The incipit of the Essays presents it as a book of good faith. The truthfulness of this claim has traditionally been seriously called into question given how extensively ironic and deeply self-contradictory Montaigne’s text is. In this article I argue that Montaigne’s opening statement about good faith should not be understood as the author’s claim, but rather as a dramatic call addressed to the reader. According to Montaigne, truth is beyond our reach since we deal only with our own “phantasies” about God, the world, and ourselves. Most notably, Montaigne’s Pyrrhonian skepticism, ontologically framed by Cusanus’s negative theology, is also merely a “phantasy.” The solution to such radical epistemological negativity is neither the indefinite irresolution of Montaigne’s discourse nor his resignation to the spontaneous flow of life. The solution may only come from the reader who is asked to trust in a book intended as a “dissimilar sign” of truth.
