Augustine’s Confessions
Read the first autobiography: Augustine's account of a soul fleeing, then seeking, its home.
Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) inaugurated a new literary form with the publication of his Essays in 1580. Yet despite the essay’s ubiquity, Montaigne’s own work has been unduly confined to the margins. Perhaps this is because the Essays is peculiar in both matter and form—and Montaigne himself a peculiar figure. Or rather, as he put it, “A new figure: an unpremeditated philosopher!”
This seminar invites a small group of fellows to retrieve Montaigne’s masterpiece from the too-seldom-visited “nook in a library” where he expected it might reside. But what kind of book is the Essays?
The work is Apollonian in spirit, despite its seemingly spontaneous and disorderly appearance. Montaigne’s studied carelessness is an artful artlessness; his text only appears to be an unruly assemblage of “grotesque and monstrous bodies.” Montaigne was an artist who likened himself to a painter. He answered the Delphic injunction to “Know thyself” with a portrait: a self-portrait, but also a portrait of the human self—his own as well as ours. “It is myself that I portray,” Montaigne announces at the outset. “I am myself the matter of my book.” Yet he later reveals that the true subject of the Essays is “man” as such, for “each man bears the entire form of the human condition.” At the heart of the work, then, is humanity: Montaigne’s and our own.
The Essays offers an intensely personal yet remarkably capacious portrait of the human condition. Tearing away the masks, robes, habits, and cloaks through which human beings both conceal and reveal themselves, Montaigne depicts human nature undressed. He leaves it to his readers to test—to essay!—the truth of his account. Will you answer his invitation? Might you, like Pascal, discover yourself in Montaigne?
Through a wide-ranging selection from the Essays, this seminar will consider both the matter and the form of Montaigne’s text. We will explore how the practice of essaying may construct, reveal, or ground the self; how Montaigne understood the nature of human longing; and how he believed those longings might most wisely be answered. Above all, we will ask how Montaigne sought, through essaying, to educate both his own desires and those of his readers.
Image: Jacques-Louis David, Two Studies of the Head of a Young Man Crowned with a Laurel Wreath, 1775/80
This course is offered by Humanities at Hertog. It will take place weekly via Zoom; the meeting day and time will be announced. Fellows who complete the seminar in good standing, including full participation, timely completion of the response paper, and submission of the course evaluation, will receive a $150 Amazon gift card. Required course materials will be provided.
Faculty
Neco Donohue
Neco Donohue is a doctoral student in political theory at the University of Texas at Austin and editor at large of The Vital Center. His research focuses on early modern and Enlightenment political philosophy, moral judgment, and political psychology.
Neco Donohue
Neco Donohue is a doctoral student in political theory in the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin and editor at large of The Vital Center. His research examines early modern and Enlightenment political philosophers, especially their efforts to cultivate the self-knowledge and political psychology required for sound moral judgment. Before beginning his doctoral work, Donohue served as program manager at the Hertog Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a certificate in Advanced Leadership Studies from American University.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
Session I
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session II
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session III
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session IV
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session V
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
