Montaigne fideist? On some topics in the skepticism analisis of Michel de Montaigne

Abstract

Michel de Montaigne has been considered, since Popkin’s reading, as a central author in the transmission of ancient skepticism to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of the skepticism at the end of the XVI century was at the same time that the protestant broken, for this reason, the cross and the doubt would have been a couple against the Reform danger and one of the most important authors in this sense would have been Michel de Montaigne as a pyrrhonic and catholic one.
To explain this couple of credulity and doubt everyone talks about “skeptic fideism”, but some recent studies show that this interpretations need a lot of remarks. For this reason, we analyze the fideism notion and the related concepts of negative theology and nominalism in Michel de Montaigne trying to show the nondefinitive character of some of the “topics” usually used in the most spread interpretations about the French author’s skepticism.