See Michel de Montaigne:
Montaigne rejects the theoretical or speculative way of philosophizing that prevailed under the Scholastics ever since the Middle Ages.
He moved from a conception of philosophy conceived of as theoretical science, to a philosophy conceived of as the practice of free judgment.
The Essays remain an exceptional historical testimony of the progress of privacy and individualism, a blossoming of subjectivity, an attainment of personal maturity that will be copied, but maybe never matched since. It seems that Montaigne, who dedicated himself to freedom of the mind and peacefulness of the soul, did not have any other aim through writing than cultivating and educating himself. Since philosophy had failed to determine a secure path towards happiness, he committed each individual to do so in his own way.
See Essais: Of experience (translated by Charles Cotton):
There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things,
and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but
comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of
authors there is great scarcity. Is it not the principal and most
reputed knowledge of our later ages to understand the learned? Is it not
the common and final end of all studies? Our opinions are grafted upon
one another; the first serves as a stock to the second, the second to the
third, and so forth; thus step by step we climb the ladder; whence it
comes to pass that he who is mounted highest has often more honour than
merit, for he is got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but
one.
[...]
philosophical inquisitions and contemplations serve for no other use but to increase our curiosity. The philosophers; with great reason, send us back to the rules of nature; but they have nothing to do with so sublime a knowledge; they falsify them, and present us her face painted with too high and too adulterate a
complexion, whence spring so many different pictures of so uniform a subject. As she [nature] has given us feet to walk with, so has she given us
prudence to guide us in life: not so ingenious, robust, and pompous a
prudence as that of their [the philosophers] invention; but yet one that is easy, quiet, and salutary, and that very well performs what the other promises, in him who has the good luck to know how to employ it sincerely and regularly, that is to say, according to nature. The most simply to commit one's self to
nature is to do it most wisely.
[...]
I had rather understand myself well in myself, than in Cicero. Of the
experience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were but
a good scholar: whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger,
and to what a degree that fever transported him, will see the deformity
of this passion better than in Aristotle, and conceive a more just hatred
against it; whoever will remember the ills he has undergone, those that
have threatened him, and the light occasions that have removed him from
one state to another, will by that prepare himself for future changes,
and the knowledge of his condition. The life of Caesar has no greater
example for us than our own: though popular and of command, 'tis still a
life subject to all human accidents.
