In Praise of Folly - Erasmus

A fantastic scathing critique of religious men, intellectuals and of those in power/of the upper class.  It seems timeless like it was written just yesterday!  I absolutely loooove the critiques in this book!

Sleep (as a follower of Folly) appears here as it does in Pilgrim's Progress.  What's with 'sleep'?  Maybe my classmates will be able to enlighten my slow mind...

I interpret Folly as humour in the part when she talks about wisdom withour folly would be unbearable and I think this true in many ways.  In this imperfect world of suffering, humour is an important coping mechanism.  Recently, at a friend's mother's 70th birthday celebration, her legs just gave out outside Hart House Restaurant and she fell and couldn't get up.  We later found out that she broke her hip.  The first thing that the parademic said to us was, "Okay, which one of you pushed her down?"  It made me laugh in a tense and stressful time.  There is certainly much wisdom (although incomplete wisdom) in Folly!

Then there is the darker Folly as discussed in class.  Perhaps Folly is a double-edged sword.  Love is generally known as something good.  We all desire love.  But love can bite you too as the rapper, KRS One notes in "Love's Gonna Get You".  He is talking about material love more specifically.  So although love is good, not love of everything is good.  You can transfer this philosophy to Folly as well.  Sometimes, it is wise to be foolish, to enjoy life, to take things easy and in perspective.  I didn't see Folly so much as 'two faced' as a classmate mentioned but rather that there are different degrees of Folly.

Erasmus' religion/God is one I can believe in.  Remove the dogma and ridiculous abstractions of religion and god and you are left with spirituality.  If there is one thing in common with most religion, it is that they all preach morality.  For a secular person like myself, I equate morality with humanity or humanism.  Can humanism thus be called a religion?  I think humanism is a form of spirituality - of connectivity with others and one's surroundings.

I didn't really know the background behind Erasmus and didn't realize until class that he was a bit of a fence-sitter and sought to reform the church from within.  I can understand why Steve would dislike this philosophy as my philosophy would be similar.  That said, I still enjoyed the text very much.  I prefer the darker humour in the last half of the book and not so much the lighter humour in the first half of the book.  I think the dark humour is so much funnier because it is sadly a true commentary on how things were (though exaggerated).

I am thinking back to King Lear's Fool.  When the truth is spoken truth a Fool (or satire/humour), it seems to be tolerate as Lear tolerates the wisdom of the Fool but banishes Cordelia when she speaks the truth.  Here, Erasmus is able to speak the truth about religious men and other privileged/upper class men pretty freely through a satire.