Erasmus's "Praise of Folly"

This week we took a look at Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly”. In it he tells about all of the wrongs that the different classes of people do. He wrote this book to amuse his friend Thomas More, but as we can see today the book became much more than that. Even though it was written as a joke, the end turns serious when Folly proclaims the virtues of the religious ideals in which Erasmus was brought up. I liked the way that Erasmus wrote the book, it was easy to read and it made sense. One of the things that I didn’t really like is when he says “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.” I do agree with him that there are a lot of bad people running things like government and large corporations, but I don’t think that being wise makes you weak.