Montaigne of cannibals the tempest

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a significant philosopher of the French Renaissance whose stated goal was to describe humans with utter frankness, yet during his lifetime he was admired more as a statesman than as an author. Born into a wealthy Roman Catholic family, Montaigne’s education was rigorous and took place under the direction of notable figures such as George Buchanan.

On completion of a law degree, he joined the local legal system, after which he was appointed a counsellor at the parliament in Bordeaux. While serving in Parliament, he befriended the humanist poet Étienne de La Boétie, whose death in 1563 deeply affected him and supposedly drove him to begin the Essais, a collection of short subjective essays on various topics inspired by his studies in the Classics.

The work covered in this piece will be On the Cannibals, which Montaigne completed in 1580, in which he criticises the ‘common opinion’ of Western and Central Europeans concer