Montaigne and the paths that develop a well formed head

Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct and present Montaigne's ideas about education based on the essay “On the Education of Children”. By contextualizing the genre “essay” in Montaigne's philosophy, we identify some implicit values present in his argument about education. By presenting his critiques of humanistic scholastic pedagogy, we recover two fundamental notions for his reflection on education: “a head well-formed” and “the commerce of men”. Showing that for Montaigne the formation takes place through the visitation of the world, it denotes the teacher's function and his ways to lead his students to develop a well-formed head.