Montaigne on Cicero: The Art of Sincere Writing
You have probably caught yourself doing it: drafting a message and choosing words designed to impress rather than to communicate. You reach for the elegant phrase when a simple one would do. Michel de Montaigne recognized exactly this trap when he reflected on the letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero — the celebrated Roman orator and statesman. In his thirty-ninth essay of the first book of the Essays, titled A Consideration upon Cicero, Montaigne examines what letters and writings reveal about the person behind them. The result is a remarkably honest meditation on vanity, authenticity, and the courage to show yourself as you truly are — themes that resonate deeply within the Masonic tradition of self-knowledge and moral integrity. What Is This Essay Really About? In A Consideration upon Cicero, Montaigne turns his attention to the personal correspondence of several towering figures from antiquity. At the center stand Cicero’s letters, but those of Pliny the Younger and Seneca also come under scrutiny. Montaigne uses these letters as a mirror: what do they tell us about the writer? Are they sincere, or were they composed with one eye on publication and posterity? At first glance the essay appears to be a literary […]