1. Pierre Charron is remembered for his controversial form of skepticism and his separation of ethics from religion as an independent philosophical discipline.
16 Facts About Pierre Charron
1. 2.
Pierre Charron was born in Paris, one of the twenty-five children of a bookseller.
3.
Pierre Charron then entered the church and soon became a popular priest, rising to become a canon.
4.
Pierre Charron moved to the southwest of France, invited by Arnaud de Pontac, Bishop of Bazas.
5.
Pierre Charron was appointed priest in ordinary to Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henry IV of Navarre.
6.
Pierre Charron delivered a course of sermons at Angers, and in the next year moved to Bordeaux, where he formed a famous friendship with Michel de Montaigne.
7.
On Montaigne's death, in 1592, Pierre Charron was requested in the will to bear the Montaigne arms.
8.
Pierre Charron retired to Condom in 1600; he died suddenly of a stroke; his works were then receiving attention.
9.
In 1594, he published a long work, Les Trois Verites, in which Pierre Charron sought to prove that there is a God and a true religion, that the true religion is Christianity, and that the true church is Roman Catholicism.
10.
In 1601, Pierre Charron published in Bordeaux his third work, De la sagesse, a system of moral philosophy that develops ideas of Montaigne.
11.
Pierre Charron connected Montaigne's scepticism with the anti-rational strand in Christianity.
12.
Apart from the major influence of Montaigne, Pierre Charron took from Raymond of Sabunde.
13.
In comparing humans with animals, Pierre Charron insists that there are no breaks in nature.
14.
Pierre Charron writes that all religions teach that God is to be appeased by prayers, presents, vows, but especially, and, most irrationally, by human suffering.
15.
Pierre Charron writes that this is one rule of wisdom with regard to religion.
16.
Pierre Charron declares the sovereign to be the source of law, and asserts that popular freedom is dangerous.