Montaigne anthropologue Retour sur une idée courante

By dedicating a whole chapter to Montaigne in his book Histoire de lynx, Claude Lévi-Strauss helped to stabilise the vision of Montaigne as an anthropologist and precursor to the “modern” methods of ethnographic investigation. This contribution examines this thesis in a critical way by instigating a form of philosophical enquiry based on Montaigne’s discussion of the Cannibals: how did he write what he wrote on the Tupinambas, and why did he write it?