Learning How to Live
Dear Saint Mary’s Friends,
Some years ago, author Sarah Bakewell published a book that garnered a lot of attention and won a number of prizes: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. Who wouldn’t pause over that title, at least for a moment, to wonder: is this a philosophical exploration, a critical study, a biography, or a self-help book? (Spoiler alert: All of the above.) Apparently, my husband and I were both intrigued by the book when it came out, because without knowing, we each ordered a copy—and then we each set the book aside for over a decade, only to rediscover it at around the same time this summer.
Michel de Montaigne lived in France from 1533 to 1592, a time of extreme religious violence and intellectual repression. Yet the ideas and thought experiments in his Essays feel fresh in the contemporary moment. They are certainly salient for those of us who dedicate our lives to the important work of colleges and universities—work that prepares students for life. Montaigne wrote about so many of the topics college students are exploring or being challenged by: self-knowledge, friendship, learning, the human condition, good conversation, the divine, habits, feelings, diversions, solitude, time, and more. He used writing as a way to search inside himself—to discover his own thoughts and feelings and to make sense of his experiences by reflecting on them. He was philosophically modest and famously asked: “What do I know?” Yet, over 400 years later, we are still turning to his thinking on the most enduring questions.
At its best, a college is not merely a place where information is transferred; it is a laboratory of the human spirit, a space where we are invited to wrestle with ideas, confront contradictions, and cultivate the habits of careful thought. Montaigne sums up so much of the project of living—truly living—in his introspective probings, and Bakewell synthesizes his ideas in chapters that made me think in new ways: “Pay attention”; “Question everything”; “Be convivial”; “Guard your humanity”; “Live temperately”; “See the world”; “Survive love and loss.” These chapters (and 13 more) are attempted answers to the question “How to live?”
I hope all of you recognize Saint Mary’s as a place that has encouraged this kind of exploration for over 180 years. As we designed and launched our new Avenue Experience, many of us thought deeply about encouraging big questions and new experiences that help students to form their own minds and characters and to prepare them for both the careers they hope to have and the lives they want to live. We encourage students to frame their own inquiries, to listen generously to others, and to disagree with respect and curiosity. When we protect the freedom to think, speak, and explore without fear of censure or conformity, we do more than honor academic tradition: we equip people for lives of purpose and participation, making sense of complexity and resisting the easy comforts of certainty.
Free inquiry and free expression aren’t worth much if our community is full of only like-minded people. Montaigne actually lived a rather solitary life, but much of his writing helps us to think about how to build a good community. For example, he contemplates the value of encountering people with different backgrounds and different experiences, observing that these differences serve as a kind of mirror: “The diversity of ways of life serves to instruct us. Our own judgments grow more subtle from contact with others.” Likewise, a college education must be broadening—not just preparation for employment, but formation for citizenship, for neighborliness, for meaningful lives in a pluralistic world. And when we shape this education in a Catholic context, we are not only pursuing truth—we are also practicing a commitment to the common good. We are laying the foundations for a democratic society, one that relies on reasoned disagreement and shared humanity.
So as we start a new academic year, we’ll continue to cultivate a campus where questions are encouraged, viewpoints are explored, and every person has the freedom to learn, to speak, and to grow.
That, Montaigne might say, is the art of learning how to live.
August 29, 2025