This text questions the concept of the essay as a purely academic gender. We start from the idea that it is an evident expression of subjectivity and the appeal to poetic resources, which can be corroborated by reading Michel de Montaigne’s essays. Therefore, we cannot conceive this genre as the ideal way of conducting science because its creator, rather than a method for truth, suggested a particular and individual way of viewing the world. In his idea of the essay there is no place for the categorical statement, but for the expression of doubts.