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Name: Praise of Folly and Letter to Maarten van Dorp (Penguin Classics): Erasmus, Desiderius, Levi, A. H. T., Radice, Betty, Levi, A. H. T.: 9780140446081: Amazon.com: Books
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Rating: 4.4 (207 reviews)

Praise of Folly and Letter to Maarten van Dorp (Penguin Classics) Paperback – March 1, 1994

by Desiderius Erasmus (Author), A. H. T. Levi (Editor, Introduction), Betty Radice (Translator)

4.4 207 ratings

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Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466-1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly, dressed as a jester, who celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and goes on to lambast human pretensions, foibles and frailties, to mock theologians and monks and to praise the 'folly' of simple Christian piety. Erasmus's wit, wordplay and wisdom made the book an instant success, but it also attracted what may have been sales-boosting criticism. The Letter to Maarten van Dorp, which is a defence of his ideas and methods, is also included.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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About the Author

Desiderius Erasmus, (born October 27, 1469, Rotterdam, Holland—died July 12, 1536, Basel, Switzerland) was the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance, the first editor of the New Testament, and an important figure in classical literature. He helped lay the groundwork for the historical-critical study of the past, and his educational writings contributed to the replacement of the older scholastic curriculum by the new humanist emphasis on the classics. By criticizing ecclesiastical abuses, he encouraged the growing urge for reform, and his independent stance in an age of fierce controversy made him a target of suspicion for loyal partisans on both sides and a beacon for those who valued liberty over orthodoxy.

Betty Radice read classics at Oxford, and became joint editor of Penguin Classics in 1964. As well as editing the translation of Livy’s The War with Hannibal she translated Livy’s Rome and Italy, Pliny’s Letters, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise and Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, and also wrote the introduction to Horace’s Complete Odes and Epodes, all for Penguin Classics. She also edited Edward Gibbon’s Memoirs of My Life for the Penguin English Library, and edited and annotated her translation of the younger Pliny’s works for the Loeb Library of Classics and translated from Renaissance Latin, Greek and Italian for the Officina Bodoni of Verona. She collaborated as a translator in the Collected Works of Erasmus, and was the author of the Penguin Reference Book Who’s Who in the Ancient World. Betty Radice was an honorary fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and a vice-president of the Classical Association. She died in 1985.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (March 1, 1994)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140446087
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140446081
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 5.04 x 0.65 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #871,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #419 in Humanist Philosophy
- #437 in Renaissance Literary Criticism (Books)
- #18,473 in Classic Literature & Fiction

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4.4 207 ratings

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Customers find the book engaging and thought-provoking. They describe it as a clever, brilliant read worth their time. The detailed introduction is appreciated for its ability to evaluate motives and faulty thinking.

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Customers find the book engaging and refreshing. They describe it as a clever, brilliant read that is worth their time. The book offers an insightful satire on life and ancient history.

"...It is worthy of your time on its own merit...." Read more

"An engaging and hilarious satire on life, and ancient history...." Read more

"I'm only about halfway through this work, and it's rather brilliant...." Read more

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Customers find the book thought-provoking and intriguing. They appreciate the detailed introduction, Erasmus's evaluation of motives and faulty thinking, and the interesting technique and sharp social commentary.

"...This is fairly well provided in the Introduction...." Read more

"...The introduction gives an excellent overview of the religious and political situation, of the turn from Latin texts to vernacular texts with the..." Read more

"...This detailed introduction is a treasure. One reason I avoided Erasmus all these years due to my obvious lack of background in medieval thought...." Read more

"...Interesting technique, and bitingly sharp social commentary." Read more

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Fos
As described
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2024
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Arrived early and in good condition

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Jim D.
The personal philosophy of Folly, the ancient god of foolishness.
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2013
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This book was written by Erasmus, but it is presented as a first person narrative of Folly, the god responsible for foolishness. Sixteenth century literature is not easy to read and while it appears to be presented in a light-hearted manner, Folly lacks no barbs in commenting on the human race. In the first third of the book (there are no chapters or other indicators) he talks about human nature in general: There are two types of human beings; the serious and wise men who live their lives based on established ideas, and the rest of us who do foolish things without considering the consequences, tend to enjoy life, new adventures and new ideas. The next third of the book is directed toward individual professions before moving to the princes and kings who do not like the wise men because they tell the truth, whereas royalty prefers those who tell them how great they are and support their foolish ideas. In the final third of the book, Folly gets warmed up to his philosophizing, and moves on to the delights in the folly of all organized religion. In retrospect, Folly, as an ancient god, considered himself on equal terms with Zeus, Mars and Venus and all the other gods. While they needed the assurance of temples and worship, Folly could look and easily see that the human race strongly supported his view of life; in other words, appreciate the fact that humans are venturesome. Folly gives us what we have today and not what was considered established and unchangeable with the past. Personally, I support Folly!

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Phred
One of Western Civ’s great documents. A modern reader may want an edition that provides more help
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2017
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Bottom Line: This review is of the Kindle edition of Erasmus’s In Praise of folly. Mine has a very good intro written by Jean Asta and no additional footnotes or commentary. My opinions aside, Praise of Folly is an important book in Western Civilization. It is worthy of your time on its own merit. The style of the period tends to weigh the humor down and a lack of internal division can make it a difficult read.

Unless you come to this book as a student of Western Literature or a related educated background having some context before you begin In Praise of Folly is critical. This is fairly well provided in the Introduction. From small things like; the original Latin title can be read as a playful pun directed at England’s Sir Thomas Moore. The two had become friends while Erasmus was visiting him in England and the book was begun if not entirely written under Moore’s roof. The historic context is that Erasmus was also in close contact with Martin Luther. Much of what Erasmus prints in In Praise of Folly is at the expense of some contemporary Roman Catholic practice. Luther had an expectation that its author would follow him into the Protestant schism. Luther would not take it well when Erasmus chose to remaina Catholic. Indeed he had been a monk and am ordained priest. He lived as a scholar, thinker and writer. He is best known as a central figure in the creation of the Humanist Philosophy.

In Praise of Folly is written in the form of a speech given by the Goddess of Folly making her claim of the primacy of Folly in human affairs. Her argument is intentionally faulty and occasionally contradictory but this is all part of the satire. Typical of Folly’s argument is an early one wherein she states that all humans are born in an act of folly. This is a favorite passage of mine, if only because it is early in the book. By the end of the book, about 85 pages, intro included, Folly has touched upon every phase of human life and made some pointed jests some of the extremes and apparent contradictions in religious practice.

It is said that humor does not travel well across time. There are parts to this short book that left me smiling. I cannot claim to have understood many references. There is near the end an appeal to a very aesthetics religious outlook even at the expense of what we now call the sciences. Does Folly/Erasmus intend this to be taken literally or sardonically? Annotation and or footnoting would be a major help in addressing that which is obscured by history or requiring additional context.

By the end of Folly, I felt as though I had been reading a run on sentence. There are distinct parts built into the flow of Folly’s speech. These could have been sectioned off, if only by skipping a few lines between them. The author may not have them in the original. Either way, the cascade of words with no breaks and the heavy, wordy style of the day made this a less pleasant read than it was intended. The right scholars may be able to read this and savor every joke and twist. For the rest a few explanations would help. These are not the fault of the Erasmus, but a recommendation that a better edition might include this additional help.

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rjames
A precursor to the reformation.
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2020
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The book was written when the Reformation was about to happen. The introduction gives an excellent overview of the religious and political situation, of the turn from Latin texts to vernacular texts with the challenge to the hierarchical authority of Rome.

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Clay Garner
‘I hate a fellow-drinker with a memory’, and new one - ‘I hate an audience which won’t forget.’
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2019
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( . . . from introduction by A.T.H. Levi . . . )

“What was at stake was simply the attempt to make the Christian revelation rationally intelligible, a problem the Christian theologians inherited from Islam. In the thirteenth century the full-scale exploitation of Islam’s Aristotelianism in the interests of elaborating a rational system capable of supporting the Christian revelation was finally undertaken by Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74).’’

Some scholars conclude ‘Aquinas became more a follower of Aristotle than Christ’.

“Aquinas was impelled by the old problems in the psychology of cognition raised by the controversy between realists and nominalists, and he provided the basis for a more optimistic understanding of the world and human experience than that inherited from Augustine, whose later writings had emphasized the effects of original sin on man’s natural powers.’’

Seems to me (and others) this unjustified trust in ‘human reason’ collapsed in WW1 and has not returned.

“In particular, Aquinas believed in a rationally ordered universe that reflected the rationality of the divine mind in its laws and structure. Since the human intellect was a created derivative of the eternal mind of God, it was itself capable of judging what was and what was not in accordance with ‘right reason’, or the rational norms imprinted on the cosmos by its creator. In other words the human intellect was capable of making moral judgements that necessarily accorded with divine law because both were based on the same rational norms.’’

This belief that ‘human reason derived from mind of creator’ underpins science. Darwin pulled out these pins . . .

“For Aquinas the norm of morality was the conformity of some particular object with the rationally perceived end of man, and this norm was necessarily in accordance with the divine law and the natural law, which was its reflection.’’

This ability to find ‘rationally known purpose for humans’ essential to engine driving ‘Reason’. Without goal, no road . . .

What other choice?

“Duns Scotus (1265–1308) reacted strongly against Aquinas by restoring in psychology primacy to the will over the intellect. He thereby emphasized both the freedom of the human will at the expense of the rationality of the act of choice.’’

‘Will controls reason’ shows alternate explanation of human thought. This interpretation seems (to me) can be used to support ‘post-truth’, ‘fake news’, etc.. If all ‘reason’ will be — controlled, adjusted, changed by the ‘will’ — why pretend to trust logic, facts, evidence, etc., when we ‘know’ they are useless!

( . . . Nietzsche, Foucault, Marcuse, etc. . . . )

Notice this question surfaces over a thousand years ago!

What influence Erasmus have on Christendom?

“There can no longer be any real doubt that the central feature of Jesuit spirituality, the celebrated ‘rules for the discernment of spirits’ at the heart of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, derives from Erasmus.’’

Jesuit’s program from Erasmus! Wow!

“The early Jesuits, at least, came very near to venerating his memory, and the Jesuit Peter Canisius spoke very highly of him. Most of his educational theory was taken up into their own carefully elaborated educational program expressed in the ‘Ratio Studiorum’ which was the immensely influential charter for their schools in the late sixteenth century.’’

Erasmus’ ideas Foundation for Jesuit education!

This detailed introduction is a treasure. One reason I avoided Erasmus all these years due to my obvious lack of background in medieval thought. Levi’s great explanation just what I needed!

Nevertheless, Erasmus’ writing still obscure. Assumes detailed knowledge of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.. That is not me. I did grasp most of his references to scripture, but, even then, took serious effort.

Levi explains . . .

“Folly’s final panegyric of unlettered Christian piety is the entirely serious if now mature derivative of his boyhood piety. It was only superficially neoplatonist, although permeated with a devotion to the authentic text of Scripture that by 1514 made a virtually public announcement of the forthcoming edition of the New Testament in Greek which Erasmus was to publish in 1516. The Pauline folly seriously praised by Folly at the end of her mock sermon, essentially derived from the spiritual combat as envisaged by à Kempis and Pico, can now be seen to have become the point of Erasmus’s text and the focus of scholastic hostility towards it.’’

Erasmus’ new Greek text of the Bible was a dramatic event in Christendom . . .

Another insight . . .

“The heresy of Pelagius, who had come from Britain to Rome in the late fourth century and had been strongly attacked by Augustine, centred on his aristocratic view that the human will could attain to religious perfection, define its own values and reform society. Pelagius held that man could merit his salvation unaided by grace. The ‘semi-Pelagian’ heresy consisted in holding that man, by his unaided efforts, could at least merit the first gratuitous gift of God which, if accepted, could lead towards the subsequent state of justification in the eyes of God. By extension, it was also semi-Pelagian to hold that man by his own unaided efforts had the power even to accept grace that was offered to him, but this was the conclusion to which Scotus’s emphasis on the will’s freedom seemed naturally destined to lead. Scotus, however, guarded against any such implication of his psychology by affirming God’s ‘absolute’ predestination of the elect, that is without reference to any foreseen merit.’’

I have often puzzled why predestination is so . . . so . . . important. This paragraph gives one clue . . .

Henry VIII and Erasmus! What!

“At the suggestion of Henry VIII and with startling accuracy he picked on the essence of Luther’s spiritual position, the denial of any autonomous power of self-determination in man. Luther’s rebellion against fifteenth-century religion had been less humanistically motivated but more sudden and more radical than that of Erasmus. Above all, he had attacked the Pelagianism of the scholastics and the religious tension which it had bred. For Luther, justification consisted in the non-imputation of guilt. The need for straining to do all that lay within one was thereby removed. Justification had become a clearly gratuitous act of God, and Luther’s concept of faith as trust and confidence in God further removed the need for moral tension. It made it possible for the truly devout to be virtually assured of their salvation.’’

No guilt! No free-will! No moral effort! Salvation guaranteed! No wonder Luther popular!

A few gems . . .

“But wisdom makes men weak and apprehensive, and consequently you’ll generally find the wise associated with poverty, hunger, and the reek of smoke, living neglected, inglorious, and disliked. Fools, on the other hand, are rolling in money and are put in charge of affairs of state; they flourish, in short, in every way. For if a man finds his happiness in pleasing princes and spending his time amongst those gilded and bejewelled godlike creatures, he’ll learn that wisdom is no use at all to him, and is indeed decried above all by people like this.’’

Well . . . who can dispute this — five hundred years later?

Last paragraph . . .

“There’s an old saying, ‘I hate a fellow-drinker with a memory’, and here’s a new one to put alongside it:

‘I hate an audience which won’t forget.’

And so I’ll say goodbye. Clap your hands, live well, and drink, distinguished initiates of FOLLY.’’

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Top reviews from other countries

Panta Rhei
Exceptionally clever
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 27, 2021
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Exceptionally clever book that sits comfortably with Plato, Montaigne, St Augustine, Marcus Aurelius and Pliny (younger) et al. A must reader for observers of humanity.

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Amazon Customer
very beautiful
Reviewed in India on October 7, 2017
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very beautiful

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a guidry
Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on February 22, 2016
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previously read but wanted it for more careful reading.

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Delia
The Folly is in all of us!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2018
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As relevant today as it was 500 years ago when it was written!

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Kevin J.
Erasmus, "In Praise of Folly"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2013
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'In Praise of Folly ' written in the 16th century by the Humanist Desiderius Erasmus, and here translated from the Latin makes a very strong statement of religious practice and ideals during the early Reformation period of the 16th century. This, as well as his other contributions to Late Medieval literature was to inspire the great reformers in the years that followed.
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