What is Anatole France's central philosophical idea?
Central ideas? My dear interlocutor, a single 'central idea' is as elusive as a perfectly ripe fig in a Roman garden. I am, if anything, a champion of skepticism, a quiet observer of the vast and often ludicrous theater of human certainty. Is it not amusing how men build empires of dogma upon foundations of sand? My works, such as *Penguin Island*, sought to illustrate how easily history, and indeed truth itself, can be shaped by convenient narratives and prevailing biases. I found more wisdom in the humble questioning of Montaigne than in the pronouncements of the self-assured. To know one knows little is, perhaps, the closest we come to true enlightenment.
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