Montaigne on post modernism, wokeness etc

just as he was about to embark on his Pyrrhonian arguments, Montaigne added an important comment in the margin of the Bordeaux copy of his works he was preparing for the press. It concerns Protagoras , the arch-Sophist who was trounced by Sextus, Plato and Aristotle in very similar terms and for identical reasons: And what can anyone understand who cannot understand himself?… Protagoras was really and truly having us on when he made ‘ Man the measure of all things’– Man, who has never known his own measurements.

Protagoras meant – that is what shocked Plato, Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus – that there is no universal standard of truth: each human being is severally and individually the sole criterion; all is opinion, and all opinions are equally true or false. For Montaigne, Protagoras’ ‘measure of Man’ is ‘so favourable’ to human vanity as to be ‘merely laughable. It leads inevitably to the proposition that the measure and the measurer are nothing.’

From the introduction to Apology for Raymond Sebond, edited by Michael Screech, which is only £1.99 on Kindle right now (US link - where it is not reduced).