Abstract

In this paper I follow Pierre Hadot in his life-long dealings with Montaigne’s Essays, from his first contact, as a young student in 1936, to his final work, as a renowned historian of ancient philosophy, in 2008. The Essays emerge as one of the primary and principal sources of Hadot’s insight of philosophy as a way of life, from diverse perspectives: «education» or formation of the mind, «wisdom» or medicine of the mind, «simplicity» or the mind’s return to (its own) nature.