The Essais, enormously successful during Montaigne’s own lifetime, represent one of the most important and influential works of the Renaissance and established the “essay" as a new literary genre. In compliance with the meaning of the French essai, these essays contain a large number of very personal and subjective reflections, and cover such different topics as religion, education, friendship, love, and freedom. The aim here is less to promote truths or beliefs, but they instead describe Montaigne’s individual search for and engagement with knowledge, the possibility of knowledge, as such. What is perhaps most interesting and eccentric about the Essais is that they elude any analysis or summary whatsoever, and it may be due to this elusiveness as well as to Montaigne’s unconventional style of writing and thinking that he is considered more a writer rather than a “true" philosopher.