essay. Much to my chagrin, I found the essay on Secular Humanism less than inspiring. I had followed Secular Humanism many years ago and in reading this essay it reminded me why I did not continue to follow the belief as a personal philosophy. 

 I enjoyed the Existentialism and Pragmatism essays, putting them back to back was a great choice, the material lent itself to a very effortful reading, but at the same time I was able to exercise my thoughts with the mental gymnastics I had to perform in order to understand the essays. Interesting thing to me is that while John Kaag is a natural choice to write the chapter on Pragmatism as he had written American Philosophy: A Love Story, a story buttressed by his search through the books and papers of the founders of American Pragmatism, yet he also wrote Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, a revelatory memoir/travelogue regarding Existentialism. I wonder if the two authors had written their essays in parallel and compared notes, since the chapters complemented each other well. 

The most interesting thing that happened to me as I read each essay is that I had come to agree with much of what was written, while being older, I did not find myself switching to each one of these philosophies as I made my way through it as my younger self would have been tempted to do. Instead I stopped looking for orthodoxy and looked to become a true believer, I was happy to pick and choose amongst all these philosophies to try to create my own personal philosophy. If you were to ask me what is my personal philosophy right now? I could not tell you. What I could tell you after reading this book is that I know which parts of each of these philosophies made sense to me. It is almost like I'm back in my college years trying to find a moral and philosophical path for myself, but instead of looking for a single monolithic belief, I have come to the belief that choosing one from column A and one from column B is not such a bad way to go as far as personal philosophies go. 

Consistency of belief is important of course, the logic and reason behind the belief needs to be aligned, but I find that it is not the only thing. The driving motivation in selecting a personal philosophy is that one needs to be true to one’s self, whatever that is, and no monolithic philosophy can encompass all the nuances and variations of my beliefs. Indeed, that is the only way to go as no one person can be happy in a singular set of belief, because we are so different. I enjoyed this book in fits and starts, not because the authors were incapable of writing cogent summaries of their philosophies and make incisive arguments, it all goes back to the material they start with, that made the most difference. It was a nice roller coaster ride through some very intellectually stimulating philosophies.