Truth and IronyTapping into selected works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, this book offers a series of philosophical meditations designed to retrieve and deploy a distinctively Erasmian manner of thinking - one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony. In purpose, it takes a philosophical route, addressing perennial questions of self-knowledge - what we can know and how best to communicate what we take to be true, what we ought to do or how we should live, and what we might hope for or what would offer us fulfilment. In method, however, this work taps into the various strategies of irony at play in the works of Erasmus, looking for guidance in handling these age-old questions. What readers will find in Erasmus is a knack for playfully reversing appearances and realities, a penchant for pushing disturbing questions relentlessly to the limit, and a skill for juxtaposing oddly matched opposites. Again and again, Erasmus presses readers to rethink these fundamental questions with dexterity and nuance, ever ready to appreciate the surprising and unsettling upshot of ironic insight. |
Contents
An Erasmian Manner of Thinking | 1 |
Irony and Deceit | 39 |
War and Sanity | 94 |
Pleasure and Religion | 155 |
Erasmian Irony and the Courage of Truth | 223 |
239 | |
253 | |
Common terms and phrases
adage agile Alcibiades appear Aquinas’s ascetic Augustine authentic silenus biblical Cambridge capacity certainly challenge Christ Christian Epicurean Cicero Colloquies Complaint of Peace deception Derrida Desiderius Erasmus dialectical dialogue dissemblance Epicurean Epicurus Erasmian Erasmian irony Erasmian manner Erasmian thinking Erasmus observes Erasmus of Rotterdam Erasmus’s fact Folly’s fools forms of folly Gordon Gorgias human existence Ibid ideal insists instance ironic John John of Salisbury Kaiser kind Lear letter Lévy lives Luther M. A. Screech madness manner of thinking Marriage means meditation mind moral mystical natural notes one’s perhaps philosopher Plato pleasure Praise of Folly Praise of Marriage Praisers Proslogion puts questions satire Screech seems sense sexual sileni right-side-out silenus Socrates Socrates’s sophist speech suggests Summa Theologiae sure Symposium theologians theology things Thomas Aquinas tion Toronto Press trans transcendent truly truth-telling University of Toronto unsettling Valla warfare wars wisdom words writes York