eigenrobot pens a faux-Montaigne essay skewering an English philosopher's rationalist hubris
eigenrobot · x · 2026-10-18
eigenrobot posted an "imagined passage from Montaigne's Essays" — a razor-sharp pastiche about a gentleman who set out to free himself from the tyranny of custom, judging every action by his own understanding alone. In youth he concluded that since men obey many foolish laws, a wise man need obey none; in old age he found men less reasonable than supposed and customs not wholly without purpose.
The narrator declines to quarrel, only noting "it is a curious thing to discover that one's compass has led one astray, and then to insist, with renewed conviction, upon the excellence of one's navigation" — learned men repair their books with a pen and suppose their lives may be amended the same way. Best line: "we are very ready to forgive ourselves the errors of our reason, as though our reason were some foreign minister whose conduct we had merely been unfortunate enough to approve." The closing contrast lands hardest: Socrates professed to know nothing; the gentleman professed to have been mistaken about everything save his right to decide everything — "i should like to hear something from those who were obliged to live according to his conscience also."
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