The Importance of Experience in Philosophy

In the ancient tradition philosophers learned to die, that's what they do. But Montaigne came to the conclusion that really philosophising as a kind of obsessing over your own death wasn't going to get you very far and if anything it made dying harder. He was probably more influenced which is an idea partly from the Epicureans by the idea that to philosophers is to learn how to live more than to learning how to die. Also there's an element that runs throughout his thinking that his own personal experience trumps any theorising about anything.