Toutes passions mises en arriere. .. The Emotions in Legal Perspective: Montaigne and the Palace Academy at Blois

Abstract

Although profound distrust of the passions underpinned Montaigne's philosophy of disengagement, it was precisely his interest in the emotion of anger that engaged the Essais (1580) most provocatively in the contemporary debate on sovereignty. Similarly, a subtext on royal power informed the Palace Academy (1576-79) lectures on anger. Whereas the Academy institutionalized a discourse on kingship, Montaigne opened the way for an emergent grammar of rights defining a subject citizen.