Michel de Montaigne has always been acknowledged as a great literary figure but never thought of as a philosophical original. This book is the first to treat him as a serious thinker in his own right, taking as its point of departure Montaigne's description of himself as "an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher." This major reassessment of a much admired but also greatly underestimated thinker is for historians of philosophy and scholars in comparative literature, French studies and the history of ideas.