Montaigne Reading Group: First 20 Essays

All of these essays are available to read for free online - see links below.

We're pleased to announce the first meeting of our new Montaigne reading group! We are aiming to read all of Montaigne's essays over an extended period. For our first meeting we will read the first 20 essays from the Penguin Classics Complete Essays edition, totalling just over 100 pages. The essays for this meeting are:

1.) We reach the same end by discrepant means
2.) On sadness
3.) Our emotions get carried away beyond us
4.) How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones
5.) Whether the governor of a besieges fortress should go out and parley
6.) The hour of parleying is dangerous
7.) That our deeds are judged by the intention
8.) On idleness
9.) On liars
10.) On a ready or hesitant delivery
11.) On prognostications
12.) On constancy
13.) Ceremonial at the meeting of kings
14.) That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them
15.) One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without good reason
16.) On punishing cowardice
17.) The doings of certain ambassadors
18.) On fear
19.) That we should not be deemed happy till after our death
20.) To philosophize is to learn how to die

Feel free to read any translation (or indeed the original French...). The Penguin Classics edition, which I will be reading, is translated by M.A. Screech and is available for free online:

https://archive.org/details/MontaigneEssayscompleteScreech.num/mode/2up

The Kindle edition of the Screech translation is also currently available for 49p... Many other translations are available, including many that can be found for free online.