I have read half waythrough Sarah Backwell's excellent book, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer. Today being not one of the best of days, I found the best answer ever to that question.
This is again from Montaigne but from a different book - When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?: Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life by Saul Frampton (review here)
Montaigne died at home on September 13, 1592, of complications from kidney stones. In his last essay, he had written, "Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself." Virginia Woolf loved that line; she quoted it often. And Sarah Bakewell, in her own book on Montaigne, rightly calls it "as close as Montaigne ever came to a final or best answer to the question of how to live."
This simplest answer has Kantian Catergorial Imperative written all over it. No sure how much Kant was influenced by Montaigne.
"Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself."
This is again from Montaigne but from a different book - When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?: Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life by Saul Frampton (review here)
Montaigne died at home on September 13, 1592, of complications from kidney stones. In his last essay, he had written, "Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself." Virginia Woolf loved that line; she quoted it often. And Sarah Bakewell, in her own book on Montaigne, rightly calls it "as close as Montaigne ever came to a final or best answer to the question of how to live."
This simplest answer has Kantian Catergorial Imperative written all over it. No sure how much Kant was influenced by Montaigne.
"Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself."
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