6 - Holy fools, witty fools, depraved fools: folly, innocence and sin

Summary

‘Doesn't the happiest group of people comprise those popularly called idiots, fools, nitwits, simpletons, all splendid names to my way of thinking?’ demands Stultitia, the goddess Folly, midway through Eramus's Moriae Encomium, or Praise of Folly (Erasum 1511: 116). Not only are they freed from both the mundane and the spiritual crises facing others but also, as she observes, ‘if they come still closer to dumb animals in their lack of reasoning power, the theologians tell us they can't even sin.… They are indeed under the protection of the gods, and most of all, under mine; and for this reason they are rightly held in honour by all’ (117). Furthermore, she claims, ‘They're the only ones who speak frankly and tell the truth’, which has a ‘genuine power to please if it manages not to give offence, but this is something the gods have granted only to fools’ (118–19). Earlier, she argues that folly is distinguished by an attachment to emotion rather than to reason: ‘this is what marks the wise man off from the fool: he is ruled by reason, and the fool by his emotions. That is why the Stoics segregate all passions from the wise man, as if they were diseases’ (105–6). Not surprisingly, the boundaries dividing the wise from the foolish are porous and shift with context: ‘Nothing is so foolish as mistimed wisdom, and nothing less sensible than misplaced sense’ (105), Stultitia argues, while ‘to play the fool in season is the height of reason’ (186).