Let's start with the question that must have formed in your brains after reading the title: Who is Montaigne? Michel de Montaigne was a 16th century philosopher of the French Renaissance who is credited as being responsible for popularising the essay as a literary genre. Even if you're not a student of literature, chances are that you have, at least, heard the names of people like Virginia Woolf, Voltaire, Rousseau, Rene Descartes, Karl Marx, and Shakespeare. Well, Mr. Montaigne here is said to have had a direct influence over these writers.

Moving on to the next basic question: What is skepticism? In general terms, to be skeptical about something is to be doubtful about the truth of something. For example, a lot of people are skeptical about the concept of love at first sight, or how the teacher is skeptical when you say your dog ate your homework. When we come to philosophy, however, skepticism takes on a larger significance. In philosophy, Skepticism is the theory that certain knowledge about something is impossible and that there is no such thing as an absolute truth.

And this is what Montaigne says as well. He belongs to a school of Skepticism called Pyrrhonism, on which the works of Sextus Empiricus are based. Pyrrhonism states that we can know nothing about the nature of things. Therefore, the only proper response to these 'things' is a withholding of judgement.

Now, I can hardly doubt (hehe, did you see what I did there?) that people will come up with counter arguments to this statement with respect to things like mathematical truths, for example, but I want to steer this discussion in a different direction: the social side. Let's talk about cancel culture, baby! I am sure a lot of you know about this (largely) social media phenomenon. But for the sake of those who don't know about it, cancel culture is a form of ostracisation or boycotting someone due to something which is seen as problematic.

This has become so prominent and popular that 'Cancel Culture' has its own Wikipedia page, complete with subsections of 'Origins' and 'Academic Analysis'. Although I don't fully disagree with this (by all means cancel racists, misogynists and homophobes) but cancelling people over small mistakes is not exactly a right thing to do, is it? And what does Mr. Montaigne suggest you do, then? Withhold judgement, of course!

In his Apology for Raymond Sebond, Montaigne writes, "[...] what we do not understand we condemn." This rings true in the 21st century as much as it must have in the 16th. Let's take homophobia for an example. Some people are so quick to call gays and lesbians as "mad" or "mentally sick", as people who need to be cured, as if homosexuality is a disease. Pop a few pills and boom you're hetero! What you don't understand you don't judge!

Be open to all possibilties is what Montaigne propounds. To be fair, I can't possibly ask or expect anyone (myself included) to stick to this in all things and to follow this till the extreme. No. What I am requesting is to follow this in at least some things, especially when all of us are so quick at arriving at judgements and forming opinions at the drop of a hat. It is true that we cannot help but form judgements unconciously. But what we can do is be consciously open to other possibilities. Believing in one thing, refusing to budge from it and considering it to be the only possible truth is not only wrong (yes, I am passing on a judgement. Yes, it is counter to what I said. No, I am not going to change what I said. Yes, there is a paradox at the heart of skepticism) but also possibly self-detrimental.

Montaigne actually pulls people down from their high horses in his Apology by challenging the one thing we pride ourselves over: reasoning power. How does he do that? Through a single sentence: "When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?" What he is doing here is putting the cat (an animal) on the same level and platform as himself (a human). He is putting the mental power of both the creatures at par with each other. The cat here might be playing with us mere creatures to entertain itself. We cannot know this! When we can't even trust our reasoning capabilities, the thing which we believe makes us superior to animals, who are we to form judgements or condemn someone or something?

I would like to end my lecture with something which was also Montaigne's life motto:

What do I know?