On Friendship

This material was written by Michel de Montaigne in the sixteenth century. It is a collecton of seven philophical essays. One is devoted to each of the following subjects: friendship, not being judgemental, the art of conversation, idleness, paternal affection towards their children, moderation, the nature of happiness while living. I found this to be a very easy to read and enlightening collection of philosophy, that I believe you will enjoy also. The author of this work was very influential to many thinkers through out the centuries down to our time. This book was cited by a recent book I read by Joseph Epstein, Friendship, an expose. "When the soul is without a definite aim she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere." "I hold that you will never achieve by force what you cannot achieve by reason, intelligence and skill." If you enjoyed the above examples you will love this book.

Like all of the other Penguin Classic Books series, this text is absolutely gorgeous and significant, inside and out. The cover is lushly decorated and the writing is a classic work that is an easy read. This is a definite must for one's personal library.

He said "the greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself." French Renaissance thinker and humanist, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), is credited with creating the personal essay as a new literary genre, and is best-known for the work of his curious mind, ESSAIS (1572-80; 1588). Born into a wealthy Bordeaux family, he lived a life that was well traveled (as set forth in his TRAVEL JOURNAL), well read, well educated (first at the college de Guyenne in Bordeaux and later at the University of Toulouse, where he studied law), and well experienced in excess. His writings influenced Shakespeare, Bacon, Matthew Arnold, Blaise Pascal, Rene Descartes ("I think, therefore I am"), and Emerson. In an age of exploration, Montaigne was truly a man of his time. In his writing, he epitomizes what it means to be human, searching for the truth in his own nature, habits, and opinions, as well as those of others. Read as a whole, his writing moves from stoicism (influenced by Seneca), to Renaissance skepticism, to acceptance of all that life has to offer, and to Roman Catholicism. (Like Thomas a Kempis, Montaigne believed there was a "plague upon man, the opinion that he knows something," which prevents him from knowing God's wisdom. He believed man is, in fact, no better than a beast.) He also believed in cultural relativism, and his essays examine such various subjects as friendship, conversation, idleness, pain, memory loss, death, marriage, raising children, beautiful women, liars, witches, warmongers, how to read well, education, sex and impotence, and even his cat. This edition offers a brief introduction to Montaigne, from which readers might consider either Penguin's COMPLETE ESSAYS (1993) or The Everyman's Library COMPLETE WORKS (2003) for further reading. (It should be noted that this review refers to the 2005 Penguin Great Ideas edition of ON FRIENDSHIP, translated by M. A. Screech, which includes the essays, "On Friendship," "On the Art of Conversation," "On Idleness," "On the Affection of Fathers for Their Children," "On Moderation," and "That We Shall Not Be Deemed Happy Until After Our Death.") G. Merritt