“웃음으로 진실을 말하다”: 『우신예찬』 읽기와 가르치기

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to suggest a model for reading and teaching The Praise of Folly in terms of “telling the truth with a smile.” The Praise of Folly has been generally read and taught as a great achievement of Renaissance Humanism, reflecting the academic and cultural inclination of early modern Europe toward Desiderius Erasmus. Nevertheless, it is notable for Erasmus to anticipate ideal “fair-minded and honest“ readers for his work, urging them to comprehend hidden messages veined in deriding satires and complicated flows of tone. This means that Erasmus might have recommend a suitable way of reading The Praise of Folly to his readers, which is clearly explained in some letters, contrary to traditionally accepted reader-oriented reading influenced by Renaissance Humanism and Reformation. Erasmus’ way of reading the work can be epitomized as placing the folly in the source of vital life force, the true search of knowledge, the subversive and iconoclastic method of criticizing social and religious powers though laughter. In The Praise of Folly, goddess of Folly claims that life does not originate from immortal God or precious part of body but from Folly herself. By Folly's power of raising laughter, human race naturally without any logical hesitation can choose the excremental place, not the so-called respectable and sacred part of body, as the life-producing point. Instead of reason great philosophers support as an essential element of life, Folly, its opponent, provides humans with their root and meaning of life by breaking the binary opposition of wisdom and absurdity. Folly's strategy of deposing the inherited superior position of wisdom through laughter also bears on the efficacy of searching for knowledge. Sophisticated scholars like philosophers and theologians have devoted themselves in accumulating various kinds of knowledge, especially abstract and speculative knowledge. They cannot understand the true function and value of knowledge, confusing logic with rhetoric. However, Folly points out with smiling that knowledge should lead to happiness as a key to solving to the problems of everyday life. The search for knowledge can be justified or nullified by the criterion of whether happiness can be made or not. Considering the relationship between knowledge and happiness, Folly concludes that folly, innocence and ignorance, if they produce happiness, can be valuable to human beings rather than wisdom, experience knowledge. Folly’s attempts to tell the truth with a smile are completed in the act of exposing the hypocrisy and vain glory of the existing religious and political authorities who tended to distort the truth by exploiting knowledge. Citing the example of Christ, Folly emphasizes with both sarcasm and laughter that the authorities should take their own cross of humbleness, poverty and honesty. The reason is that the folly of Christ exemplifies an acme for the content and methods of telling the truth with a smile. Thus, following Erasmus’ writing intent, it is necessary that The Praise of Folly should be read and taught in the focus of the essence of the truth and its effective delivery.