SOURCE: MacPhail, Eric. “Friendship as a Political Ideal in Montaigne's Essais.” Montaigne Studies 1, no. 1 (November 1989): 177-87.

In this essay, MacPhail discusses Montaigne's views on political power through an examination of his writings on friendship.

La plus part des offices de la vraye amitié sont envers le souverain en une rude et perilleus essay.

“De l'Experience”

The attitude to monarchy that Montaigne expresses in the Essais possesses the same ambivalence as the notion of friendship which he adapts from classical texts and infuses with his own experience. For Montaigne, friendship involves independence and even distance while also signifying profound respect and attachment, whether to an individual or to an institution. In political terms, friendship offers Montaigne a dignified humanist alternative to the rebellion of civil war and the subservience of courtiership. His treatment of friendship in “De l'Amitié” and in some key passages from the third book of essays...