The Folly of Wisdom

Introduction and Definitions

Jaques:           A fool, A fool! I met a fool i’ the forest,
            A motley fool. A miserable world!
            As I do live by food, I met a fool,
            Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,
            And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms,
            In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.

-         William Shakespeare, As You Like It, (II, vii)

1.1              The folly of wisdom

It seems appropriate to begin a dissertation on the unusual topic of folly with some talk of wisdom, which it is fair to say is the other main theme of this work.  While the historical vociferousness of philosophers on the topic of wisdom is well known, strangely the topic of folly has remained, for the most part, the domain of writers, playwrights and artists.  The twin themes of folly and wisdom are unavoidably linked, if only by the bonds of opposition; a far closer bond than mere relation.  Just as the fool has, in our modern age, faded from common consideration, so too has wisdom become a less than popular topic.  Yet it was wisdom that influenced philosophy’s first shaking steps onto the wider stage.  If there is any one thing that can be blamed as the originator of philosophy, it should be blamed on the search for and the love of wisdom.  While contemporary philosophy may have passed over this particular quest, it is doubtful whether the topic has been, or could ever be, completely exhausted.

            Wisdom, unlike knowledge, is not the mere accumulation of facts.  It “may be accompanied by a broad range of knowledge, by intellectual acuteness and speculative depth, but it is not to be identified with any of these and may appear in their absence”[1].  If wisdom is to be related to knowledge at all, wisdom can be seen as a second order knowledge, i.e. knowledge about how to use and understand knowledge itself.  Wisdom is usually associated with concepts of living well and with the idea of personal development.  It is a quality that cannot be held simply as an object of knowledge, to be taken out at public functions and admired before being hidden again, rather wisdom must be instantiated and utilised to have any value.  Wisdom is, in the final picture, a way of life.

            From the very definition of wisdom it can be seen that it is a concept that still has an inestimable amount of relevance to the contemporary thinker.  The aspect of wisdom I wish to consider in this dissertation is the role of rationality in wisdom.  I shall propose that whilst wisdom should be informed by conventional knowledge and rationality, focussing on only these two qualities neglects a very large part of human life and a very large part of wisdom.  It may also be possible to possess wisdom without possessing much or any knowledge.  The irrational should both be considered and incorporated into any account of wisdom.  I shall argue that folly, traditionally seen as the antithesis of wisdom in the value it places on the irrational, contains within it the seeds of some forms of wisdom.  I shall claim that the rather subversive historical convention of ‘wise fools’ is motivated by genuine and valuable intuitions about what folly and the irrational can add to more staid notions of wisdom and that these intuitions should motivate the modern thinker too.

            Let me start by elucidating on the historical basis for the intuitions regarding wisdom and the fool.  This will only be a brief overview, but should establish the place of the fool within this wider context.  Since the goal of this section is to establish the historical basis for intuitions regarding the wise fool, I shall not be overly concerned with whether the fools and folly I treat with are historical or literary, since both can be adequate reflections of intuition.

1.2       The fool through time – establishing an intuition

For as long as there have been people there have been fools.  Folly and foolishness have been seen as accompanying humanity from the very beginning.  Creation myths from different cultures almost invariably include some central trickster/fool character; characters that have been given such important roles as causing the planet to be populated (*Coyote from the North American Indian creation stories) and bringing about the end of the world (*Loki and Loki’s children from Norse mythology).  These characters were traditionally ethically valueless, living outside the boundaries of good and evil.  Often they stood as originators of such value distinctions.   They often possessed a chaotic animal nature that reflected that they were creatures of the irrational, motivated by and revelling in humanity’s ‘darker’, more bestial nature.  They were unconventional heroes in that they valued qualities like deceitfulness and cleverness over the more traditional heroic values of courage and strength.

            One possible reason these characters could be so universal stems from the Jungian analysis of character.  One of the ‘archetypes’ Jung identifies is that of the trickster, a “forerunner of the saviour....  He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness.”[2]  The trickster/fool of mythology and psychology partakes of both the bestial and the divine.  In doing so there is an implication that through the trickster’s bestial nature the trickster is able to attain knowledge of something higher.  It can be seen that the trickster/fool is not an unequivocally foolish character.  In the midst of their foolishness lie the seeds of greatness and their centrality in mythology shows the importance of both the trickster/fool and the knowledge they possess.

            In more recent cultural practices, carnival traditions involving the celebration of folly and light heartedness show that there is a general perception that folly has its merits.  During these celebrations acts of foolishness are forgiven and the ruler of the festivities is the fool, temporarily removed from their normal position at the bottom of the social hierarchy.  Such traditions show that a more general perception of the wisdom of folly has historically existed and still exists to some extent today.

            Bridging the gap between history and literature is the pastoral and bucolic traditions of various countries.  These traditions involved an exaltation of pastoral life and the wisdom of people who lived their lives in this fashion.  People who lived in pastoral simplicity were said to have a closeness with nature and a natural wisdom denied to others.  This closeness gave them an earthy, practical wisdom praised by poets and artists.  Evidently it is not the bucolic individual’s reasoning ability or breadth of knowledge that grants them this wisdom; rather it is it is their uncomplicated natures that allow them to perceive these pastoral truths.  The semi-fictional dialogues between Marcolf and Solomon present an excellent illustration of this.  Marcolf is a simple, pastoral fool, with a rude wit and the implication of being simpleminded.  Solomon represents wisdom as we normally think of it, wisdom informed by reason and intelligence.  In these dialogues Solomon’s wisdom is always outdone by Marcolf’s simple, pithy wisdom.[3]  Note that, while these dialogues may have been completely fictional, they still help to show that there is some historical basis for the intuition of the wise fool.

            In literature the fool has also possessed this ambivalence between foolishness and wisdom.  The fools of Shakespearean plays are often given lines that are startling in their perspicacity.  Often such fools are witty, intelligent and astute, leading the audience to wonder what it is that draws the distinction between the fool and the rest of the cast.  Touchstone from As You Like It is a “worthy fool” and a “noble fool” who is not of poor breeding, but rather has the manners of a “courtier”, and yet nevertheless “Motle’s the only wear”.[4]  Feste from Twelfth Night proclaims that he would rather be “a witty fool than a foolish wit”.[5]  Even the near idiot fool of King Lear shows his wisdom and quality in the steadfast care and loyalty he provides his benighted master in addition to the lucidity he gains as Lear’s own reason flags.  Shakespearean fools are often said to be Shakespeare’s mouthpiece, uttering the words closest to his own way of thinking.  Plainly the sympathy Shakespeare expresses towards his fools shows at least a recognition of the wisdom of folly.

            Few other writers have treated the fool with such sympathy and care, but certainly Dostoevski must be included amongst these.  In his novel The Idiot, he portrays Prince Myshkin, whose combination of innocence and wisdom show that Dostoevski too possessed the intuition of wise folly.

            In more modern times the theme of folly and the character of the fool have not been as pervasive as they have been in the past.  One reason for this could be the relative diminishment of wisdom as a prime goal and hence folly’s paralleled waning.  Another reason could be our heritage from the Enlightenment, where reason has overthrown any place folly and its related irrationality might have.  However, these intuitions regarding the wise fool have certainly not disappeared.  The persistence of wise fools and comic heroes in novels and on television help show that the intuitions of the past still remain, as does the persistent popularity of the fools in Shakespeare’s plays.  Our awareness of older traditions of wise fools helps establish our own.

            These historical examples go some way to establishing a common intuition regarding the wisdom of the fool.  Yet it has emerged from these examples that the terms folly and fool cover a wide range of referents.  If I am to deal with the wisdom that emerges from folly then I am certainly going to have to propose some delineations.  When the term ‘fool’ can embrace such diverse creatures as Shakespeare’s Touchstone and Dostoevski’s Prince Myshkin, then the types of ‘wisdom’ these various follies will contain is almost certain to be of a plural nature.

1.3            Distinguishing fools

As the biblical saying goes stultorum infinitus est numerus (*Ecclesiastes 1, 15), and similarly numerous are the types of folly.  The first and most obvious meaning of folly is to lack reason.  This gives rise to the more archaic usage of the word ‘fool’ to refer to idiots, simpletons and the insane.  The second usage would refer to someone who acts as a fool, but is not made to be a fool by nature.  These people can take folly as a profession, as is the case of historical ‘court fools’ or ‘house fools’, or can simply be ‘playing the fool’.  A fool can also be a person who acts poorly and, ofttimes, immorally.

            For the purposes of this work I shall be considering the fool as a person who, for some reason, possesses a lack or a diminishment of reason.  I shall consider what wisdom the fool who lacks reason can possess.  I shall also consider those who counterfeit folly, the aptly named artificial fool and the wisdom they may possess.  Hence I shall utilise the Elizabethan distinction of natural and artificial fool.  The natural lacks reason and is made a fool through the caprices of nature.  This category includes the simple fools of various degrees and the insane, whose reason is perverted involuntarily.  The natural fools are not fools through choice and are unable to voluntarily escape their states.  The category of artificial fool, on the other hand, includes those who actively choose to celebrate their folly.  They are usually of relatively normal intellect and abilities, but nevertheless choose to live a life of folly.  By choosing to emulate folly the artificial fool gives us a living example of the intuition of the wise fool.  Were folly a purely negative quality then emulating folly would also be seen as entirely negative.

            Within the broad category of the natural fool I shall draw a distinction between the innocent, uncomplicated natural fool and the insane fool.  Both fit within the wider nomenclature of natural fool since they are both creatures that lack reason.  However, they approach unreason from different sides.  The natural fool possesses a bond to the irrational through being pre-rational.  They perceive in the world a lack of meaning through lacking reason themselves.  The insane fool is linked to the irrational by possessing a perverted form of rationality.  Unlike the natural fool they probably do not lack the capacity for normal reason, but nevertheless their reason is absent.  They perceive in the world a multiplicity of meaning, but the meaning they perceive can be fragmentary and disparate or even distorted; which can be almost worse than not perceiving meaning at all.

            So the major delineation I shall deal with will be between the natural fool and the artificial fool.  Both value the irrational, one through their nature and the other through conscious choice, and in this way escape the bonds of reason.  Even in this initial separation reasons are appearing as to why any wisdom that might be attached to these two categories would be different.  The wisdom of the natural fool is tied to their lack of reason, as this is their single most distinguishing feature.  I will be putting forward arguments about how certain truths may be easier to grasp with an uncomplicated mind and arguments about how by lacking reason the natural fool is able to escape many of the traps reason offers us.  I will put forward arguments about how the natural’s innocence allows them to be, to an extent, ethically blameless.  I will make arguments about how an apprehension of higher truths may not require the complicating factors of reason.  The wisdom of the artificial fool will not concentrate on the element of not possessing reason, but will rather focus on the reasons for and the implications of their conscious choice to adopt folly.  All these points are inextricably tied into the natures of these diverse types of fools.

            Of the two divisions, I shall begin with the wisdom of the natural fool, starting with the uncomplicated natural fool (a real misnomer) and then moving on to examine the insane fool.  I choose this place to begin proper because, of the two main divisions, the natural fool will certainly have the most straightforward relationship with the irrational and with wisdom.  The artificial fool’s relationship with the irrational will be more complicated since they possess reason of some form, and yet still choose to value the irrational.  In addition, it is also probably the most uncontroversial place to start, since a great deal has already been written about the wisdom of the innocent fool.  The final reason to begin with the natural is that the wisdom of the artificial fool will rest to a large extent upon the wisdom of the natural fool; one account of the artificial fool places their wisdom in their emulation and respect for the elements of wisdom present in the natural fool and in the irrational itself.  Thus, I shall begin, as do we all, with the blissful ignorance that characterises the natural fool.