Erasmus, The Praise of Folly; More, Utopia

Though I feel as if I got a lot out of the medieval philosophers––the Islamic theologians and Maimonides especially––I did complain quite a bit about the dense logic they often employed, lines of reasoning that were mystifying on first (and usually second) read. Indeed, one of the most unique aspects of scholasticism, as far as I’m concerned, is a glorification of Aristotelian logic. How, then, does the Renaissance set itself apart as a separate epoch?

At the same time that Europe experienced a rebirth of classical scholarship, it experienced also the rise of humanism, which was no longer concerned with the monastic approach to arguments that so dominated the previous era. Renaissance humanism instead, as Clarence Miller writes in his introduction to Erasmus, “might be simplistically described as an attempt to regain and restore the rightful roles of grammar and rhetoric.” Simplistic as that may be, it’s an excellent working definition, as we’ve already seen the way Boccaccio and Chaucer brought language and rhetoric to the fore. So too do the figures of today’s post, Desiderius Erasmus and Sir Thomas More.

The two men were friends and often made references to one another in their works, which have much in common. The Praise of Folly and Utopia both make constant reference to the Greeks and Romans. Both are written in Latin. And perhaps most significantly, both join in rhetorical games that stretch the boundaries of logic. In Folly, an encomium (or work of praise) to Folly written by Folly herself, we hear praises and defenses of foolishness so strong that it is difficult to untangle what Erasmus believes from what is tongue-in-cheek. In Utopia, a narration about a perfect society living on an island, our confidence in the so-called perfection of the community is constantly undermined by the narrator, and we are left unsure of what to make of this place called Utopia.

Such is the power of rhetoric, as demonstrated by two of the most famous Renaissance humanists. In today’s post, we’ll consider these two works, which recall and reinforce one another so strongly, and ask what the often paradoxical and disarming rhetoric employed by these two great writers can tell us.

Folly

There is plenty to be discussed in the Praise of Folly as far as arguments go, but even more interesting than its content is its structure. First, Praise is an encomium, that is, a speech written in praise of someone who is generally worthy of such a speech. The most famous example is probably the “Encomium of Helen” by the ancient sophist Gorgias, who gave many reasons for why Helen should be praised, despite having a pivotal role in the start of the Trojan War. So generally, encomia are written by one person in praise of another. Not so with Erasmus’ work, which is written ostensibly by Folly about Folly herself. Who else, it seems to imply, would wish to write a hymn of praise to someone as decidedly unpraiseworthy as Folly?

Folly sets out to prove that she is indeed praiseworthy, and does so in a three-act structure, here described by Clarence Miller:

“(1) Folly provides the illusions necessary to render life in this world tolerable or even pleasant… (2) Folly makes the professional leaders of church and state blind enough to be happy in their vicious irresponsibility… (3) Folly enables the Christian fool to renounce the world in favor of Christian joy in this life and the beatific vision in the next.”

Folly begins in act one (note that these acts are interpolated by scholars and don’t represent hard divisions in the text itself) by describing the ways in which she makes life bearable for the average person. She follows this by extending her duties to leaders of church of state, allowing them to be happy despite the terrible job they do. She concludes by saying that she also helps the Christian fool endure the irresponsibility of the very leaders whom she has made subject to her power.

Immediately we see a problem in this so-called three-act structure. The sections are related to one another, but they also seem to be responsible for one another. All men are foolish in order to live with the absurdities of life; included among all men are leaders of church and state; yet Christians, also included among all men, are miserable without folly exactly because of the leaders of church and state. I wanted to be fancy and say that the middle section acts as something of a chiasma, but on second thought, I don’t think that’s accurate. The entire work, in fact, is rather reminiscent of Homer Simpson’s dictum about alcohol: Folly is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. Or even more accurately, it is like this SMBC. 

Of course, Folly is very convincing if you don’t think too hard about her arguments. She begins by describing the plight of all men: that their wisdom runs counter to their passions:

“Moreover, he [Jupiter] limited reason to the narrow confines of the head, leaving all the rest of the body to passion… How much reason can do against the forces of these two [anger and passionate desire] is sufficiently clear from the everyday life of mankind: she does all she can, which amounts to no more than shouting herself hoarse and preaching moral rules, but the passions tell their ruler to go to the devil and shout her down all the more impudently, until she is so tired that she gives in and knuckles under.”

Who has not experienced such a dilemma: did not Augustine rail against this very problem in his Confessions? The mind is no match for the will, and it is even difficult, truly nearly impossible, to bend one’s will to one’s will; Godel would prove this about half a millennium later.

Folly’s arguments in fact remind me very much of a certain episode I experienced. Once, some friends and I were watching American History X. If you are unfamiliar with the movie, Edward Norton stars as an neo-Nazi who returns from prison seeing the error of his ways and seeks to keep his younger brother from going down the same path. There’s a scene early on when Norton, before his stint in prison, confronts his mother’s new lover, a Jewish man, about the atrocities perpetrated by the Jews and how they are the cause of the world’s woes. Yet Norton is not your run-of-the-mill bigot, but a brilliant rhetorician, and he chooses his examples and his words and his tone so carefully that even my friend, watching the film with me, asked, Is it racist if I agree with him? The answer, despite what you may think, is no: Norton, the character, was written so that he would be convincing. Think of Ivan Karamazov, how he could not free himself from his own arguments. Norton is a racist, but he’s also smart, and there’s nothing wrong with falling for his arguments prima facie. But it is upon closer inspection that his arguments, as well as Folly’s, are shown to hold no water.

Take for example the direction she goes after the opening pages. She gives examples (we see how much Erasmus loves the Classical age here) from Circero and Quintillian: Cicero, she says, praises trepidation, Quintillian, fear. Therefore, she says, don’t they “clearly admit that wisdom is a hindrance to doing a job properly?” She continues:

“The fool plunges into the thick of things, staring danger in the face, and in this way (unless I am badly mistaken) he acquires true prudence. Homer seems to have seen this (in spite of his blindness) when he said ‘a fool is wise after the event.’”

Who has not had this same thought? Has not much been made of people like the subway hero in New York, and parodied on 30 Rock? Hell it was even written about in that book All Things Shining by a couple really important philosophers. But it’s said by Folly, so we must see the problem with the argument. Just because apparent vices like fear and trepidation are praised does not mean that wisdom should be discarded, cast aside as a relic of a former time. Rather, wisdom can be found separating true folly from wise folly: a fool is wise after the event, but only to those who saw his wisdom as foolishness. Time does not separate the fool from the wiseman; rather, judgment does.

But let us not spend all our time picking apart Folly’s arguments. It is enough that we know that her words are not to be taken at face value.

Having disposed with normal people, Folly moves on to leaders of church and state. First up, the medieval theologians:

“Certainly, though no one is less willing than they are to recognize my good will toward them, still these men are also obliged to me for benefits of no little importance. They are so blessed by their Selflove as to be fully persuaded that they themselves dwell in the third heaven, looking down from high above on all other mortals as if they were earth-creeping vermin almost worthy of their pity… In all of these there is so much erudition, so much difficulty, that I think the apostles themselves would need to be inspired by a different spirit if they were forced to match wits on such points with this new breed of theologians.”

Truly, this is an argument that could not have been made a few hundred years ago. Folly criticizes the scholastics for turning the teachings of the apostles into a series of increasingly complex word games, so that even the saints themselves would not be holy by the definition of these philosophers.

Yet we should notice something else about this second section: the language is very different. There are fewer rhetorical flourishes, fewer direct references to Folly herself. Rather, this middle section seems as if it could have been written by Erasmus without any reference to a goddess. If any of Folly’s words can be put into Erasmus’ mouth, they would certainly be from this section. This is supported by a comment made by William H Gass in his wonderful afterword: “Erasmus wanted the church to allow the study of pagan authors because he often found them wise and in every way as virtuous as the accepted saints.” Perhaps Erasmus recognized the wisdom of the pagans as well as the folly of many of the saints who, virtuous though they may be, are still foolish.

Finally, Folly quotes the prophets whom she said would find no support from the theologians, quoting them as proof that even God recognizes the importance of her work.

“But [the prophet] Jeremiah professes this belief much more frankly in his tenth chapter: ‘Every man,’ he says, ‘is rendered foolish by his wisdom.’ Wisdom he attributes to God alone, leaving folly as the lot of all men.”

But that’s clearly not what he’s saying. Wisdom is indeed God’s, but that does not mean man receives no share of it: recall that men are made in the image of God, and that a great deal of scholarship in the past centuries was dedicated the showing how wisdom is God’s gift to men. This is true too of the other passages he quotes, such this passage, either from Ecclesiastes or Ecclesiasticus: “A fool changes like the moon, a wise man is immutable like the sun.”

Utopia

The difficulties of Folly lie in its structure and its arguments. More’s Utopia engages with the same rhetorical challenges as Erasmus’ work, but it also derives confusion from its use of language. This problem is brought to light in its very title: Utopia, which in modern parlance is synonymous with “good place” (eu-topos in Greek), can also be translated as “no place” (ou-topos). To skirt middle-school-English analysis, neither is the “correct” translation: the point, rather, is that the Utopian island is both a good place (if we are to believe the narrator Hythloday, which we perhaps shouldn’t, as his name translates to “peddler of nonsense”) and a place that can’t possibly exist, which we will discuss in a moment. The reality of Utopia seems predicated in fact on its hanging in the balance between these two interpretations. The critic Edward Surtz, as quoted in the introduction, writes:

“Is the Utopian view of war, religion, and communism really absurd? Is the Utopian vision really hopeless and unachievable? Utopia therefore is an open-ended work––or better a dialogue with an indeterminate close. More asks the right questions––which can never be answered fully.”

I would change the words just a little: because More asks the right questions, we can never know for certain. For if such a place that fulfilled all of More’s hopes could exist, it already would; since it doesn’t, it cannot.

Why can Utopia not exist? One possible reason: money. Hythloday describes Utopia as having a wealth of gold, but not recognizing that wealth as such. That is, the citizens of Utopia know about the evils of money and therefore do not use it, though it has so much that it could utilize. A lovely idea, is it not? But how would its citizens, who have presumably never left the island, how would they know of the havoc money has wrought on other countries? One might answer, from the books that are brought to the island, works by Plato and Aristotle. Yet they would then know that money is worthwhile elsewhere and would leave the island, taking some of it along with them. It is simply a fanciful dream that such a place could exist. As Jerry Harp writes in the afterword, “You can’t get there from here.” Utopia is a “no place” because it is internally inconsistent; there is no way for such a place to exist.

Moreover, Utopia doesn’t really seem like a great place. Its solutions all seem too elegant and don’t account for the tempestuous nature of human psychology. Take their clothing: “when they go out in public they put on cloaks which cover these rough clothes; throughout the island they are all of the same color…” It seems that Utopians are free from vanity as well as greed. Or take children: “For it is not possible to set a limit for children. This limit is easily maintained by transferring persons from households with too many people to those with too few.” This could never work, for reasons that don’t need to be discussed.

And this is the other point I want to make about the book. Utopia is a simple place. Hythloday, in describing it, uses simple language. Everything is black and white. The sentences are short, the syntax straightforward. In his rhetoric, we may think he has accounted for everything. And, just as Edward Norton may have tricked some of us into becoming neo-Nazis, so Hythloday tricks us with his language.

When criticizing England, on the other hand, Hythloday’s language is anything but simple. In fact, in two places, he uses a sentence that lasts more than one page, straining, as Clarence Miller writes in the introduction, straining the Latin syntax almost to its breaking point. Who but the (post-)modernists would construct such a sentence? What practical need is there for language like that? Yet that is exactly what Hythloday employs, that which is unnecessary, in service of his goal. As much as he admires the Utopians, it seems that even he cannot live up to their unrealistic standard.

Stray Observations

• Folly: “I always look exactly like what I am.” Not I always am what I am, but the appearance of such.
• Folly: “Just as nothing is more foolish than misplaced wisdom, so too, nothing is more imprudent than perverse prudence. And surely it is perverse not to adapt yourself to the prevailing circumstances, to refuse ‘to do as the Romans do,’ to ignore the party-goer’s maxim, ‘take a drink or take your leave,’ to insist that the play should not be a play. True prudence, on the other hand, recognizes human limitations and does not strive to leap beyond them; it is willing to run with the herd, to overlook faults tolerantly or to share them in a friendly spirit. But, they say, that is exactly what we mean by folly. I will hardly deny it––as long as they will reciprocate by admitting that this is exactly what it means to perform the play of life.”
• Folly: “Nowadays flattery is thought of as disreputable, but only by people who are more concerned about words than about things themselves… Not to mention that this flattery plays a large part in that eloquence everyone praises, a larger in medicine, and the largest of all in poetry ––in sum, it is the honey and spice of all human intercourse… But to be deceived, they say, is miserable. Quite the contrary––not to be deceived is most miserable of all. For nothing could be further from the truth than the notion that man’s happiness resides in things as they actually are. It depends on opinions.”
• Folly: “Surely you don’t believe that there is any difference between those who sit in Plato’s cave gazing in wonder at the images and likenesses of various things––as long as they desire nothing more and are no less pleased––and the wiseman who left the cave and sees things as they really are?”
• A portion of a sonnet by George Santayana, as quoted by William H Gass in his afterword: “It is not wisdom to be only wise / and on the inward vision close the eyes / but it is wisdom to believe the heart as well.”