Montaigne

Why does everyone like this guy so much? Can someone explain why he is life changing?

no one likes him, just that autistic guy who fucking spams whatever he happens to be reading apparently got a copy and now thinks its the greatest shit over, probably later he'll move on to some other mediocre collection of forgettable essays by someone else and we won't see another montaigne thread

Because he's smart as fuck.
He sampled everything the world had to offer, all the pleasures of life, read everything available to him, then retreated to his study to write about what he had learned. Luckily he was a literary and philosophical master. Even if he'd been a moron his prose style would still have kept him relevant.

lol, I made two posts about Montaigne yesterday, and a few spread out over the past couple weeks, but i'm not OP. You had me going though, user.

Possibly the biggest patrician ever

first, philosophy don't change the life of anybody, this is a ridiculous ideia. Second, his writting are so gud, man! Give a chance to him.

i havent read many of the essais but i feel like this is pretty true

anglo pleb

i read a few of them waiting for them to get good but it never really did, sort of reminded me of barthes mythologies, it's not totally retarded, but it's like nytimes op-ed tier, not some kind of major contribution or deep insight to anything

literally going to open the book and quote passages I starred

>An able reader often discovers in other men's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meaning and aspects.

>Plato scolded a child who was playing at cobnuts. He answered him: "You scold me for a small matter." "Habit, replied Plato, "is no small matter." I find that our greatest vices take shape from our tenderest childhood, and that our most important training is in the hands of nurses.

>If, however, in the matter of [my penis's] rebellion being blamed and used as proof to condemn him, he had paid me to plead his cause, I should perhaps place our other members, his fellows, under suspicion of having framed this trumped-up charge out of sheer envy of the importance and pleasure of the use of him, and of having armed everyone against him by a conspiracy, malignantly charging him alone with their common fault. For I ask you to think whether there is a single one of the parts of our body that does not often refuse its function to our will and exercise it against our will. ... How many times do the forced movements of our face bear witness to the thoughts that we were holding secret, and betray us to those present.

>I do not make it my business to tell the world what it should do--enough others do that--but what I do in it.

>To compare this brotherly affection with affection for women, even though it is the result of our choice--it cannot be done; nor can we put the love of women in the same category. Its ardor, I confess--is more active, more scorching, and more intense. But it is an impetuous and fickle flame, undulating and variable, a fever flame, subject to fits and lulls, that holds us only by one corner. In friendship it is a general and universal warmth, moderate and even, besides, a constant and settled warmth, all gentleness and smoothness, with nothing bitter and stinging about it..

...

>(on marriage and a unity being equal to friendship): Besides, to tell thee truth, the ordinary capacity of women is inadequate for that communion and fellowship which is the nurse of this sacred bond; nor does their soul seem firm enough to endure the strain of so tight and durable a knot. And indeed, but for that, if such a relationship, free and voluntary, could be built up, in which not only would the souls have this complete enjoyment, but the bodies would also share in the alliance, so that the entire man would bed engaged, it is certain that the resulting friendship would be fuller and more complete. But this sex in no instance has yet succeeded in attaining it, and by the common agreement of the ancient schools is excluded from it.

and there's one of these for each page, and I'm only 30 essays in.

The first essays are a bit, meh. It get's better tho.

Taleb likes him; references him in the beginning of Fooled by Randomness and again somewhere else ('bout how he got his ideas on horseback, I think).

I don't think it's possible for people with even the faintest familiarity with Plato's dialogues to take that Socrates """quote""" seriously.

Theyre small, he's young(er) and just setting out. Nonetheless theyre wide open and once one begins thinking about them one soon learns theyre inexhaustible.

Read the Republic again

It's not a Socrates quote. It's a Plato quote. There's a difference between Plato and Socrates, and like the other user said: read the Republic to get closer to that difference.