Montaigne | He Locked Himself in a Tower and Described Us All

<p>Fall asleep to Montaigne, who locked himself in a tower to study one man and quietly described us all.</p><p><br /></p><p>In fifteen seventy-one a French nobleman withdrew from public life to a round library at the top of a stone tower, and there, to tame his own restless mind, he began the strangest and most intimate book of its age. This is the story of Michel de Montaigne and the work he modestly called his attempts, the essays that invented a whole way of writing. We begin with his unusual life, the strange education, the one friendship that shaped everything, and the loss that turned him inward. From there we follow the great themes of the book, his bottomless doubt and its gentle motto, his study of the ever-changing self, his hatred of cruelty in a country torn apart by religious war, his acceptance of the body and its pains, and the serene wisdom of his final years. Along the way we meet a mind that set out to know one person and ended by knowing everyone.</p><p><br /></p><p>Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.</p><p><br /></p><p>Chapters:</p><p>0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Man in the Tower</p><p>0:11:33 Chapter 2: Because It Was He</p><p>0:19:29 Chapter 3: The Matter of My Book</p><p>0:31:06 Chapter 4: Nothing Holds Still</p><p>0:36:42 Chapter 5: Planting the Cabbages</p><p>0:45:20 Chapter 6: What Do I Know</p><p>0:57:58 Chapter 7: A Head Well Made</p><p>1:03:53 Chapter 8: The Cannibals at Rouen</p><p>1:12:01 Chapter 9: Between Two Fires</p><p>1:23:03 Chapter 10: The Mayor and Myself</p><p>1:30:17 Chapter 11: The Road to Rome</p><p>1:35:53 Chapter 12: Kings and Philosophers</p><p>1:43:33 Chapter 13: On Our Own Legs</p><p>1:55:05 Chapter 14: The Last Additions</p><p>2:00:28 Chapter 15: The Book That Became a Friend</p><p><br /></p><p>If this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going.</p><p>Music by Kevin MacLeod (<a href="http://incompetech.com/" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">incompetech.com</a>)</p><p>Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License<br /><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</a></p><p>Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: