Praise of Folly

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469—1536) — the greatest scholar of the European Renaissance, philosopher, and researcher of biblical texts. He was called the «prince of humanists» and the «oracle of Europe». He left behind a vast epistolary legacy and numerous works devoted to the most important problems of the universe. «Praise of Folly» (1509) — a joke, essentially a trifle, as the author himself admitted, written to pass the time. And yet this work became Erasmus's most famous composition. Paradoxical? — or perhaps inevitable? For therein lies the greatest mastery of the philosopher, a virtuoso of word and thought — to express the most important, the most profound, that which will remain eternal through all ages in a joke.