Montaigene’s view on Custom
Renaissance
thinkers strongly felt the necessity to revise their discourse on man. But no
one accentuated this necessity more than Montaigne: what he was looking for,
when reading historians or travellers such as Lopez de Gomara's History of Indies, was the utmost variety of beliefs and
customs that would enrich his image of man. Neither the Hellenistic Sage, nor
the Christian Saint, nor the Renaissance Scholar, are unquestioned models in
the Essays. Instead, Montaigne is considering real
men, who are the product of customs. “Here they live on human flesh; there it
is an act of piety to kill one's father at a certain age….”
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