Irony, Wretchedness, and the Liberal Arts

Abstract

In diagnosing a distinctively modern discontent, the Storeys have written a biography of a distinctively modern idea of happiness (141). Their achievement is to show that these two stories are the same. Montaigne's promise of what they term “immanent contentment” is itself connected to the ubiquitous if amorphous restlessness that plagues our culture today. Montaigne sought to find happiness not in transcendence or salvation, but in the simplicity of ordinary pleasures. Life is a game of variety and excitement, not an anguished pilgrimage to an eternal home. This counsel—meant to bring peace and to inoculate us against dogmatism—paradoxically underwrites the pervasive unhappiness of our time.