QuestionsWho am I, really?We are all patchwork: I do not paint being, I paint passing
Who am I, really?No fixed self

We are all patchwork: I do not paint being, I paint passing

The inconstancy of our actions; "I do not paint being, I paint passing"

Michel de Montaigne 1533 · 1592'Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice': our customs are not the measure of everything.
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What it claims

There is no fixed self in us: only pieces and a passing.

Why

Our acts contradict one another from one moment to the next, and when I watch myself I find nothing fixed to grasp, only a passing.

The same idea through history
Seneca65Seneca (Letter 120) makes the same observation: almost nobody is the same from one day to the next. But for him this is the fault of the foolish, which only the wise man has overcome. Montaigne quotes his sentence in his chapter, then makes it the ordinary condition of everyone.
Michel de Montaigne1580Montaigne (II, 1, 1580) starts from the observation of acts; in "Of repentance" (III, 2, 1588) he applies the idea to himself: his book does not paint a fixed being but a passing. The version presented here.
David Hume1739Hume will reach a neighbouring conclusion by another route: looking into himself, he finds only passing perceptions, never a self that remains.
In short

"We are all patchwork: I do not paint being, I paint passing" is an argument by Michel de Montaigne (Essays II, 1 "Of the inconstancy of our actions" (1580); III, 2 "Of repentance" (1588), 1580) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: no fixed self). Its claim: There is no fixed self in us: only pieces and a passing. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Essays II, 1 "Of the inconstancy of our actions" (1580); III, 2 "Of repentance" (1588)
Valid with an implicit premise

Montaigne watches himself and others, and sees the same thing: our acts do not make a straight line. The brave man of yesterday trembles today, the wise man says something foolish, and there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. When he turns inward he does not find a solid self either: "I do not paint being, I paint passing". Note: Montaigne does not say that there is nobody. He says that this "self" is neither one, nor fixed, nor transparent: it is a series of pieces and moments.

P1Our acts vary from one moment to the next, without any rule: "every piece plays, every moment, its own game", and there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
P2When I examine myself, I cannot fix my object: it is "tottering and reeling". I take it as it is at the instant I consider it, and what I paint is a passing.
P3 · implicit premiseIf there were in us a single, fixed self, we would find it both in the constancy of our acts and in the observation of ourselves.
Therefore there is no fixed self in us: only pieces and a passing.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds someone whose acts vary a great deal and who cannot hold his gaze on himself, but who still has a fixed self, hidden under those variations.
With the hidden premise P3, the conclusion follows: if a fixed self would show in our acts or in our self-observation (P3), and it shows in neither (P1, P2), then there is none. P3 is the weak point: a stable self could exist under varying acts, and self-observation may not show everything. Montaigne feels this himself, see the second objection below.
Analogy. A river keeps its name, but the water that passes is never the same: if you look for "the river" outside the current, you find nothing. Montaigne thinks it is the same with us.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Seneca 65 · attacks premise 3

Inconstancy is not man's nature, it is the fault of the foolish. "Nobody can be one person except the wise man": so one can have a single, lasting character, provided one wills it and works at it. Inconstancy shows a lack of judgement, not the absence of a self.

Montaigne replies
Montaigne 1580
Montaigne himself quotes this sentence of Seneca in the same paragraph ("Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere") right after his observation: we are all patchwork, and there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our reading: Montaigne does not reject Seneca, he leans on him. If only the wise man reaches unity, unity is rare and has to be won; it is not a self that everyone already carries within. A defender of Seneca would answer that a rare ideal is still a possible one.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the disagreement is about what inconstancy is. For Seneca, an ideal to reach and a fault to correct; for Montaigne, the starting condition of almost everyone. Both admit that in fact almost nobody is one.
Montaigne himself, in "Of repentance" 1588 · attacks premise 3

In the same chapter where he paints the passing, Montaigne writes: "there is no man, if he listen to himself, who does not in himself discover a particular and governing form of his own, that jostles his education". He also says he finds himself "always in my place", like heavy bodies. So there is a stable ground in him under the variations.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Montaigne in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Montaigne does not correct himself on this point. On the same page he writes: "Could my soul once take footing, I would not essay but resolve: but it is always learning and making trial" (III, 2). The "governing form" can be read as a temperament that steers, not a fixed self: acts vary around it. Or as a step back from the thesis. Our summary: the text leaves both readings open.
Where the debate stands (our summary)An open point in Montaigne himself: is a lasting temperament enough to make a "self"? Readers are divided.
John Locke 1694 · attacks premise 3

What makes me the same person is not the constancy of my character or of my acts, but consciousness: a thinking being that can consider itself as the same "in different times and places". My moods may change a great deal; it is still I who remember them. See the argument "Personal identity" (locke-identite).

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1694, after the author's death (1592).
The debate goes on (our summary) Locke writes more than a century after Montaigne, who could not answer him. A defender of Montaigne would say that the thread of memory is itself a passing, made of states that replace one another (the route Hume will take). A defender of Locke would say that Montaigne only shows that character changes, not that the person is not the same. We found no answer from Montaigne on this point.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Montaigne speaks of character and lived experience, Locke of the identity of the person. Depending on whether one calls one or the other "the self", both can be right.