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It has long been know that Rousseau in his works alludes to or elaborates arguments and images that also appear in Montaigne's Essays. One thinks, for example, of the pictures of the noble savage in both authors; the attacks on pedantry; even the peculiarly rapturous autobiographical accounts of becoming unconscious (by falling off a horse, in Montaigne's case, or by being knocked out by a large dog, in Rousseau's). So extensive are Rousseau's detailed debts to the Essays that in 1766, a critic published a pamphlet, The Plagiarisms of J. J. Rousseau of Geneva, which contained an entire chapter itemizing various ideas supposedly "stolen" from Montaigne.
The broad similarities are, if anything, even more striking. Both men made an earnest effort to answer to the Delphic injunction "Know Thyself." Both approached philosophy as a way of life, and not just a set of propositions and theories. Yet Rousseau notoriously criticized Montaigne when he came to write his Confessions, putting him "at the head of these falsely sincere people who want to deceive by speaking truthfully." Why was Rousseau so ambivalent about Montaigne?
With this question in mind, it will be good to recall, briefly, some of the contrasting conclusions that each man provisionally reached in the course of his philosophical quest.
For Montaigne, the search for wisdom had begun in a classically Stoic manner. A landed aristocrat who had served for several years as a counselor to the Parliament at Bordeaux, Montaigne subsequently went into retirement at his family estate, where he was free to ponder perennial questions about human nature and to work on improving his character through study and introspection.
To this end, Montaigne in his reading and writing ranged widely, consulting contemporary historical chronicles, classical poetry, edifying ancient biographies (those of Plutarch above all), philosophical and theological treatises, even (to an unusual extent) his own personal experience, in order to weigh, and sometimes revise, his core beliefs. In his written record of this solitary quest, Montaigne asserted his candor, but he wrote in an indirect, allusive, and often guarded style that was marked by contradictory assertions, non sequiturs, and paradoxical Unes of argument. Reading his Essays, it is hard to know just what Montaigne actually believed. That makes his book quite different...