Monday, July 22, 2013

How Montaigne Influenced Hirschmann

If there was one author who captured Hirschmann’s imagination, it was Michel de Montaigne.  The highly personal vignettes, meditations, and moral reflections shook Hirschmann to his core. He immediately grasped the power of the essays — Montaigne questioned absolute forms of knowledge by submitting everything to the interrogating eye of the observer, starting by looking at himself, turning himself over and over to capture the multiple points of perspective or the multiple forms of the self.  “We are never ‘at home’: we are always outside ourselves,” Montaigne wrote.  “Whoever would do what he has to do would see that the first thing he must learn to know is what he is.

Montaigne’s affection for the aphorism, for accumulating quotes, rubbed off on Hirschmann instantly, and he began to stockpile his own, starting with a mantra from Montaigne; “observe, observe perpetually.”

His favorite pastime was rereading Montaigne’s Essais. He told Ursula that “this is perhaps the bedside book— livre de chevet— par excellence, the one that would probably be my choice to take if I had to choose only one book.”


- Excerpts from Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschmann by Jeremy Adelman (I am smitten in this fascinating book)



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