Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

How To Live by Sarah Bakewell: Quiz/Discussion Questions

Questions 

1. How was Montaigne's writing style different from other writers?

2. What were his writings called?

3. How do you "wake" from the "sleep of habit"?

4. What was a common example Montaigne used for how perspectives differ?


Discussion Questions

 Do you believe reading is more enjoyable when it relates to you, or when it is fantastical and unrelated to anything you could experience?

Do you think that a society today could be considered civilized if it participated in barbarous acts like public torture and even cannibalism? What about 500 years ago?

1 comment:

  1. Montaigne's faithful readers universally report that they find him incredibly relatable, as though the half-millennium separating us from him did not exist at all. He's fun. And I'd have to say I think he does offer a salutary example of how to live, though he does not presume to tell any of us how we MUST live.

    The greatest barbarities Montaigne wrote about were not those of the indigenous "new worlders" but rather of the "civilized" European invaders/occupiers who engaged in torture and genocide. What people "consider" civilized can never be the last word on the subject.

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