Michel de Montaigne's essays are hailed as profoundly modern and their style original. This type of personal essay writing is still found in many places, including today's common blogs. These pieces are political, social, philosophical, but they are all deeply personal; they are all self-portraits. In his address to the reader, Montaigne says that it is a work that has been “dedicated… to the private benefit of my friends and relatives so that, having lost me (as they soon will) they may find here some features of my life. of my character and my moods... I myself am the subject of my book” (lxiii). Despite the assertion that he alone is the subject of these works, Montaigne also acts by expanding his personal experiences to define the human condition. His essays often deal with questions relating to existence, and in particular the songs “Philosophizing is learning to die” and “On physiognomy” question the relationship between death and life, and the relationship between life and death with respect to how a man lives or how he sees these things. The following work “On physiognomy” actually refutes or contradicts some statements made in the previous “Philosophizing is learning to die”; this too, in a larger scheme, threatens Montaigne's claim that “you have here, reader, a book whose faith can be trusted” (lxiii). How Montaigne reaches his new, correct position on death in relation to life, and how he makes the transition even within the selected passage, are central to the reader's understanding of the entire work and provide to said readers a way to reconcile the main contradictions found in these essays. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In many places, Montaigne takes on a sort of real “we,” and this selection of “On Physiognomy” is no different; says that “We confuse life with worries about death, and death with worries about life. [C] One torments us: the other terrifies us.” These descriptions are apparently respective: the one that torments us is when “we confuse life with worries about death,” and the one that terrifies us is when “we confuse death with worries about life.” Why does one torment us and the other terrify us? Is this simply a rhetorical differentiation? Furthermore, what does Montaigne mean by “confusing” life with concern for death or vice versa? Confusion implies a confusion, perhaps a contamination, that life is contaminated by worries about death. Less clear is how people can care about life when they are dead. Here Montaigne seems to appeal to the potential feeling of not being fulfilled when one dies; he asked himself: "Would I have died less happy before reading the Tusculan Disputations?" and replied, "I think I would not" (1176). Both possibilities proposed in this passage have the potential to terrify and torment us constantly. He goes on to say that “We are not preparing to die: it is too temporary a matter. [C] A quarter of an hour of pain, without after-effects, without discomfort, does not need its own precepts. [B] To tell the truth, we prepare against our own preparations for death!” The beginning of this train of thought is rather confusing, as it offers no context. When does this lack of “preparing to die” occur? What happened that we now have to “speak sincerely” about “preparing against our own preparations for death?” This will not be clear until the next two statements conclude this paragraph, and even then, it can only be fully understood when the previous essay is revisited“Philosophizing is learning to die.” In this essay Montaigne tries to remedy his melancholy, realizing that the constant presence of death is what caused his depressive state. He argues that all men should learn to face and accept death, and only then, only after having internalized this inevitability, can they truly live. Apparent philosophy helps man in this, and therefore it makes sense when he says in “On physiognomy” that “Philosophy first commands us to always have death before our eyes, to anticipate it and consider it in advance, and then it gives us rules". and warnings to avoid being hurt by our reflections and foresight. Montaigne asks why philosophy should comfort such a painful topic, but only after actively raising it? He compares it to doctors who "inform us about diseases so that we can have the means to use their medicines and their art". Philosophy is not simply preparing people to die or teaching them to die, as Cicero said, but it is a double negative that prepares people against their preparation for death; it is the medicine for self-induced illness. This mention of doctors brings to mind an earlier sentence about doctors in “Philosophizing is Learning to Die”: “Stupid, you! Regarding your life, who decided the term? You rely on doctors' stories; instead look at the facts and experience. As things usually go, you have been living thanks to an extraordinary favor for some time now. The tone there and the tone here are markedly different. However, the concept of “means” challenges the idea of ​​“ends.” Every means tends to an end. This is what Montaigne will delve into in the next section. First, he transitions by discussing how “If we have not known how to live, it is not right to teach us how to die, making the shape of the end incongruous with the whole. If we have known how to live firmly and calmly, we will know how to die in the same way. In his previous essay, Montaigne used death to define life. He believed that knowing about death or thinking about death made life more meaningful by giving it a clear and present end. This way of thinking defined life negatively, that is, according to what it is not. Here Montaigne realizes that his previous thought was in reverse order. Knowing how to live, however, is a prerequisite that must be acquired before learning to die. He says that if we know how to "live firmly and calmly", then we will already know how to die in the same way. He makes a brief digression to criticize his old way of thinking, characterizing those who claim that “the whole life of philosophers is a preparation for death” as people who can “brag as much as they want.” Now he is of the opinion that "death is indeed the end of life, but not therefore its end"; although it is the physical end of life, death is the End of life towards which life as a means tends. «It puts an end to it», he repeats, «it is its final point; but that's not his goal." What then is the purpose of life? Instead of involving death, Montaigne states that “life must be its own objective, its own purpose. His right concern is to govern himself, govern himself, tolerate himself." Finally, these sections end on a high note: «Enumerated among its other tasks [of life] included under the general and main title, How to Live, is the subsection “How to Die”. Life has many worries and death is just a small one of them. However, it still seems important and leads many people, including Montaigne himself, to believe that it is a bigger issue than it actually is. This is due to fear; “If our fears gave it no weight, dying would be one of our lightest duties.” The opinions expressed in “On physiognomy”, in this passage, are substantially different from the thought in “Philosophizing is.