Ali Benmakhlouf, Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Paris Est – Créteil, is the holder of the 2026 UCSD James K. Binder Lectureship in Literature. As part of his Binder Lectureship, Benmakhlouf will address a Literature and Cultural Studies class on the history and philosophy of medicine. In this lecture, students from a wide range of disciplines, and especially those with pre-health-career backgrounds, will learn about Michel de Montaigne and the Montaigne's conceptualization of pain, medicine, and the role of illness in the texture of human life.

Abstract: Medicine according to Montaigne: example, experience, art
Chapter 37 of Book II of Montaigne's Essays is entirely devoted to illness and medicine. Montaigne's mistrust of the medical profession does not mean that he rejects therapeutic teachings based on example and experience. He had a way of experiencing illness that shed new light on the acceptance of pain: neither heroic denial of pain, as in Stoicism, nor religious complaisance towards suffering. 

Nowadays, Montaigne would have been very interested in genetic studies, since his father left him with a “stony disposition” (renal colic), a condition that led him to wonder about what bodies pass on from one generation to the next: the genetic transmission of diseases seemed to him more difficult to understand than miracles. The lecture I propose will attempt to grasp the role of illness in the texture of life, how it constitutes an “essay” worthy of consideration in shaping life with, according to, and against illness. I will pay particular attention to the anthropological and, as we would say today, “genetic” dimension of illness in Montaigne. Not to mention his constant concern to contrast the teachings of nature with science as a risky invention of the mind.

All are welcome to this public lecture! Prior readings as circulated to the class may be requested in advance from Amrita Dhar (amdhar@ucsd.edu), but while the prior reading is encouraged, it is not required.