ABSTRACT
Sceptical therapeutics is aimed at doing away with all integrative aspirations, be they metaphysical or cathartic, whether based on conversion or on narrative compromise. Sceptical therapeutics is clearly on the clinical side of strategies for curing, and inspires what Michel de Montaigne called the anatomy of the soul. Psychoanalysis is a dialectic, in the sense of what Montaigne called the “art de conferer”. Montaigne could be considered a legitimate heir and representative of the meditative current of Hellenistic care of oneself. Montaigne’s conversion might also have been closely related not only to his kidney stones, but also to the friendship he built up with Etiene de la Boetie. Montaigne’s moral anatomy is simultaneously an ironic criticism of self-deceit and of willingness to harbour the illusions one sees among men, on the one hand, as well as a study of their paradoxes, on the other.
