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Fitzgerald's Follies
In The Praise of Folly, in 1509, Desiderius Erasmus personified folly as a goddess. She develops the thesis that folly is good and that it is deserving of praise. Folly remarks on her own ubiquity — since we all, the wise and the unwise, live in folly’s grip. “Fortune herself,” Folly tells us, “the directrix...
Socrates is the wisest man in a city said to favor wisdom, and after being put on trial for no actual crime he is compelled to commit suicide. Though Erasmus pokes fun at the self-importance and the pieties of theologians and clerics, he emphatically does not equate folly with nihilism or wisdom with hypocrisy. Subscribe Now Register for a Free Sample Just enter your email to read one essay per month and receive our weekly newsletter.
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