Montaigne begins this chapter by stating that his project is concerned with portraying the

entire man. He says that he is the first author concerned with himself not simply in one facet of his
life, but in the whole. He says that in this case, it is not possible to separate the author from the work,
so ones opinion of his work is his or her opinion of him.
He next begins his discussion of conscience and repentance. After saying that he rarely repents
and is comfortable with his own conscience, he says that each persons vice troubles that person and
his virtue makes him feel good. In addition, ones opinion of himself and his own actions is worth
infinitely more than that of someone else. Ones conscience is most clear in how one acts in his home,
where no one can see him because when no one can see them, people are more likely to give in to
their habitual vices.
Men are creatures of habit and are quite prone to relapse into habitual things that they have
given up. Often when men repent, their repentance is not complete. Montaigne tells the story of a
peasant he met who in his youth saw more profit in becoming a thief than in working. In his old age, he
was able to live comfortably. His repentance was to steadily pay back the descendants (offsprings) of
those from whom he stole and to pass on this duty to his own descendants. He saw the wrong in his
actions, but it was not enough to make him live in poverty to pay back those he wronged. Montaigne
then talks about regret in decision making. He says that he rarely regrets his decisions, and that the
outcome being bad does not necessarily mean that the decision was regrettable. He also says that he
rarely gives advice or considers that of others
To Repent, or Not to Repent-That is the Question: The Influence of Repentance on the Self and
Society. Repentance and regret are commonly thought to have the same meaning, but for Michael de
Montaigne they are entirely different; repentance is the denial of one's natural, everyday actions and
regret is wishing to undo them. In his essay "Of Repentance" Montaigne argues that all people are born
with a certain nature, some lean toward good and others toward evil, but we cannot change who we
are. Therefore, if we reason and act within our nature, then there is nothing to repent of. Moreover,
repentance is not necessary because we should not be held to our actions and words of the past,
because our public nature is constantly changing along with your inner nature (45-6). Montaigne's
concept of a public versus private persona, one that he does not condone, and where one is showing
the world a different person than one is at home, is a dangerous proposition for community and
personal life because it excuses a beguiling lifestyle. If one listens to Montaigne and strays away from
this, than one can live an overall better life. His point is valid, but if one does not listen, this life can
lead to mistrust by others, losing the self, committing crimes, and sadness.
Montaigne's essay, "On Repenting" is a long and complicated one. Let me begin by saying Montaigne is a
Stoic. The Stoics believe that causation is absolute and that everything is fated and unalterable. This is
why Montaigne can write that he rarely repents. He believes that repentance is not a regret, but a
denial of the rightness of what one had formerly willed:
"You cannot extirpate the qualities we are originally born with: you can cover them over and
you can hide them." The key is to know a person's character "Anyone can take part in a farce and act
the honest man on the trestles: but to be right-ruled within, in you bosom, where anything is licit,
where everything is hidden--that's what matters." We should, therefore, govern ourselves in public just
as we do in private when no one is watching. If you want to know truly about a person, talk to the
children, the spouse, the servants. It is possible for "vicious souls" to be "incited to do good by some
outside instigation." It is also possible for "virtuous souls to do evil." This is why souls must be judged in
"their settled state, when thy are at home with themselves...or at least when they are nearest to
repose in their native place." People can repent, but true repentance for Montaigne is a cleaning out of
the soul and body, "Before I call it repentance it must touch me everywhere, grip my bowels and make
them yearn." If the evil from which a person repents is not gotten rid of, then "there has been no cure."
Montaigne warns us of the elderly who claim they are wise and have given up all of their vices. Don't

believe it he says. Just because you are old doesn't mean you have given up your vices. Vices are given
up, yes, but not by choice; age forces us to relinquish what in our youth we had no intention of
abandoning:
Our appetites are few when we are old: and once they are over we are seized by a profound disgust. I
can see nothing of conscience in that: chagrin and feebleness imprint on us a lax and snotty virtue.
In the end Montaigne declares, "If I had to live again, I would live as I have done; I neither regret
the past nor fear the future." The Stoic beliefs that Montaigne holds perhaps makes such a statement
easier to make. But I believe in free will. There is much that goes into making a person's character, some
of it chosen, some of it not. But in the end, it is the individual's responsibility for who he or she is and
becomes. I agree that true repentance requires the expurgation of the vice (no bowel movement
required), but I don't think it should be such a rare thing. Unfortunately it is. Why repent if you don't have
to? If are you convincingly contrite and put on a good show, you can get away with murder.
It is ambiguous what Montaigne meant by repentance in the first place, and it seemed as if the
process of repenting itself only lead him to melancholy and pessimism.
The act of isolated self-meditation provides the foundation for this essay , we have to withdraw
from such attributes of the mob as are within us. It is our own self we have to isolate and take back into
possession. By contemplating our personal experience in isolation, we better understand ourselves, but
Montaigne does more than simply embark on an identity quest. He is testing the validity of his own
actions against his experience.
Montaigne first gives us a fairly simple picture of repenting based on his ability to judge right and
wrong. He is satisfied to repent only of those things which he can clearly perceive as vices: Since he
speaks as an ignorant questioning man, Montaigne must be ignorant of most vices, and we cannot hold
him in contempt if he rarely repents. To be able to judge his actions, Montaigne must create his own
system of moral judgment: we must establish an inner model . . . by which at times we favor ourselves or
flog ourselves. I have my own laws and law-court to pass judgment on me and I appeal to them rather
than elsewhere. While he restrains his actions according to the standards of others, I enlarge them
according to my own. In practice, Montaigne might abide by the common beliefs of the Catholic Church,
but he only passes moral judgment upon his actions based on what he perceives as right and wrong.
Yet when Montaigne tests this model against his experience, he finds that it fails to account for
the influence of the in his actions:. This leads Montaigne to question the efficacy of repentance: to repent
is but to gainsay our will and to contradict our ideas; it can lead us in any direction (Montaigne 236), even
to the denial of virtue. He questions whether repentance for ones actions can lead to true reform, since it
fails to address the will, but this leads him to doubt the impartiality of his own reason. He acknowledges
there is hardly an emotion in me which sneaks away and hides from my reason or which is not governed
by the consent of almost all my parts (Montaigne 240). His reason consents to those actions which he
clearly identifies as vice, and he doubts that this same reason can be an impartial judge of these same
actions. If his perceptions of right and wrong are not good enough bases for his own judgment of his
actions, this questions whether he can repent of any vice whatsoever. To be right-ruled within, in you
bosom . . . where everything is hidden thats what matters (Montaigne 236), but Montaigne doubts that
we can even know if we are right-ruled.
If the will causes us to sin and Montaigne doubts our ability to reform, it is uncertain how people
can be held responsible for their actions. Just as the author cannot speak French better than Latin when
the latter is his native tongue, you cannot extirpate the qualities we are originally born with: you can
cover them over and you can hide them (Montaigne 239). A man born into beggary might blame himself
for becoming a thief, but even if he himself knows thievery is a vice and habitually repents of it, he will
continue to steal out of habit and necessity. Yet this does not excuse vice. Rather, the real condemnation
which applies to the common type of men nowadays is that their very retreat is full of filth and corruption,

that their amendment of life is vague . . . . Some of them are so stuck to their vices by long habit or some
natural bonding that they no longer find them ugly (Montaigne 239-240). Montaigne, too, has generally
acted according to the impulses of his will, but he seems to believe there is at least a way of covering
ones negative qualities.
Perhaps the difficulty in Montaignes writings is that he has atomized his system of moral justice
and reform. While Montaigne may not experience the intimate connection with God that Augustine seems
to claim, he is too ready to separate out his reason from his emotions and his actions from his will. It is
necessary to do our best in judging between right and wrong, but there comes a point at which the
reasoning process fails and we must be sincere to our emotional grief. For the Catholic, it seems that
repentance is part of the larger practice of confession: acknowledging ones own inadequacy in light of
divine justice and to reforming as best as one can manage. Montaigne touches on this holistic approach
to reform but is afraid to engage it because of his melancholy. If our actions lead us to grief, we should not
remove ourselves from that emotion in the process of reform but rather acknowledge that wrongdoing and
melancholy are inevitably part of our being.