Montaigne writes his Essays because he is seized by the desire to tell his mœurs. What astonishes him is the fact that his weak and lowly mœurs conform to so many philosophical discourses and examples, for he has never deliberately formed himself according to the rules of any philosophical school. His mœurs are just what he learned in the nursery. So the circle of his thought simply returns to its starting point: there is no philosophical project of forming or reforming. “Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed” (VS804; F610).

On the other hand, Montaigne is a new figure and the Essays are the public display of a new possibility for human being. Although he denies that he has ever attained the philosophical consistency or constancy of Cato, he does present a “natural movement,” a picture of “liberty and license so constant and inflexible” that it cannot be captured in the rule of any philosophical school (VS795; F603). He publishes his mœurs, in part, because they are new: “The uniformity and simplicity of my mœurs produce an appearance easy to interpret, but because the manner of them is a bit new and unusual, it gives too fine a chance to calumny” (VS980; F749).

What is it that is new in Montaigne's manner of being? Are we entitled to speak about a project of reformation when Montaigne is so insistent that he does not “form” man and that he has no authoritative teaching?