ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Michel de Montaigne's answer is not only concise and to the point, but is the best answer that can be given to the question 'what's it all about?', or, 'what is the meaning of life?' There is something profoundly unphilosophical in the cabbie's expectation of an immediate answer and in his disappointment at not receiving one. Montaigne's answer, by contrast, is an invitation to philosophize. Montaigne's Complete Works, which, including his letters and travel journals, runs to over 1,300 pages; and is a book which famously exhibits all the twists and turns and inconsistencies of the author's own thinking over the entire latter part of his lifetime. Some of what Montaigne says about the composition of the Essays is of interest not only for what it reveals of Montaigne's habits as a writer and philosopher but also for their illumination of the origins of the essay as a genre – for the essay is Montaigne's invention.
