29 nov

So now I know how to live. It took me a while to finish the delightful book by Sarah Bakewell about Montaigne, but it is also not the easiest question to answer. For sure, I have proven to be a slow learner regarding the subject.

The first surprise about Montaigne is that he lived in the 16^th century. That comes as a surprise for someone so accessible and modern in his thinking. The plague was a common cause of death and he, as well as his father died as a result of kidney stones.

Although this was secondary literature, it is clear there is much to enjoy in reading Montaigne himself, which is exactly what I plan to do. I love the way he is constantly relativistic about what he has to say. He likes his own opinions enough to write them down, but is not convinced it is the ultimate opinion about what could be said. About all the subjects he writes about – vanity, cripples, books, conscience, tomorrow’s a new day – he constantly infers words like ‘probably’, or ‘maybe’. My favourite quote from him, one he borrowed partly from socrates is: ‘All I know is I know nothing, and I am not even sure about that.’ It is no wonder he calls the articles that he wrote ‘Essays’, after the french word for “to try”. He was rewriting the essays till his death, people are still disputing what the definitive edition of the essays should look like.

Here are some of the answers – Bakewell divides her book into twenty chapters, each answering the question: How to Live?

* Read a lot, forget a lot and be slow-witted

* Question everything

* Wake from the sleep of habit

* Reflect on everything, regret nothing

* Philosophise only by accident

* Be ordinary and imperfect

* Let life be it’s own answering

I am looking for the checkmark on this computer. Can’t find it. Not that I do all these things – although I read a lot and forget more, and I am slow witted, if witted at all – but I want to tell Bakewell that I got it what she’s trying to explain about Montaigne.

Travel!, said Montaigne, go see the world. Just like Montaigne we are narrowing our world view down to Western Europe. Do something no one has ever done before!, said Montaigne, which is in a way travelling with this bloody (lovely) old camper of which the homemade electric circuit is showing more and more shortcomings. Every other week there is something else that stops to work. First we had 5 lights of which one never worked, now we are left to one, although we added some other ones. We had an electric flush on the toilet, but that is gone. Not really necessary anyway, but it is nice and it comes closer to what Julie more and more often describes as her Barbie dream house. She sometimes even calls me Ken, which I do not approve of.

The point about these shortcoming is that I try to fix them, but can’t. I am not clever enough by half. But who cares, I might not be able to fix something when it’s broken, but I do know how to live.