Great Authors - Literature of the Renaissance - Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

[Music] so [Music] this morning i'd like to talk about erasmus book and praise of folly and talk about erasmus place in the renaissance and in the reformation and in the kind of approach he has towards writing the sort of comical book that he has and about the didactic function of comedy and a number of other connected issues in the first place erasmus himself lived in the late 15th and early 16th century flourished at about the same time that the protestant reformation was beginning he was roughly speaking a contemporary of luther and he was catholic clergyman he was renowned for his piety and for his liberal learning he was an expert translator of greek and latin he was a very serious and devout figure in the catholic church but he never rose in the hierarchy he was renowned for his learning but never really developed much interest or inclination in the political or the kind of administrative element side of the church what he mostly did was advocate a kind of humane and generous non-theological piety and in that respect perhaps his view of religion harks back to what we learned it when we read the book of job that perhaps theology and piety are in some respects incompatible or at least as a certain tension between the two erasmus is one of the most attractive and sane figures of the reformation or counter-reformation and this is remarkable because the reformation and its catholic counter-reformation is not remarkable for attractive sane level-headed figures erasmus was a sort of beacon of tolerance and intelligence and humility at a time that was really lacking in such things first off he is most known for a book called the praise of foley which was written in latin and which was an encomium or speech of praise on the pagan goddess folly which is personified in this book in other words folly does all the speaking folly gives a lecture in praise of the various elements of folly and the devotees of folly and the subsets of folly in other words folly to a great extent is co-extensive with our sins and erasmus was very much concerned with the problem of human sinfulness the problem of pride particularly intellectual pride he is very critical of other intellectuals and even critical of himself which shows you the kind of level-headed broad-minded fair-minded man we're dealing with here the sort of person that's able to level criticism towards himself towards the kind of person that he is the segment of society that he comes from is one that's able to deal justly and fairly and reasonably with others now even though he was abhorred by some of the more radical elements in the catholic church because they thought of him as insufficiently vigorous in defense of the faith and he was also roundly castigated by luther himself because he thought that he was in fact the most dangerous kind of reactionary because he appeared reasonable and in fact was and he appeared to make uh corrupt and evil catholicism appear morally acceptable he caught a lot of criticism and a lot of flak from the more radical of the reformers as well and if you can tell a man's value by the kind of enemies he makes perhaps this is the best possible statement of what a virtuous man he is fanatics on both sides disliked him because of the fact that he was so fair-minded so broad-minded in his criticisms he spent the greater part of his life studying scripture and classical letters he did translations from classical greek and latin he was a pivotal figure in the northern renaissance because he helped adapt and bring into the culture of northern europe important elements of the classical writings and at the same time he spent a good bit of time studying the bible and working out what he could of theological issues ultimately what he decided was that there are many passages of scripture that are obscure and uncertain and the best thing that human wisdom can do is to allow for a certain degree of play in the text to insist that while the general spirit of the gospels is accessible to human beings it's not profitable or appropriate for us to argue about the letter of the law i believe this passage in the gospel which says the spirit of the law giveth life and the letter of the law giveth death well he wasn't so much involved with the letter of the law as he was with the spirit of the law and what erasmus did in controversy is for the most part say well let's split the difference if we can without doing any injustice to our conscience let's see if we can't find some modus vivendi and let god sort out the problems which are really inaccessible to human beings this sort of humility suggests that he'd read the book of job very carefully and actually had appropriated the message and then applied that message to his own life there are so few intellectuals that do that erasmus was the kind of man who did what he could to avoid intellectual controversy not because he was ill-equipped to do so but because he thought for the most part it was testimony to the pride of intellectuals rather than a testimony to their sincere desire to illuminate the truth he thought that it was much more of an ego trip than anything else and he said god preserve me from such things i'll do what i can to reconcile arguing parties and then where i don't know what i'm talking about or i'm not able to discern the real truth we'll pass over that and allow for a latitude of opinion a very attractive insane figure from the reformation who brings a sort of renaissance broadness a renaissance clarity which is lacking in many of the later figures in the renaissance and in particular he is concerned that not that luther is wrong in other words in praise of foley when i cover that book in detail we'll see that he attacks the church or not attacks it but criticizes the church for things like selling indulgences he says what could be more contrary to the spirit of christianity to worldly bishops and cardinals and the hierarchy of the church insofar as they're concerned with mundane terrestrial political matters he says that's a prostitution of the church that's not what religion is really about yet at the same time he doesn't want to go so far as luther did and later calvin did on account of the fact that he foresees that the result of religious schism will be a period of rapacity and bloodshed unparalleled or unprecedented in european history to this in this respect he's largely correct after his period after he died in 1536 what we do is we see a rise of religious warfare in western europe which destroyed for example the culture of germany made a mess of european politics and caused a tremendous amount of hardship and misery which could have been avoided with a more tolerant and reasonable and humane and fair-minded approach erasmus in that respect has something to say across the centuries about the nature of religion he is renowned for wisdom as well as knowledge and wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing there are many knowledgeable people who lack wisdom what we see here is a man who is not only a profound scholar and a seriously religious individual but a man who has really appropriated wisdom what does it say that it says in the book of ecclesiastes buy wisdom and sell it not well he is a great storehouse of wisdom and offers us something to think about even today now he was at his best when writing on religious topics and he was also quite good at writing on classical topics with considerable reluctance he engaged in a controversy with luther on the nature of free will luther had written a rather dogmatic pamphlet in the beginning of the reformation about the nature of free will and the obligations of the christian conscience and luther for all his piety and seriousness was a real desk pounding kind of dogmatic fellow and he was full of the sort of self-righteousness that we associate with the prophet jeremiah those of you who know the old testament he's constantly telling the world and particularly the church how sinful it is and how much we need reformation with a capital r he did this on the basis of his particular reading of scripture which luther insisted was the only reading of scripture the right reading of scripture the one that could the only one that could be truly reconciled with the christian conscience what erasmus says is this after spending an entire lifetime of studying scripture and doing what he could to discern god's will in god's law he's thought through insofar as he could the problem of free will and his considered opinion is that it is beyond human capacity to understand in other words the problem of free will and determinism is just outside our ken and the humble sensible faithful servant of god is one that won't cause terrestrial political disputes particularly religious and political bloodshed over an issue that nobody really understands how sensible how humane this is why he is a figure of great importance in the history of european letters now luther of course wrote back a thundering response saying the holy spirit is not a skeptic which strongly suggests the holy spirit is really an ally of luther rasmus says well look i don't have any monopoly on god i don't have any special access to the holy spirit i do what i can to live a holy life and to improve those around me and to do honor to the profession of learning and to be a good clergyman but i think that even though the holy spirit may not be a skeptic about some issues i am a skeptic because it's just an indication of the limitations of my knowledge and perhaps the entire limitations of human knowledge altogether a very humane humane yet cerebral and impressive intellect erasmus is someone well worth your study if you get the chance and if you're going to read erasmus the only thing that really would be accessible and pleasant nowadays i would suspect is his book in praise of foley in praise of folly is a beautiful personification of sin it's an extended meditation on sin particularly upon the sin of pride but in fact all of the seven deadly sins get mentioned in in praise of folly and not only are they mentioned but they are excoriated and held up to ridicule and this is very important because erasmus humorous book because it's a very funny book it you'll laugh through it and because it's full of w of witticisms and ironies and well thought out passages which hold virtue up to ridicule they make it laughable and by making it laughable two things happen first of all it's morally didactic it shows you the imperfection it shows you the disagreeable qualities of evil and sin and folly by making it ridiculous and not only does it make it ridiculous but it makes it accessible to the average person when you accuse some individual person of having some particular fault at some particular sin oftentimes just by the nature of the human psyche and the human demand for self-justification people will reject the message it strikes too close to home it cuts a little too deep erasmus understands that element in the human psyche and in writing in praise of folly he offers a gentle clever witty satire which is broad-minded which is fair-minded which laughs at all follies equally and shows how they're distributed all across human life and by not singling out one particular person or one particular kind of evil what he does is make it more palatable in other words the sweetness of the mirth exceeds the bitterness of recognition when you see that well look since he criticizes all sins here and none of us are without sin we can't help but recognize that somewhere in this book he mentions foibles and mistakes and evils that are characteristic of us but by making the formulation of this beautiful and attractive he makes he kind of sweetens the bitter medicine and by doing so hopes to create a moral reformation in his hearers in other words what i want to argue is essentially this that in praise of folly is the greatest sermon ever written it covers the whole gamut of human sin and it covers all of human life all the elements of human life both men and women rich and poor noble and common everyone gets criticized for the characteristic vices and because you can see that his his shot rings true when he criticizes other people you get the sense that yeah when he's criticizing you or people like you when you identify yourself in this book you say yes i must admit that's a fair criticism difficult as it is to bring the charge home against myself i do recognize myself here it is a masterpiece of clever and well thought out didactic comedy so it is both a work of imaginative art it is a work of non-theological piety and it is the most lasting and improving of sermons in that respect he is both a renaissance author and a great theological writer or thinker now folly introduces herself and says since no one ever praises folly people always condemn it i believe i'm going to give a speech in praise of myself what could be more characteristic of folly self-praise is the characteristic of all foolish people and naturally folly would take this to its greatest possible extreme so in praise of folly is folly praising herself which is pretty much what you would expect in addition to that folly is personified as a pagan goddess which is to say as a sort of alternative to the god of the bible right those of us who don't worship the god of the bible with our whole heart and soul and mind are willy-nilly devotees of folly what a clever and thoughtful idea this is and how nicely these ideas mesh if you get a chance you would like to read this book you will like it he sees that you can't bully people into virtue by making virtue attractive and making vice ludicrous he gradually moves you it's a propa-dutic towards understanding what you ought to do and towards improving your life now he gives the first thing he does is give the lineage of folly which would be typical of people who are proud of their lineage he says later on in the book that those of us who are proud of their lineage are in fact the children of folly a very clever and witty retort he says well the father of folly is riches rich people tend to have greater scope for their folly and actually you see a little bit more in them when you're poor you're much too interested in putting bread on the table to practice the various follies which makes a certain amount of sense it rings true in addition the mother of folly is youth inexperience leads to mistakes inexperience leads to arrogance and wrong estimation of the world so the combination of riches and youth is a sure recipe for folly even one or the other is likely to lead you to folly and in the absence of that you'll probably get to follow later on in life but one way or another riches and youth lead to folly and folly is also considerate and she thanks her nurses the nurses of foley the ones who raise folly up and bring it from an infancy to adulthood are ignorance and drunkenness defects of the mind and defects of the body or defects of the passions the desires these defects raise the follies that you started out with to their larger adult form again a very witty thoughtful organization of his sermon now once we get past the nurses of foley we have to think of what the companions of foley are what is it that we usually associate with folly well how about the usual gamut of human vices we will find that the normal companions of foley are the things called the theological books the seven deadly sins and to these seven deadly sins he adds a few other sins which perhaps aren't quite deadly but are pretty bad and tend to lead you to a life of vice and evil the thing the companions of folly are self-love flattery sloth pleasure madness wantonness oblivion intemperance yes indeed all of the usual defects of the human soul are the things that accompany folly in other words this is an elaborate indictment of our sins but it's the most pleasing and clever indictment now after we get rid of the particular uh companions of folly he begins to inquire into the folly of common people and after going to common people he goes to the folly of nobles and from there to the folly of intellectuals and politicians and churchmen but let's start with the folly of noble of common people common follies well there's the folly of aged people behaving in a childish way and aged people do behave in a childish way sometimes there's the folly involved in idiots feigning sagacity acting as if they're intelligent folly from top to bottom there's the folly of ugly people trying to make themselves cosmetically beautiful which rings home i mean yes i said he's right about that absolutely uh there's the folly of those who are poor exceeding their income spending more than they have and there's the folly of the rich who are miserly and don't want to spend the money they have people who have no sense of proportion in other words all the sins that we will encounter in human life are going to be criticized here and somewhere along the line you can't help but recognize yourself now we go to the folly of aristocrats there are folly there are follies of pride arrogance self-indulgence all the things that you would associate with people who have rather little restraint imposed upon them by law and there's also of course the folly that comes from marriage he says that there would be no marriages at all without folly it's just part of human nature you have to accept it and do what you can with it but people are the way they are they will continue to get married like it or not but suppose hypothetically if we were able to realize what goes what goes on in the wings or behind the scenes in courtship how many ploys and stratagems there are in a suitor that wants to win a woman or a woman that wants to get married to a particular man what's going on in the back of their head there's a wonderful movie by woody allen what's it called annie hall where a man and a woman are talking to each other and that the real subtitles of what's going on in their head in fact are put beneath the dialogue and in fact what's going on in their head has nothing to do with what they're saying he says if people actually knew what was going on in the minds of other people when they talk to them particularly when they're involved in courtship and marriage no one would ever get married the fact that people get married generally speaking is testimony to the fact that we are all devotees of folly like it or not it's not that he's opposed to marriage it's not that he's opposed to courtship and love what he says is look there are some infirmities some evils some follies that are just intrinsic to human nature we can't get beyond them in other words we are sinful creatures we must live with that fact we perhaps when we become conscious of our follies can improve ourselves can perhaps restrain our follies but the idea of eliminating our follies or avoiding our follies is utopian in the pejorative sense of the term it just can't ever be done so without without folly there would be no marriage and without marriage there would be no people but there are plenty of us around and ask yourself what that means a very very clever book now beyond the folly of marriage there are some people who marry independent of love they marry for money and he says what could be more foolish if getting married for love or you know desire is foolish imagine the foolishness of a man who marries a a dowry rather than a woman foolish from top to bottom again and you see plenty of this perhaps not so much today but certainly in the time when marriages were regularly arranged we see that sort of thing all the time he says not only marriage but even friendship contains a certain amount of of folly he doesn't mean to say that friendship is an evil or that is the kind of thing we should avoid we should all become hermits but rather that don't we find that among our friends we're willing to overlook their vices kind of soft soap their vices i mean even if somebody is kind of rude or arrogant or dishonest we tend to overlook this in our friends to treat them as kind of minor vices he says what could be more foolish than that and yet all of us do it and can't avoid doing it right we can't become hermits we can't withdraw from society so although friendship is a good thing and a desirable and necessary part of human life inevitably it is accompanied by foley and all of us who are married or thinking of getting married all of us who have friends are necessarily the devotees of folly he holds up the mirror to us and shows us our imperfections he shows us that those elements in us that we don't usually want to see because he says not only do you manage to avoid confronting the imperfections and follies in your friends we also do that with ourselves and he's right about that he says look we are if we're friendly to other people even once in a while we are certainly friendly towards ourself and if we show any bias towards other people we certainly certainly show some bias towards ourselves and what could be more foolish how will you ever improve yourself if you are unwilling to see your own deformities and evils folly from top to bottom and folly tends to develop and kind of improve on itself and increase on itself and make itself worse so only by folly praising itself and by forcing us to look it in the face can we see the follies that are inherent in our own lives now there are plenty of other follies we haven't exhausted the list of folly i mean there's plenty of sins still left how about the follies of intellectuals now this is one that i particularly like all right i always read this passage twice when i read and praise the father this is a great part he says the besetting folly of intellectuals it's hard to really say where to start because they have such big heads first of all they think that what they're doing is tremendously important but on the other hand no one reads their books and the reason why no one reads their books is because what they're doing really isn't important they'll spend years in the library growing one and pale splitting hairs and doing research and cogitating and doing all these important things so that two other pale and juan people over the course of the next hundred years will read their book and think very highly of it this they're convinced is the most important thing in the universe and what could be a greater example of folly right on the money i should say not only that but he says another devotee of folly is the intellectual wannabe so because you remember that copyright laws aren't very important back at this time or they're not they don't exist as a matter of fact and because of that fact many people pirate editions of someone else's book and then sign their own name to it he says well this folly is different from the other folly of staying in the library and actually writing the book but both of them are folly one is the folly of actually thinking that intellectual stuff is really important in the cosmic scheme of things which is ridiculous and the other folly is attaching your name to a book and lying about it because you have bought into this ridiculous idea that this is really an important thing and a really praiseworthy thing to do it's all folly from top to bottom what is it that they say in the gospels my kingdom is not of this world it seems that just about everything of this world turns out to be a kind of folly and it's not necessarily that that we're to escape all these follies they're part of the human condition but he shows us that so much of what we take to be important and serious is in fact folly he also goes on once again once he gets finished skewering the intellectuals which he does beautifully he goes on to the politicians who also deserve it i like this part too he says politicians mostly spend their time doing things like adultery and blasphemy and war and oh bribery and that kind of thing and they think that's really important and that's the way that societies ought to be run most politicians are monuments to folly they are the great high priests of folly to a great extent the kings and princes and emperors of the world who have somehow convinced themselves of what they're doing is tremendously important and that they are the most significant possible people are in fact trivial in their pursuits and foolish in their aspirations this is a very critical and a very cost well not quite caustic a very gentle but direct and foundational criticism of the political life around him uh erasmus was a friend was a close personal friend of thomas moore and you can see if any of you have read utopia and you see the sort of criticism that thomas more makes of the political life of europe during the you know around the time of say 1500 or 1520 around that time you'll find many of the criticisms that moore makes about the nature of politics in contemporary europe are just like those of erasmus in fact in praise that folly is dedicated to thomas more uh there's a play on words moore's last name uh sounds very similar to the latin mori a m-o-r-i-a-e and uh that's the word for folly she says my book is in praise of folly i didn't mean it in praise of you in fact you're as far from folly as your name is close to it but the fact of the matter is most people really are foolish it may also be that there's a little bit of irony in that introduction because you've got to remember he has said that we tend to overlook our friends false and follies right so he says you're as far from it as your name is close to it well maybe maybe not maybe he's just saying that i'm a subject to the human condition and human frailties and human follies as anyone else and it's this fair-minded broad-minded humane sort of criticism that makes the book so attractive if you were to say that you're all sinful and i myself am a paragon of moral virtue a you probably disliked the guy intensely because a because b you'd know he was a liar and in addition to disliking the guy you would also be less inclined to take him seriously because you would have some doubts fair doubts about whether he was a fair-minded critic he says oh so you're the only sinless one i don't think so he he actually names himself specifically later on his father says well one of my great friends is erasmus oh yes yes he follows foley as well he understands the human condition and he is willing to accept his sinful characteristics now more is brought in politicians are criticized and after we've criticized politicians the next thing that gets criticized is the church and the clergy the catholic hierarchy in other words moore is a very fair-minded sensible humane and or not more but erasmus is a very fair-minded sensible humane individual and he is a churchman he's a clergyman and he says i have and what he must be thinking is i have seen an immense number of disgraceful activities done in the name of christianity wars and institutionalized evil and bribery and nepotism and symphony and all kinds of evil the selling of indulgences but you can't come out and say that in a book like in praise of folly so he says let me tell you some of the follies that i've seen being a clergyman living in within the church in the first case it seems to him that the fact that the church is bound up with worldly political concerns is a sign that terrestrial corruption has crept in what could be more foolish than a cardinal trying to be a minister of state it just won't work that's a way of praising folly he also criticizes the fact that indulgences are sold and this is prior to luther prior to the 95 theses what he says is this is plainly contrary to the spirit of the law remember that erasmus claimed not to be a philosopher but he said he claimed to follow the philosophy of christ now those of you who have read the new testament will not mistake jesus for aristotle in other words there isn't a philosophy of christ in the same sense it's a philosophy of say aristotle or spinoza in fact the philosophy of christ may be found perhaps in the the spirit of the gospels right perhaps in the beatitudes and he says apart from a kind of non-theological piety and the idea that we ought to do kindly unto well unto our neighbor be kind to other people you can't split too many hairs about this and we ought to reject the world and think about the other world we ought to do the best we can to be good down here but the key thing is that after we die we will be judged that's what christianity is about and the elaborate hierarchy and and all the corruption and worldliness that's come in he's clearly opposed to that he is so clearly opposed to that that at the early stages of the reformation it was expected by some of the reformers that he would come over to their side they said well anybody is fair-minded and as humane and as christian for one of a better way of describing it as erasmus can't help but see the force of our criticism and since he can't help but see the force of it and since he appears to be an honest well-intentioned man he has to come over to the side of the angels on the other hand because he was a clergyman many and because he was again a defender of the faith in many respects he was expected by the catholic hierarchy to write books in favor of the counter-reformation what he did in fact was try and withdraw from controversy and try and bring both sides together he felt that that was in keeping with the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law and he said look i spent a whole lifetime studying the letter of the law and i hardly understand that i just muddle through as best i can a kind of appropriate conscientious humility comes out of this not only does he criticize the kind of political corruptions in the church he also criticizes the intellectual corruptions back to the stuff i really like the intellectual corruptions that he criticizes are things like unreasonable or uh extravagant interpretations of scripture which don't really illuminate matters of faith or matters of morality what they do instead is illuminate the cleverness and the and the intellectual pride of the speaker he talks about some of the ridiculous sermons he has heard which which twist the words of the gospel and turn them into what the speaker had pre presupposed was going to be the case he talks about the intellectual vanity of that and says in fact this is opposite to whatever scripture could possibly teach you it is not the uh the matter for an ego trip scripture is meant as a kind of guide to getting us to heaven not a way of allowing us to get tenure which is again the kind of uh intellectual analog the kind of terrestrial analog of what this will get a christian theologian so he says i have no use for that and they're all the devotees of folly i have my sins but that's not one of them he goes beyond that and he criticizes the church of course but when he finishes up he starts to talk about scholasticism and that's a great thing to criticize because it deserves it so much he says i have heard a great many debates and disputes between the various followers of scholastic philosophy and he describes the rubbish that comes from the alchemists and the thomas and the albertists and the scotists and the various schools and how they by chopping logic and adding scripture to it come up with controversies that don't amount to anything that don't lead anywhere that are simply testimonies to their intellectual pride and their vanity and he says in fact this should be recognized for what it is another way of following the god is folly rather than following god the father the god of the bible and he's absolutely right about that in many respects you might want to compare his criticism of the scotus and the albertus the various uh schools within uh scholastic philosophy to uh jonathan swift if i mean i'll be doing that next week when i come back but uh when uh gulliver goes to glub dub drib and it's the island of the enchanters and he's given a chance to bring up both aristotle and homer and in addition to aristotle and homer because he conjures them up out of nothing he brings not just aristotle and homer but the various commentators in aristotle and homer and aristotle and homer are given a chance to actually hear what people say about them and both aristotle the ghost of aristotle and the ghost of both say these guys don't understand our work at all i don't know how they managed to make a small cottage industry out of interpretation interpreting us but the fact of the matter is that these guys don't understand this and this has nothing to do with what i was trying to say so be gone all you commentators be gone you intellectual hot dogs the fact of the matter is you don't understand what you're talking about and when we come back to in praise of folly not only is it foolish but it's sinful it's morally evil now the reason why i think this is one of the greatest sermons ever written is because i think it actually is effective in showing people what their deformities are it makes clear that sin is a kind of deformity of the soul that it is a kind of folly that they're that it's incompatible for people to be both foolish and self-satisfied and when he shows you that you're foolish you can't help but be less self-satisfied and i would compare this to uh to an alternative kind of sermon um you perhaps know this seminar there was an 18th century american puritan speaker uh he's isn't it or divine his name was jonathan jonathan edwards and he wrote a magnificent sermon magnificent because it's furious like a hurricane and this sermon is called sinners in the hands of an angry god and he talks about what evil men do that evil is paraded throughout the universe and that god does not like this that god holds the sinner over hell fire the way a boy might hold an insect over a campfire a loathsome disgusting piece of vermin god is disgusted with our evil god condemns our fa our maliciousness god does not like the way the world is being run a real hellfire and damnation kind of argument gets made by jonathan edwards that's the alternative kind of sermon now while for while the literary qualities of such a sermon are remarkable if you ever get a chance to read jonathan edwards sinners in the hands of an angry god it will scare the hell out of you and whether you're religious or not i mean it's really scary i mean just the image of insects being loathes and bugs maggots being held over a fire that they really should be pitched into except for the grace of god it will scare you the difficulty is is that that's such a harsh kind of criticism that people don't think that the maggot is them in other words if you call me foolish and you call everybody else foolish i might be able to buy into that if you call me a loathsome maggot being held over the fires of damnation i'm much more likely to think you're talking about somebody else right just human pride and vanity being what it is in other words it's not that jonathan edwards is wrong in condemning the evil of the world it's just that he loses control of his rhetoric he loses a sense of how the human psyche works in other words i think that erasmus sermon is much more sophisticated in a psychological sense we are much more likely to take a criticism to heart if you sweeten it and make it gentle so that the pain of recognition is is kind of counterbalanced by the humor or the attractiveness of the sermon when you say that you're a maggot being held over hellfire nobody wants to believe that about themself when you say that you're just like all the other people in the world foolish three-quarters of the time you can't help but agree with erasmus yeah that's largely true now this actually this these two approaches to moral didacticism in other words both of these sermons attempt to improve the hearer but they represent two kinds of approach to improving the here one is to accuse the prosecuting attorney you are bad time to reform the other is a kind of fellow traveler in in this world of sin and that's the kind of tendency that erasmus represents and this approach to morally didactic literature actually has a very very long history and it goes at least as far back as roman satire right so it's very very old and there are two romans i mean just to backtrack a little bit to show you where this comes from there are two romans that figure very heavily here and that's horus and juvenile both horus and juvenile roman satirists were wrote very very effective satires and they're still read today and i assume that they'll be included in among the literary figures that we discuss in the process of looking through the western intellectual or western literary tradition and here's how we distinguish between them the satires of horus are gentle forgiving kind of fun-loving satires in other words horus points out the defects in roman society and the evils and the hypocrisy there but he does so in a gentle and inclusive and fair-minded way and it's the broadness of the satire and the attractive sweet qualities of it that are mixed in with the criticism that make it easy and palatable as a kind of literary form and that tradition of horation satire of morally didactic literature which tends to sweeten its criticism as a vehicle or as a means towards more towards practical improvement of the here that we see in erasmus in other words what i'm saying is that erasmus is sort of the christian horus can you see how they would be connected the idea of sweetening up your criticism in order to make it more effective these are the rhetoricians that really understand the human psyche now the alternative tradition comes out of juvenile juvenile is a very angry man and very angry people who are insistent about pointing out how evil and perverse and uh morally bankrupt the world is tend to be very very self-righteous people in other words you don't put down all the rest of humanity unless you have a very very high opinion of yourself and not only does it require in the case of juvenile a very high opinion of oneself but it also requires that you lose a sense of proportion in your argument someone wants to find fanaticism as redoubling our efforts when we have forgotten our ends well if the end of this sort of literature is to the moral improvement of the hearer you must always keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish and your desire to condemn the world must be subordinated to your into your desire to improve the world and if your condemnation becomes so harsh and grating and unpleasant that no one takes it to heart because they just can't face that as in is the case for example when you say that you're a maggot being held over hellfire and god should throw you and you loathe some vermin well that's the problem with juvenile as well people who have a high opinion of themselves who tend to condemn others make others resistant to the moral message and if in the process of trying to get a moral message across you go on an ego trip you indulge your own desire to raise yourself from above the common stratum of humanity the fact of the matter is you undercut the moral force of your argument in that respect i would say that jonathan edwards is the descendant of that juvenalian tradition of criticism what we get here then are two approaches to improving the world that of somebody like jonathan edwards and that of erasmus it seems to me that that of erasmus is much more attractive certainly it's much more attractive in a christian clergyman because as erasmus points out pride particularly intellectual pride is a kind of sin and those who think themselves sinless as we found out in the book of job are among the greatest of sinners we are not justified compared to god all those juvenalian critics who want to condemn all of humanity have lost a sense of proportion and are in a way covertly justifying themselves erasmus does not justify himself erasmus includes himself by name in his book saying having folly say one of my great friends is a rad erasmus he's a real dope too and the kind of guy that can say that in fact is not a real dope the kind of guy that can say that is in fact he has is in fact a kind of humble and yet sensible and yet thoughtful man who hasn't lost a sense of proportion he is the true winner of souls because he recognizes that he is on the same level as the people he talks to so this tradition that comes out of horus and juvenile we're going to see it later on when i talk about moliere as well is a very important element in the tradition of didactic literature and because comedy is often not always but most of the time concerned with morally improving the people who observe it there's often a didactic element in comedy the comedians who give gentle and thoughtful and fair-minded criticism of others are the ones who are most effective and if we are honest in saying that we want to improve the world rather than merely have that be a kind of stalking horse for our own egotism and for our own self-righteousness then the way to do that is the horation slash erasmian tradition the tradition of gentle inclusive broad-minded criticism all right now let me conclude with with some observations about where the sorts of criticisms that erasmus offers where they go erasmus lived fortunately for him in a rather innocent time europe had not yet seen the wars of the reformation had not seen the religious butchery the misery and the intolerance and the enormous evils that are going to happen throughout the 16th century all right once the the reformation gets into full swing and the counter reformation meets it there's all kinds of fanaticism and intolerance and disgraceful behavior that does no honor to either side in which erasmus as a kind of conscientious thoughtful man would have condemned and but he would have condemned both sides because you can see that he's quite a fair-minded figure when we take this idea this kind of non-theological piety this kind of criticism of intellectual pride of intellectual uh ego trips we see erasmus is a kind of anti-intellectual thinker i mean i think that's kind of a strange paradox but he's a very thoughtful man he's a professional scholar and yet he thinks that well vanity of vanity is all is vanity particularly the vanity of intellectuals which is in some ways worse because they ought to know better well if we take him to be an anti-intellectual thinker one who is able to criticize not just the the kind of ignorant and the common people but also professional scholars as well it seems to me that after a couple of hundred years of misery and terrible tumult and persecution and intolerance and fanaticism that we get with the rules of the reformation that this sort of anti-intellectual trend which says well look we should best live our lives quietly and peaceably and not trying and take things too far we ought to restrain our sinful inclinations when this when this tendency becomes secularized it seems to me that it's going to emerge later on in another book called candide those of you who know candide and who know that the final moral is that we must we should cultivate our gardens and voltaire has candide say let us live without philosophizing it is the only way that makes life bearable well that's a somewhat more cynical and perhaps more secular more extreme formulation of the erasmian view but my understanding is is that essentially they are spiritually kin in other words it's a little bit more hard edge it's a little bit more caustic it's a little less forgiving than than the position taken by erasmus but the end of candide where we decide that well philosophy isn't going to help us very much we should do what we can to live simple kind quiet lives that don't go beyond the scope of real human virtue which is actually quite limited that in that respect uh the praise that we get of folly in erasmus is like the criticism of philosophy that we will get with voltaire erasmus differs from from the the criticism we get in voltaire is that voltaire is much more in the juvenalian tradition he's much harsher he's much more cutting erasmus then is perhaps the form of the good and moral comedian the didactic man who measures and controls his didactic tendencies and does so in the interest of moral virtue and political harmony

Channel: Michael Sugrue

Views: 6,044

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Keywords: Michael Sugrue, Dr. Michael Sugrue, Lecture, History, Philosophy, Western Culture, Western Intellectual Tradition, Western Literary Tradition, Author, Literature, Great Authors, Renaissance, Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

Id: po7QCNVnIzw

Length: 45min 55sec (2755 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020