Critics Of Enlightenment Rationalism

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Critics of
Enlightenment
Rationalism

Edited by
Gene Callahan · Kenneth B. McIntyre
 Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism

“Callahan and McIntyre have brought together a distinguished and cosmopolitan

array of contributors who have produced a lively and provocative collection of
essays exploring and analyzing the modern phenomenon of Enlightenment ratio-
nalism, whose distinguished critics range from the historically important Edmund
Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Friedrich Nietzsche, to our near contemporaries
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Eric Voegelin and Michael Oakeshott. The connecting and
fascinating thread that runs through the volume is a relentless critique of a style of
thinking that prioritizes the pursuit of certainty, and a blind belief in the powers of
instrumental reason to overcome all adversity.”
—David Boucher, Professor of Political Philosophy and International
Relations, Cardiff University, UK

“This volume could not have arrived at a better time. McIntyre and Callahan have
given us an excellent set of essays that speaks directly to the fetishization of human
reason. Each of the thinkers examined reminds us of the fallibility of human
beings—a lesson we sorely need to revisit every generation or so.”
—Richard Avramenko, Professor, Department of Political Science,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

“This is a remarkable and remarkably comprehensive collection on thinkers who

questioned enlightenment rationalism, both in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
tury. The list is impressive: Tocqueville, Kierkegaard, Burke, Nietzsche, Eliot, as
well as Oakeshott, Hayek, Alasdair MacIntyre, and a number of others equally
stellar, and equally deep and complex. The essays are by accomplished scholars,
and show that the opposition to enlightenment rationalism was both diverse and
strikingly coherent, and a treasure trove for thinking beyond the enlightenment. It
will be especially valuable for those with interests in one of these thinkers to see
them in the context of the larger fraternity to which they belong.”
—Stephen Turner, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy,
University of South Florida, USA

“The variety of topics considered, the range of thinkers included, the striking and
ultimately illuminating juxtaposition of approaches combine to cast, not a spot-
light, but indeed multiple of points of light on a rich selection of important think-
ers from the later-modern period. Scholars and students interested in modern
critics of modernity will benefit from the range of figures treated here and the
depth of the commentaries on them.”
—Alexander S. Duff, Assistant Professor of Political Science,
University of North Texas, USA
Gene Callahan • Kenneth B. McIntyre
Editors

Critics of
Enlightenment
Rationalism
Editors
Gene Callahan Kenneth B. McIntyre
New York University Sam Houston State University
Brooklyn, NY, USA Huntsville, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-42598-2    ISBN 978-3-030-42599-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42599-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sam Houston State University for its financial sup-
port and for granting me a sabbatical in which to complete the project. I
would also like to thank The Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy
at The University of Wisconsin for inviting me to spend the 2019–2020
academic year as a Visiting Scholar at the Center, and providing financial
support for the year. Thanks to my mother and father for all of the support
over the years. I want to thank my two daughters, Flannery and Julie, who
rarely agree with me, but, at least, find me occasionally humorous. Finally,
thanks to Maria for taking care of things.
Kenneth B. McIntyre
4 September 2019
Madison, WI
Many thanks to the patience of my wife, Elen, to the support of my
children, Eamon, Emma, and Adam, to Leslie Marsh for encouraging us
in this project, and to David Boucher for his mentorship. Selah.
Eugene Callahan
5 September 2019
Brooklyn, NY

v
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Gene Callahan and Kenneth B. McIntyre

2 Burke on Rationalism, Prudence and Reason of State 15

Ferenc Hörcher

3 Alexis de Tocqueville and the Uneasy Friendship Between

Reason and Freedom 33
Travis D. Smith and Jin Jin

4 Kierkegaard’s Later Critique of Political Rationalism 47

Robert Wyllie

5 Friedrich Nietzsche: The Hammer Goes to Monticello 61

Justin D. Garrison

6 “Pagans, Christians, Poets” 79

Corey Abel

7 Wittgenstein on Rationalism 95
Daniel John Sportiello

8 Heidegger’s Critique of Rationalism and Modernity107

Jack Simmons

vii
viii Contents

9 Gabriel Marcel: Mystery in an Age of Problems125

Steven Knepper

10 Michael Polanyi: A Scientist Against Scientism139

Charles W. Lowney II

11 C.S. Lewis: Reason, Imagination, and the Abolition of Man159

Luke C. Sheahan

12 Hayek: Postatomic Liberal179

Nick Cowen

13 “Anti-rationalism, Relativism, and the Metaphysical

Tradition: Situating Gadamer’s Philosophical
Hermeneutics”193
Ryan R. Holston

14 Eric Voegelin and Enlightenment Rationalism211

Michael P. Federici

15 Michael Oakeshott’s Critique of Modern Rationalism227

Wendell John Coats

16 Isaiah Berlin on Monism237

Jason Ferrell

17 Russell Kirk: The Mystery of Human Existence251

Nathanael Blake

18 Jane Jacobs and the Knowledge Problem in Cities263

Sanford Ikeda

19 Practical Reason and Teleology: MacIntyre’s Critique of

Modern Moral Philosophy279
Kenneth B. McIntyre

Index295
 Notes on Contributors

Corey Abel studied the history of political thought at The London

School of Economics and Political Science, where he earned an MSc., and
The University of Chicago, where his Ph.D. was on the thought of Michael
Oakeshott. He has taught in both political science and interdisciplinary
humanities at The United States Air Force Academy, The University of
Denver, Metropolitan State University, The University of Colorado, and
The Colorado College. He is the editor of Intellectual Legacy of Michael
Oakeshott and The Meanings of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism.
Nathanael Blake earned a PhD in political theory from the Catholic
University of America, and has written for a variety of scholarly and popu-
lar publications. He resides in Missouri.
Gene Callahan has a PhD in political theory from Cardiff University and
a Master’s in the philosophy of the social sciences from the LSE. He is the
author of Economics for Real People, Oakeshott on Rome and America, and
co-editor of Tradition v. Rationalism. He teaches at New York University.
Wendell John Coats is Professor of Government at Connecticut College
where he teaches courses in the history of Western political theory, ancient,
medieval and modern. He is published widely in the field of political the-
ory, especially with regard to the work of the twentieth century, English
philosophic essayist, Michael Oakeshott.

ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Nick Cowen has a PhD from the Department of Political Economy,

King’s College London, and degrees from the University of Oxford and
University College London. He has written for the American Journal of
Political Science, Critical Review and the Review of Austrian Economics.
Michael P. Federici is professor and chair of the Political Science and
International Relations Department at Middle Tennessee State University.
He received his B.S. in economics from Elizabethtown College and his
M.A. and Ph.D. in politics from The Catholic University of America.
He is the former president of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters
and the author of three books and three edited volumes: The Political
Philosophy of Alexander Hamilton, The Challenge of Populism, Eric Voegelin:
The Search for Order, The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and
Politics: The Modest Republic, Rethinking the Teaching of American History,
and The Catholic Writings of Orestes Brownson.
Jason Ferrell currently teaches political theory at Concordia University,
having also taught McGill University and Mount Allison University. His
research interests include the thought of Isaiah Berlin, value pluralism,
and distributive justice. His articles have appeared in Political Theory,
Contemporary Political Theory, and the Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy. He has also authored a “Glossary of Names”
for the second edition of Isaiah Berlin’sRussian Thinkers.
Justin D. Garrison is an associate professor of political science at Roanoke
College in Salem, Virginia. He is a political theorist who researches the rela-
tionship between politics and the imagination. He is the author of journal
articles, book chapters, and the book An Empire of Ideals: The Chimeric
Imagination of Ronald Reagan. He is also co-editor of the book The
Historical Mind: Humanistic Renewal in a Post-­Constitutional Age.
Ryan R. Holston is Professor and holder of the Jonathan Myric Daniels
‘61 Chair for Academic Excellence at Virginia Military Institute. He is also
an Associate Editor at the journal Humanitas. His published work has
appeared in History of Political Thought, Telos, and Harvard Theological
Review, among other places. He is currently writing a monograph, whose
working title is Tradition and the Deliberative Turn, and is co-­editor of a
forthcoming book entitled The Historical Mind: Humanistic Renewal in a
Post-Constitutional Age (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2020).
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

Ferenc Hörcher is a political philosopher and historian of political

thought. His PhD was on the Scottish Enlightenment. He is research pro-
fessor and director of the Research Institute of Politics and Government at
the National University of Public Service in Budapest. He is senior fellow
and earlier director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. His publications include Prudentia Iuris: Towards a
Pragmatic Theory of Natural Law (2000) and the coedited volume: Aspects
of the Enlightenment: Aesthetics, Politics, and Religion (2004). Most
recently he co-edited an co-authored the volume: A History of the
Hungarian Constitution. Law, Government and Political Culture in
Central Europe (2019). A Political Philosophy of Conservatism, Prudence,
Moderation and Tradition is in print with Bloomsbury, scheduled to get
published in 2020.
Sanford Ikeda is Professor of Economics at SUNY Purchase. He is an
internationally recognized scholar of Jane Jacobs’ work, and the author of
Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism.
Jin Jin is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He
received his B.A. with honors in Political Science from Concordia
University in Canada, winning the Renée Vautelet Prize as the most out-
standing student in his program. His honors thesis, entitled “The Seas to
Rove and the Sea of Roving Men: Self-Awareness in Tocqueville’s
Recollections and Fortnight in the Wilderness,” discusses Tocqueville’s
self-awareness as a pathway to his thought on human nature.
Steven Knepper is an assistant professor in the Department of English,
Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at Virginia Military Institute. His
research interests include American literature, tragedy, and aesthetics. His
writings have appeared in Telos, The Robert Frost Review, The Cormac
McCarthy Journal, Religion & Literature, and other journals. He is cur-
rently writing about the philosopher William Desmond’s approach to
literature.
Charles W. Lowney II is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hollins
University, Roanoke, Virginia, USA. He received his masters in philosophy at
Boston College, where he studied Continental Philosophy, and his doctorate
at Boston University, where he studied Analytic Philosophy. He is interested
in applying the concepts of emergentism and tacit knowing to ethics, society,
and religion, and has done so in articles such as “Authenticity and the
Reconciliation of Modernity” (2009), “From Science to Morality” (2009),
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

“Morality: Emergentist Ethics” (2010), “From Morality to Spirituality”

(2010), and in a chapter, “Four Ways of Understanding Mysticism” in
Mysticism and Silence (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, Laura Weed, ed.).
Lowney is also the editor of Charles Taylor, Michael Polanyi and the Critique
of Modernity: Pluralist and Emergentist Directions (2017).
Kenneth B. McIntyre is Professor of Political Science at Sam Houston
State University. He is the author of The Limits of Political Theory: Michael
Oakeshott on Civil Association, Herbert Butterfield: History, Providence,
and Skeptical Politics, and has also written essays on the philosophy of his-
tory, ordinary language philosophy, American constitutionalism, and prac-
tical reason. He is currently working on a book on value pluralism, liberty,
and the rule of law.
Luke C. Sheahan is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duquesne
University and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Program for Research on
Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS) at the University of
Pennsylvania. He researches the intersection of First Amendment rights
and political theory. Sheahan’s scholarly articles and reviews have appeared
inThe Political Science Reviewer, Humanitas, Anamnesis, and The Journal
of Value Inquiry He has lectured widely on religious liberty, freedom of
speech, and freedom of association. His book Why Associations Matter:
The Case for First Amendment Pluralism is forthcoming from the
University Press of Kansas. From 2018–2019, Sheahan was Associate
Director and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Freedom Project at
Wellesley College and from 2016–2018, he was a postdoctoral associate in
the Department of Political Science at Duke University. He received a
PhD and MA in political theory from the Catholic University of America
and a B.S. in political science from the Honors College at Oregon State
University. Sheahan is a five-­ time recipient of the Humane Studies
Fellowship, a 2014 recipient of the Richard M. Weaver Fellowship, and a
2018 recipient of the Leonard P. Liggio Memorial Fellowship.
Jack Simmons is a Professor of Philosophy at Georgia Southern
University, in Savannah, Georgia. His research focuses on discourse ethics
and hermeneutics, leading to publications in bio-ethics, film, television,
technology and science.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Travis D. Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia

University in Montreal. he has published on Thomas Hobbes and Francis
Bacon, and is the author of Superhero Ethics (Templeton, 2018) and co-­
editor (with Marlene K. Sokolon) of Flattering the Demos (Lexington, 2018).
Daniel John Sportiello is an assistant professor of philosophy at the
University of Mary in North Dakota. He has published several book
reviews with the Notre Dame Evolution Working Group; he also contrib-
uted a chapter on Eric Voegelin to Tradition v. Rationalism: Voegelin,
Oakeshott, Hayek, and Others.
Robert Wyllie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science
at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses upon Spinoza’s
moral psychology as a pivot in the modern understanding of envy. His
work, which includes several articles on the political theory of Kierkegaard,
has appeared in Perspectives on Political Science, Res Philosophica, Telos, and
other journals.
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Gene Callahan and Kenneth B. McIntyre

Enlightenment rationalism may be said to have been birthed with the

writings of Francis Bacon and René Descartes, and to have come to self-­
awareness in the works of the French philosophes (e.g., Voltaire, Diderot,
Condorcet, and d’Alembert), and their allies, such as Thomas Jefferson,
Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Paine. But almost contemporaneously with
the birth of this movement, it attracted critics. The aim of this project is to
provide an overview of some of the most important of the many critics of
“Enlightenment rationalism,” a term we use in an historically loose sense,
to cover not just leaders of the Enlightenment itself, but also latter figures
whose model of what is rational closely resembled that espoused during
the Enlightenment.1
The essays on each thinker are intended not merely to offer a commen-
tary on that thinker, but also to place him in the context of this larger
stream of anti-rationalist thought. Thus, while this volume is not a history
of anti-rationalist thought, it may contain the intimations of such a his-
tory. Some may wonder at the mixed bag of thinkers we address: poets,

G. Callahan (*)
New York University, Brooklyn, NY, USA
K. B. McIntyre
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA
e-mail: kbm014@SHSU.EDU

© The Author(s) 2020 1

G. Callahan, K. B. McIntyre (eds.), Critics of Enlightenment
Rationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42599-9_1
2 G. CALLAHAN AND K. B. MCINTYRE

philosophers, economists, political theorists, and urbanists. But there is

unity in this diversity. Although these authors worked in a variety of forms,
they all sought to demonstrate the narrowness of rationalism’s description
of the human situation. It is our hope that surveying the variety of per-
spectives from which rationalism has been attacked will serve to clarify the
difficulties the rationalist approach to understanding faces, rather than dis-
persing our critical attention. In other words, we hope that these diver-
gent streams flow together into a river, rather than meandering out to sea
like the channels of a delta.2
The subjects of the volume do not share a philosophical tradition as
much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among mod-
ern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonable-
ness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the
presuppositions, methods, and logic of the natural sciences. In epistemol-
ogy, this scientistic reductionism lends itself to the notion that knowing
things consists in conceiving them in terms of law-like generalizations that
allow for accurate predictability. In moral philosophy, scientism leads to
the common notion among modern ethicists that any worthy moral the-
ory must produce a single decision procedure that gives uniform and pre-
dictable answers as to what is moral in any particular situation.
While the subjects of the volume are united by a common enemy, the
sources, arguments, and purposes of their critiques are extraordinarily
various and, though they often overlap, they often contradict one another.
There are epistemological pluralists like Gadamer, Oakeshott, and Berlin
who draw sharp distinctions between scientific, aesthetic, historical, and
practical modes of discourse, and, thus, reject the Enlightenment rational-
ists’ claims concerning the superiority of scientific explanation. There are
religious believers like Kierkegaard who criticize the “faith” in human rea-
son exhibited by Enlightenment rationalists (this group of critics tends to
be Augustinian Christians). There are aesthetes like Eliot, Lewis, and Kirk
who decry the insipid and desiccated conception of humanity put forward
by the Enlightenment rationalists. There are critics of modernity itself like
Heidegger and MacIntyre who deplore not merely Enlightenment ratio-
nalism, but other forms of modern rationalism associated with many of the
other subjects of this collection. And there are those who attack the
Enlightenment rationalists’ understanding of scientific activity and expla-
nation, like Polanyi and Hayek.
Other than Nietzsche, we have not included thinkers who are deeply
skeptical of any form of human reason, and who view human interactions
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

almost solely as the result of power relations or unconscious desires,

motives, or beliefs. So the variety of postmodern thought that owes such
a great debt to Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud is not included (Lacan,
Foucault, Derrida, et al.), though all are highly critical of Enlightenment
rationalism. Additionally, due to limitations on space and time, we were
not able to include a number of other figures within our bailiwick, such as
Herder, De Maistre, Carlyle, Coleridge, Spengler, Arendt, Gray, and
Scott. We hope to produce a second volume that can remedy these
omissions.
Having looked at our criteria for selecting what thinkers to include, let
us now turn to the thinkers themselves. In his chapter on Edmund Burke
(1729–1797), Ferenc Horcher argues that Burke’s critique of the French
Revolution focuses specifically on the inappropriateness of the philos-
ophes’ and revolutionaries’ attempt to apply an abstract and rationalistic
blueprint to the messy complexities of French political life. According to
Horcher, Burke is justly understood as the founder of a political tradition
which might with good reason be labelled as British conservatism. One of
the central features of Burke’s position is his skepticism about the useful-
ness and applicability of theoretical abstractions in political affairs. Horcher
notes that Burke’s criticism of the French philosophes centered on the
practical destruction caused by their “social engineering,” and on the ever
more radical (and more bloodthirsty) revolutionary regimes created by
such “social engineering.”
Further, Burke argued that the nature of politics is exceedingly com-
plex. (As Jane Jacobs, discussed later in this volume, would have put it, it
is a matter of organized complexity, rather than simple order or pure ran-
domness.) Thus, the optimism characteristic of enlightened intellectuals
when they enter the political arena is not only logically unfounded, but
also politically counterproductive and often pernicious. Horcher focuses
his attention on those parts of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in
France which helped to identify a less optimistic, but more realistic view of
politics which has characteristic British traits, the most significant of which
is a belief in the value of such non-instrumentally rational political institu-
tions as precedents, custom, and political experience.
Travis Smith and Jin Jin discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1805–1859)
nuanced criticism of rationalism by examining his views on the relation-
ship between philosophy and politics in Democracy in America and
Recollections. According to Smith and Jin, Tocqueville claims that the
preservation of liberty requires a new political science to educate the
4 G. CALLAHAN AND K. B. MCINTYRE

ineluctably emerging democratic social state. Tocqueville argues that the

ascendant political science of the Enlightenment, which aimed at whole-
sale social engineering, is actually an unscientific and partial ideology that
is oblivious to certain aspects of the human condition, and obliterates
other parts.
For Smith and Jin, Tocqueville’s recognition that both ethics and poli-
tics require educated virtue means that reason and political liberty are
inherently complementary. However, Tocqueville notes that the kind of
rationalism espoused by the French philosophes depends on assuming
ever more control over people’s lives. Smith and Jin observe that
Tocqueville witnessed at firsthand multiple attempts to implement ratio-
nalistic systems following the end of the Old Regime, and his more realis-
tic science of politics explains why they necessarily failed to produce the
supposedly just society or free people they were purportedly designed to
construct while succeeding instead at fostering ever more dehumanizing
injustices.
According to Smith and Jin, Tocqueville insists that political freedom
requires virtue, and virtue requires reason, but reason is best developed
when human beings are given the freedom to meet their greatest poten-
tial. Politics dominated by uncritical veneration of reason, especially an
Enlightenment conception of reason that is simultaneously excessive and
deficient, undermines virtue and freedom alike.
While Tocqueville focused on the political and social consequences of
the spread of Enlightenment ideas, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),
often considered to be the first existentialist philosopher, turned his atten-
tion primarily to the theological and ethical conflicts following in their
wake. Nevertheless, he addressed political matters as well, as noted by
Robert Wyllie in his essay on the Dane: “Kierkegaard is a famous critic of
rationalism, though less well known as a critic of political rationalism”.
Kierkegaard condemned what he saw as his era’s tendency to replace deci-
sive action with political “talkativeness, chatter, or chit-chat”: such a trend
betrayed a lack of passion on the part of citizens. The age, he believed,
“lets everything remain, but subtly drains the meaning out of it”. Wyllie
draws a connection between the object of Kierkegaard’s critique and the
concept of the rationality of the public sphere in the work of Habermas.
As Wylie portrays it, Kierkegaard could be viewed as offering a century-in-­
advance takedown of Habermas. For Kierkegaard, politics, at least as prac-
ticed in his age, was a distraction from fixing one’s own character. The
rationalism he criticizes consists in the belief that endless palaver about the
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

“reasons” such-and-such should occur can take the place of true, ethical
commitment to an ideal of life.
Justin Garrison offers an account of Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900)
critique of Enlightenment rationalism which is unique in this volume in
that, according to Garrison, Nietzsche rejects not only Enlightenment
rationalism, but even the idea of rational discourse itself. Garrison offers us
Thomas Jefferson, rather than the French philosophes, as his primary foil.
Of course, Jefferson was a great admirer of the philosophes specifically and
the Enlightenment generally. As Garrison notes, Jefferson consistently
proclaimed the innate goodness and rationality of human beings, and
believed that governments propped up by irrational claims of authority,
particularly the “monkish ignorance” of religious authority, had subverted
these qualities too often. For Jefferson, a new science of politics, one
grounded in reason rather than superstition, offered hope because it
allowed for the discovery of a rational foundation for government worthy
of the people it would serve.
Per Garrison, Nietzsche would find Jefferson’s political thought naïve
and unphilosophical. Nietzsche argued instead that Enlightenment ratio-
nalism did not inaugurate a break from the religious past so much as it
re-packaged pre-existing ethical and political beliefs in verbiage stripped of
many pre-existing theological and metaphysical associations. Thus, mod-
ern rationalism was not a new thing under the sun, but was instead an
example of a serious problem Nietzsche believed he had already identified
in Christianity: nihilism. Garrison explores Nietzsche’s understanding of
reason, morality, equality, Christianity, and democracy, and applies
Nietzsche’s analysis to those elements in Jefferson’s political thought. By
borrowing Nietzsche’s hammer to “sound out” Jefferson’s mind, Garrison
suggests that Jefferson’s oft-celebrated democracy of reason is tinged with
misanthropy and world hatred. In other words, such a vision is a manifes-
tation of the ascetic ideal and thus is ultimately nihilistic. Because many see
Jefferson as a paradigmatic figure in the American Founding, even as an
incarnation of the American spirit, the chapter has broad implications for
interpreting a fundamental dimension of the American political tradition.
Corey Abel grapples with the conundrum of how T.S. Eliot
(1888–1965), one of the paradigmatic “modernist” writers, could also
have been a staunch defender of tradition. Abel quotes Eliot arguing,
“The sound tree will put forth new leaves, and the dry tree should be put
to the axe,” and describes the quote as “a vivid image of Eliot’s modernism”.
6 G. CALLAHAN AND K. B. MCINTYRE

So, for this paradigmatic modernist, what, exactly, is the value of tradi-
tion? Abel argues that Eliot actually had a nuanced view of culture and art
grounded in a robust conception of tradition. He interprets Eliot as believ-
ing that, “from the poet’s standpoint, a tradition provides buoyancy…
Tradition, for the artist, is the gift of form”. When poets are writing within
a tradition, each poet has less work to do to express themselves than does
any poet who attempts to abandon all traditions. (Of course, as Oakeshott
demonstrated, such an abandonment is never really possible.) Abel sug-
gests that Eliot’s sensibility provides a view of tradition that powerfully
challenges modern ideological habits of thinking.
Daniel Sportiello, in his chapter on Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951),
examines how Wittgenstein’s later philosophy brings into question many
of the assumptions of Enlightenment rationalism, especially its focus on
quasi-mathematical reasoning. According to Sportiello, the focus of
Wittgenstein’s critique of rationalism was his rejection of the thesis that
there is a single right way to do whatever it is that we do, and that way can
be discovered by the use of an abstract faculty called reason.
Sportiello observes that, for Wittgenstein, our words and deeds are
justified only by the rules of particular language games, but these language
games are themselves justified only insofar as they meet our needs; cer-
tainly none of them need be justified by reference to any of the others. In
claiming this, Wittgenstein is something more than a pragmatist since he
believes that the rectitude of all of our discourse is a matter of its use (for
whatever ends we happen to have). Taken together, our language games
constitute our form of life, though this form of life is not entirely arbitrary,
as some of its features can be explained by reference to our nature.
Nonetheless, per Sportiello, Wittgenstein claims that our form or forms of
life could be different in many ways. Indeed, the forms of life that have
characterized human communities have been and will continue to be
marked by significant differences. Thus, for Wittgenstein, the failure of
Enlightenment rationalism lies in its attempt to reduce the variety of lan-
guage games and forms of life to a single, abstract, rational unity. Sportiello
suggests that Wittgenstein reminds us that, on some level, we all know
this. Philosophy at its worst is the attempt to forget it; philosophy at its
best is, therefore, the attempt to remember it.
The work of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Jack Simmons says, can
be understood largely as a critique of scientism. As he writes, “Science sees
the world scientifically and Heidegger contends that this method of reveal-
ing the natural world conceals non-scientific ways in which the world
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

might appear to us, ways that might represent a more authentic encounter
with the world”. As Simmons notes, the supposedly timeless “natural sci-
entific reasoning” is itself an historical phenomenon, and has no valid
claim to resist being evaluated as such. And, in fact, “The reductionist
approach of modern, scientific reasoning makes it well-suited to a utilitar-
ian worldview Heidegger calls technological thinking”. Here we might
note the similarity to both Marcel’s and Oakeshott’s attacks on “the tyr-
anny of technique.”
According to Simmons, the relevance of Heidegger‘s critique of tech-
nological thinking is demonstrated by “Our current affinity for STEM
education, wedding science to technology, engineering and mathematics,
in order to satisfy the needs of the community as determined by a reduc-
tionist, economic theory, and reducing the student to an economic
resource”.
Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), notes Steven Knepper, hosted one of
the most important salons in Paris both before and after the Second World
War, attended by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Maritain,
Emmanuel Levinas, and others. As such, he influenced several major intel-
lectual movements, such as Catholic personalism and existentialism. He
would doubtlessly be better known today if he had chosen to align himself
with some such movement, and adopt a “doctrine” which could have
yielded him “followers.”
However, Knepper argues, “Marcel worried that such labels distort or
lead to assumptions”. Philosophy should be an open inquiry that did not
imprison him in a “sort of shell”. Nevertheless, an attack on “technocratic
rationalism” is a continuing theme in Marcel’s work.
Marcel’s concern with the “tyranny of technique,” which “drowns the
deeper human in a conspiracy of efficiency and a frenzy of industry” closely
echo Oakeshott’s criticism of the “sovereignty of technique,” and
Heidegger’s attack on “technological thinking.” The focus on technique
tended to turn life into a technological problem to be solved, and other
human beings into resources to be possessed for the assistance they might
provide in solving life‘s problems. (As evidenced by the ubiquity of
“human resource” departments.) Mystery is drained out of existence:
death becomes a tricky biomedical challenge to be handled as discreetly as
possible, and love is a matter of achieving as high a “relationship rating”
as possible in some romance “app.”
This solution to this problem, for Marcel, was not to abandon tech-
nique, or reject technological progress. Instead, he argued, “What I think
8 G. CALLAHAN AND K. B. MCINTYRE

we need today is to react with our whole strength against that disassocia-
tion of life from spirit which a bloodless rationalism has brought about”.
Charles Lowney’s essay on Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) argues that
Polanyi’s work demonstrates that the Enlightenment’s standards defining
knowledge contain distortions that often have destructive effects, and in a
variety of ways. According to Lowney, Polanyi was a sympathetic critic of
the Enlightenment, which makes sense given Polanyi’s own success as a
natural scientist. Polanyi admired the Enlightenment’s political ideals, but
its rationalism led to a misunderstanding of the character of science, a
misunderstanding that Polanyi called “scientism.” Lowny notes that, for
Polanyi, this ideological “scientism” tended to reject the objectivity of
anything not based on physics and chemistry, thus relegating human val-
ues to the realm of the purely subjective.
Lowney claims that Polanyi’s post-critical philosophy revises
Enlightenment standards to more accurately reflect the limits of knowl-
edge and how science actually proceeds. This involves critiquing (1) the
viability of complete objectivity, (2) the adequacy of Cartesian explicit
analysis to simple self-evident truths, (3) the concomitant reductive analy-
sis of reality to smallest physical components, and (4) reductive dichoto-
mies between mind and matter, and between fact and value. Polanyi
accomplishes this with his conceptions of (1) personal knowledge, (2) tacit
knowing, (3) emergent being, and (4) discovery and indwelling. For
Lowney, Polanyi’s work undermines the traditional conception of scien-
tific knowledge, and shows that, instead, science moves toward truth, and
better contact with reality, by using the same tools of practical knowing
that produce understanding in those cultural and religious traditions that
are open to dialogue and discovery. Values, and not just physical facts, can
be real discoveries about the world. Polanyi’s post-critical epistemology
thus provides a non-skeptical fallibilism that goes beyond simple dualisms
and reductionism, forestalls a regression into nihilism, and renews hope in
human progress.
C.S. Lewis (1898–1963), notes Luke Sheahan, may seem an unlikely
candidate for inclusion in a book on anti-rationalists. After all, in a series
of books, he used reasoned arguments to defend the Christian faith. But
he believed that the effectiveness of such arguments “depended upon a
deeper mode of knowing”. Lewis is considered one of the most prominent
Christian apologists of the twentieth century. But he held a deep distrust
of the work of the rational faculty that was not properly oriented by the
imagination, which explains in large part his turn to writing imaginative
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

fiction later in his life. Through his fiction Lewis was trying to demon-
strate, rather than rationally explain, what the world would look like if
Christianity and the broader moral worldview in which it exists were true.
Lewis explains this understanding of the imagination and its importance
for right thinking in a variety of essays and in his two most profound
books, The Abolition of Man and The Discarded Image.
F.A. Hayek’s (1899–1992) anti-rationalism, argues Nick Cowen, is
founded upon a revival of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism combined
with a psychology that rejects a correspondence between human orderings
of experience and “reality.” Despite the epistemic restrictions this view
apparently imposes, Hayek believes that humans can use their capacity for
“pattern recognition” to generate and sustain cooperative social orders
through a process of trial and error. Institutions that allow this cooperative
order to emerge centrally include private property, voluntary contract, and
the rule of law. Unlike many utopian theorists, Hayek does not rely upon
fundamental normative claims for his political ideas. Thus, Cowen argues,
his ideas are compatible with a cosmopolitan order made up of people
with varied conceptions of morality. He connects Hayek’s argument
against rationalism to other such critiques, which often rely on a distinc-
tion between the concrete and the abstract, when he notes that: “A neces-
sary feature of concrete orders is that they always have more dimensions
and features to them then we have apprehend. They are irreducibly com-
plex. Abstract orders, by contrast, are the simplified models and categories
that we use to make sense of our experience and communications with
others”.
In his chapter on Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), Ryan Holston
explores Gadamer’s ambivalent relationship to Martin Heidegger (the
subject of his own chapter in the current volume) and the unusual way in
which Gadamer combined Heidegger’s historicism with the tradition of
Western metaphysics that was the very target of Heidegger’s own critique
of Enlightenment rationalism. According to Holston, Gadamer, while
acknowledging his deep indebtedness to Heidegger, moves beyond
Heidegger’s relativistic historicism to a position that is more deeply
indebted to the long tradition Western philosophy beginning with Plato
and Aristotle.
For Holston, Gadamer’s achievement is to offer an alternative account
of human epistemology which grounds human knowledge in the facticity
of human ontology. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics collapses the
fact-value division which is characteristic of Enlightenment rationalism,
10 G. CALLAHAN AND K. B. MCINTYRE

and, as such, combines a descriptive and normative epistemology. Holston

suggests that Gadamer has described what is fundamental to any true,
authentic, or genuine interpretation/understanding. To put it differently,
one might say that he is describing a normatively positive category of
human experience which encompasses understanding the human world in
a way that abstract “scientism” cannot.
According to Holston, Gadamer’s critique of modern rationalism arises
from his concern about the forgetfulness of being, and he sees that forget-
fulness as characteristic of scientific inquiry (understanding “from a dis-
tance”) in which the observer is conceived as not part of the reality being
observed. By calling attention to the ubiquity of “application” to present
circumstances that is part of all understanding, Gadamer aims to remind
us of our continuous involvement in a reality that transcends both “sub-
ject” and “object” of interpretation. That inescapable involvement of the
interpreter in the reality that interpreter attempts to describe was also a key
theme of our next thinker.
Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) is a hard theorist to summarize, as his 34
volumes of political philosophy include “multiple changes in focus and
emphasis,” according to Michael P. Federici. Federici notes that Voegelin
was not focused in his writing on “the Enlightenment itself but a broader
intellectual genealogy of which the enlightenment was a part”. Voegelin
was concerned “primarily with the rise of political religions [which were]
the outgrowth of existential closure to the truth of existence”.
Enlightenment rationalists were “interesting to Voegelin in so far as they
contributed to the development of... the western crisis of order that
inspired his work”. As Federici puts it, “Enlightenment thought has been
described as the religion of reason and the religion of humanity, language
that conveys Voegelin’s characterization of the enlightenment as apostatic
revolt”.
Similarly to Michael Oakeshott, Voegelin understood Enlightenment
rationalism to be irrational, “because it is reductionistic”. For Voegelin,
Federici writes, Enlightenment rationalism, following the lead of Voltaire,
takes “a part of human experience... the animal basis of existence... as its
whole” so that “man’s participation in transcendent reality is eliminated
from consciousness”.
“Removing consciousness of... transcendent structures from the life of
human beings and human civilization eliminates the very source of order
on which the ends of politics depend”. As Federici puts it, “a just political
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

and social order, including rational discussion on which it depends, are

only possible if human beings are open to transcendent reality”.
Wendell John Coats, Jr. contends that the works of Michael Oakeshott
(1901–1990) on rationalism, from the 1940s and 50s, “develop in detail
the implications of a view of human knowledge and experience articulated
initially in the more philosophic Experience and Its Modes”. The earlier
work sets out a case that arguments from various “modes” of experience,
such as science, history, and practical life, are mutually irrelevant to the
advancement of other modes. For instance, a practical argument suggest-
ing that we would be better off if we could travel faster than the speed of
light should have no impact on a scientific case for whether or not such a
thing is physically possible.
Coats says that “Oakeshott’s fundamental critique of [rationalism] as
an approach to human activity and conduct is its partiality in the definition
of ‘rationality’”. The rationalist misses the essentially poetic, and not pro-
saic, character of human experience. In other words, Oakeshott’s critique
of rationalism is essentially an ontological one.
Jason Ferrell’s essay on Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) focuses on the vari-
ous ways in which Berlin deploys the term “monism” as a critique of a
variety of reductionist forms of theorizing. Ferrell notes that, though
Berlin associates monism with one of the primary historical traditions in
Western philosophy, Platonism, Berlin extends this critique of monism to
the kind of modern conceptions of moral philosophy and scientific ratio-
nalism associated with the Enlightenment. According to Ferrell, Berlin’s
understanding of monism manifests his pluralist and anti-reductionist
conception of the character of human experience, and is best understood
as consisting of three claims. Berlin avers that monists of various stripes
claim that, first, all questions have one and only one genuine or correct
answer; that, second, there is a means of determining these answers; and,
third, that the answers to all of the questions are compatible with one
another.
Ferrell then examines three different ways in which Berlin contrasts
monism with richer, more pluralistic conceptions of human activity. First,
he offers an account of Berlin’s critique of the attempt to apply the meth-
ods of the natural sciences to the human sciences, especially history. Ferrell
explains both Berlin’s critique of scientism and determinism in the study
of human action as connected to a conflation of the notion of causality in
the natural sciences, which is a logical and empirical notion, and causality
in the human sciences, which is a question of making actions intelligible.
12 G. CALLAHAN AND K. B. MCINTYRE

Second, Ferrell surveys Berlin’s account of the character of philosophy and

why monist approaches to that subject tend to get things wrong. According
to Ferrell, Berlin takes philosophical questions to be those which cannot
easily be classified as empirical or logical, and claims that the error of phil-
osophical monism, especially modern “scientistic” monism, is to attempt
to reduce all questions to the empirical or logical. Finally, Ferrell offers an
account of Berlin’s critique of political monism, which once again focuses
on its fatal reductionism and its ignorance of human moral and social
plurality.
Nathaneal Blake, commenting on Russell Kirk (1918–1994), seeks to
place him in the context of the American conservative movement of the
mid-twentieth century. Blake claims that Kirk’s great achievement lies in
his steady insistence on the fundamental limitations of human rationality,
especially when that rationality is applied to social or political activity.
Blake notes Kirk’s Burkean opposition to schemes for collectivizing prop-
erty and centralizing power, and connects that opposition to his conten-
tion that such rationalist plans fail to account for the limits of human
knowledge and goodness. When implemented, they brought and continue
to bring misery to millions. Against the rationalist confidence of the cen-
tral planners, Kirk set tradition, which he saw as a repository of human
experience and the tried and true wisdom of the past.
Blake also notes that Kirk’s most famous work, The Conservative Mind,
brought about a revival of interest in Edmund Burke and solidified Burke’s
reputation as the founding figure of modern conservative political thought.
According to Blake, Kirk also offered unique insight into Burke’s blend of
natural law thinking and historical consciousness, and this blend offers
valuable insights into the real working of political communities. There are
real moral obligations upon us, but the mystery of human existence pre-
vents us from delineating once and for all a perfect system of moral phi-
losophy, or an ideal political system. Finally, Blake points out that, for
Kirk, truth, whether moral, cultural or political, is apprehended as much
by the imagination as by reason.
Sanford Ikeda, in his essay on Jane Jacobs (1916–2006), ties her cri-
tique of rationalist urban planning to Hayek’s analysis of the problems
facing any such planner, whether they are attempting to plan a city, an
economy, or an entire social order. (This, by the way, justifies Jacobs inclu-
sion in this volume: her concern was not merely with urban planning, but
also with broader questions of the nature of social order.) Ikeda notes how
Jacobs understood rationalist urban planners to be under a similar
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

egophanic spell as other prophets of utopia: “As in all utopias, the right to
have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners in charge”.
Ikeda makes clear the utopian character of Jacobs’ targets in a series of
sketches of their ideas; for example, Ebenezer Howard is quoted as boast-
ing that his schemes would create “garden cities” “in which all the advan-
tages of the most energetic and active town life, withal the beauty and the
light of the country, may be secured in perfect combination”. In common
with all utopians, Howard seems to lack any sense that life might involve
inescapable trade-offs: he suggests we can live in a place as lively as London
and as serene as the Lake Country. One wonders that he did not also
promise that his garden cities would be both as warm as the Congo and as
cool as Antarctica! Similarly, Ikeda quotes Frank Lloyd Wright’s claim that
implementing his planned communities would “automatically end unem-
ployment and all its evils forever”. And the arch urban rationalist, Le
Corbusier, sought to create a “theoretically water-tight formula to arrive
at the fundamental principles of modern town planning”. Again, the ratio-
nalist seeks to replace practical experience with a theory. As Ikeda con-
cludes, all of the urban rationalists “do not appreciate the nature of a living
city as an emergent, spontaneous order”.
In his chapter on Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–), Kenneth McIntyre (no
relation) examines MacIntyre’s critique of modern rationalist moral phi-
losophy and his attempted resuscitation of the Aristotelian tradition of
virtue ethics. According to McIntyre, Alasdair MacIntyre offers not only a
critique of Enlightenment rationalism, but a critique of modern moral
philosophy as a whole. MacIntyre proposes a revitalization of Aristotelian
and Thomistic ethics as an alternative to what he takes to be the desiccated
and deracinated nature of modern deontology, utilitarianism, and emotiv-
ism. What went wrong during the Enlightenment, according to MacIntyre,
was that philosophers jettisoned the anchor that tied moral rules to sub-
stantive human results, leaving practical reasoning and moral judgments
unmoored to any conception of human flourishing. As McIntyre notes,
for MacIntyre, as for Michael Oakeshott, the rationalist conflates practical
and theoretical/scientific reasoning. For MacIntyre, this is an outcome of
the modern rejection of Aristotelian teleology. As an alternative, MacIntyre
offers an account of human practical knowledge which rejects the modern
scientistic account of human reason as primarily instrumental and techni-
cal instead of insisting that it is acquired only by an engagement in the
variety of specific human practices themselves. Since to know a practice is
to understand the history of that practice, a notion MacIntyre adopts from
14 G. CALLAHAN AND K. B. MCINTYRE

R.G. Collingwood, there is an inherently traditional aspect in human

rationality.
McIntyre offers a sympathetic account of Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique
of modern moral rationalism, emphasizing the importance of MacIntyre’s
recognition of the teleological character of a significant part of human
activity, while also suggesting that his critique owes a great deal to other
modern critics of moral rationalism, like Hegel and Collingwood. McIntyre
also suggests that the primary weakness of MacIntyre’s version of virtue
ethics is that it does not adequately answer the challenges posed by mod-
ern moral pluralism to a unified conception of the human telos.

Notes
1. We are not concerned with delineating a specific historical event or series of
events in the manner of an intellectual historian, nor are we interested in
offering a rationalized version of the “philosophy” of the Enlightenment or
a cultural history of the Enlightenment. For academically significant exam-
ples of each, see respectively J.G.A. Pocock’s magisterial history of
Enlightenment historiography Barbarism and Religion, Volumes One, Two,
and Three (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 1999, 2003);
Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Fritz C.A. Koelln and
James P. Pettegrove, trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955); and Peter Gay,
The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Volumes One and Two (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1966, 1969).
2. We are also not involving ourselves in the ongoing historical debate about
the Counter-Enlightenment. Whether the Counter-Enlightenment is best
understood as a discrete and internally coherent tradition of criticism of
Enlightenment thinkers and their ideas or whether it is best understood in a
pluralistic way as composed of a group of thinkers without a single target or
a unified argument is beyond our remit in this volume. The thinker most
often associated with the notion that the Counter-Enlightenment consti-
tuted a coherent and directed attack against the Enlightenment is Isaiah
Berlin, though this line of argument has been supported in recent years by
thinkers like Zeev Sternhell. See Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of Enlightenment:
Vico, Hamann, Herder, Second Edition, Henry Hardy, ed. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000) and Zeev Sternhell, The Anti-­
Enlightenment Tradition, David Maisel, trans. (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2010).
 CHAPTER 2

Burke on Rationalism, Prudence and Reason

of State

Ferenc Hörcher

“Il faut… tout détruire; oui, tout détruire; puisque tout est à recréer.”1

1
One of the most sophisticated minds of twentieth century political phi-
losophy seems to have completely misunderstood Edmund Burke’s frame
of mind. In his magisterial work, Leo Strauss presented Burke as a histori-
cist–relativist–particularist, almost a post-modern thinker, who did not
have any long-term values, but used political rhetoric for his own pur-
poses. He argued for the complete lack of natural law in Burke.2 In fact,
he found him lacking in rationality. He claimed that Burke “parts com-
pany with the Aristotelian tradition by disparaging theory and especially
metaphysics. He uses ‘metaphysics’ and ‘metaphysician’ frequently in a
derogatory sense.” His “opposition to modern ‘rationalism’ shifts almost

F. Hörcher (*)
Research Institute of Politics and Government, National University of
Public Service, Budapest, Hungary
Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities,
Budapest, Hungary
e-mail: horcher.ferenc@uni-nke.hu

© The Author(s) 2020 15

G. Callahan, K. B. McIntyre (eds.), Critics of Enlightenment
Rationalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42599-9_2
16 F. HÖRCHER

insensibly into an opposition to ‘rationalism’ as such”.3 Here we have

Burke presented as the prophet of irrationalism.
There is another possible, even characteristic, opposite misunderstand-
ing of Burke by those, who—starting out from his fierce opposition to the
ideas, and even more the practice of the French Revolution—thought that
he was a dogmatic thinker.4 It is argued that he is an old-fashioned reli-
gious reactionary. An advocate of religious superstition and an unsubstan-
tiated Natural Law, he is claimed to be determined to fight against social
justice and progress. This is Edmund Burke, the dogmatic ideologist of
religious reaction and doctrinaire natural law thinker.
This paper does not want to argue against Strauss’ interpretation of Burke,
or address the problems of presenting Burke as a religious dogmatic. It sim-
ply takes it for granted, that neither was Burke a scholastic crypto-Catholic,
nor a thinker of almost post-modern, or at least romantic irrationalism, who
did not trust reason at all, and therefore urged his readers to set free irrational
political passions.5 Rather he is going to be taken here as someone convinced
of the use of a constrained activity of reason in politics, and who did himself
believe that practical wisdom could—on the long run—lead us to recognize
those truths, which are generally labelled as the precepts of natural law. I will
argue that this Burkean approach to politics is genuinely conservative (even
if he himself was a Whig), or not to become anachronistic, that it is in har-
mony with a sceptical, British type conservatism. I will also argue that this
sort of pessimistic, practical rationality is derived from the Aristotelian
account of phronesis, which was transformed into the Roman and later
Christian virtue of prudence. Finally, I will show the parallel between the
prudence attributed to the successful individual human political agent, and
the reason of state attributed to the early modern state.
To prove these claims I will rely on Burke’s reaction on the French
Revolution, famously elaborated in the Reflections, his most influential
political work, and will concentrate on his use of the term reason and
rationality. As it will be seen, I was influenced by two classics of Burke
scholarship, most importantly by the relevant works of J.G.A. Pocock, and
of Francis P. Canavan, S.J., to whose positions my own is perhaps the clos-
est.6 Yet I will not try to overcome Pocock’s magisterial historical scholar-
ship. Instead, I will try to read Burke with the intention to make him
useful for our present day concerns. As for Canavan, the present chapter
will position Burke closer to the British conservative tradition, more
embedded in the particularities of the common law tradition and less in
the Thomistic and scholastic discourse, while keeping the basic elements
of a Christian Aristotelianism, that Canavan uncovered in his thought.
 2 BURKE ON RATIONALISM, PRUDENCE AND REASON OF STATE 17

2
In his fierce political pamphlet, written in the form of long letters, pub-
lished under the title Reflections on the Revolution in France, in 1790,
Edmund Burke tried to make sense of the fresh news about the revolution
in France. Or to put it in a more precise way: he was shocked by the news
of the events over the channel, and felt obliged to reflect on the possibility
whether the strange French disease can put its head up in his own country.
By giving his thoughts expression, the British Whig politician was able to
stir up a huge public debate about the situation, and about the necessary
measures to react upon the urgent challenges. What he was doing was not
much more than comparing the rhetoric of the French revolutionaries
with their own deeds, in order to show how much they were misleading
not only themselves and their own population but also the international
community. His strategy was a kind of dissection of revolutionary com-
munication, a rhetorical deconstruction, in order to reveal the actual polit-
ical stakes involved.
Perhaps the most important linguistic struggle in the Reflections went
around the notion of rationality. The revolutionaries claimed that the
political structure of the Ancien Régime had become anachronistic by
their day, and therefore it was irrational to sustain it any longer. Their
argumentation was based on the enlightened ideas of rationality recently
promulgated by people like Kant, who famously claimed that the
Enlightenment is not much more than the ability to “Sapere aude!” (appr.
Dare to know!, or Dare to think for yourself!). This trust in the potential
of human reason gave the name to the age: enlightenment, meaning a
kind of secular revelation induced by reason, or simply the Age of Reason.
This latter term was popularized by Thomas Paine, in his The Age of
Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, published in
1794. Paine’s work, undoubtedly the most influential attack on Burke’s
Reflections, was a defence of Deism, an intellectual movement believing in
a passive God, influenced by early eighteenth-century British Deism.
Burke’s work was attacked by Paine partly because Burke himself criticized
with strong words such famous contemporary dissenters as Richard Price
and Joseph Priestley for the political theology they preached.
One should certainly ask, on what grounds Burke attacked these firm,
and most of the time worthy believers of human reason? Well, to be sure,
not on the grounds of irrationality, either in the sense of a religious mysti-
cism or of a Romantic form of it. I would argue Burke himself is to be
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
estado y causas en que la
pobreza se conserua y cria, y avn
augmenta como es en la vida que
por remedio escogeis. En verdad
que el que viuiendo en
seruidunbre le pareçe huyr la
pobreza no puedo sino afirmar
que grandemente a sí mesmo se
engaña, pues sienpre veo al tal
menesteroso y miserable y en
neçesidad de pedir, y que le den.
Miçilo.—Yo quiero, gallo,
responder por mí y por aquellos
que la neçesidad los trae a este
vibir, con los quales comunicando
muchas vezes con mucho gusto y
plazer me solian dezir los
fundamentos y razones con que
apoyauan y defendian su opinion,
que a muchos oy dezir que
seguian aquella vida del palaçio
porque a lo menos en ella no se
temia la pobreza, pues que
conforme a la costumbre de otros
muchos honbres trabajauan auer
su cotidiano mantenimiento de su
industria y natural soliçitud,
porque ya venidos a la vejez,
quando las fuerças faltan por
flaqueza o enfermedad, esperan
tener alli en qué se poder
mantener.
Gallo.—Pues veamos agora si
esos dizen la verdad. Mas antes
me pareçe que con mucho mayor
trabajo ganan esos tales el
mantenimiento que quantos en el
mundo son. Porque lo que alli se
gana hase de alcançar con
ruegos; lo qual es más caro que
todo el trabajo, sudor y preçio
conque en el mundo se pueda
comprar. Quanto más que avn
quieren los señores que se
trabaje y se sude el salario; y de
cada dia se les augmentan dos
mil negoçios y ocupaçiones[1112]
para el cunplimiento de las[1113]
quales no basta al honbre la
natural salud y buena dispusiçion
para los acabar[1114]; por lo qual
es neçesario venir a enfermedad
y flaqueza y cuando los
señores[1115] sienten a sus
criados que por su indispusiçion
no los pueden seruir y abastar a
sus negoçios los despiden de su
seruiçio, casa y familia[1116]. De
manera que claramente ves ser
engañados por esa razon, pues
les acarreó el palaçio más
miseria, enfermedad y trabajo,
lleuauan[1117] quando a él fueron.
Miçilo.—Pues dime agora tú
gallo; pues no te pareçe que los
miseros como yo sin culpa
podrian elegir y seguir aquella
vida por gozar (siquiera) de aquel
deleyte y contentamiento que da
vibir en aquellas anchas y
espaçiosas casas, habitaçion y
morada de los dioses y de sola
persona real? enhastiados y
mohinos destas nuestras
miserables y ahumadas choças
que más son pozilgas de puercos
que casas y habitaçion de
honbres; y ansi mouidos[1118]
someternos a su seruiçio, avnque
no se goze alli de más que de la
vista de aquellos marauillosos
tesoros que estan en aquellos
suntuosos aparadores de oro[1119]
y de plata, bagillas y tapetes y
otras admirables riquezas que
entretienen al honbre con sola la
vista en deleyte y contentamiento,
y avn comiendo y beuiendo en
ellos, casi en esperança de los
comer y tragar?
Gallo.—Esto es, Miçilo, lo
verdadero que primero se auia de
dezir, que es causa prinçipal que
mueue a los semejantes honbres
a trocar su libertad por
seruidumbre, que es la cobdiçia y
ambiçion de solo gustar y ver las
cosas profanas, demasiadas y
superfluas; y no el ir a vuscar
(como primero deçiades) lo
neçesario y conueniente a vuestra
miseria[1120], pues eso mejor se
halla[1121] en vuestras choças y
pobres[1122] casas aunque
vaçias[1123] de tesoro, pero ricas
por libertad, y esas esperanças
que dezis que prometen los
señores con la conuersaçion de
su generosidad, digo que son
esperanças vanas, y de
semejante condiçion que las
promesas con que el amante
mançebo entretiene a su amiga,
que nunca le falta vna esperança
que la dar de algun suçeso, o
herençia que le ha de venir,
porque la vanidad de su amor, no
piensa poderla conseruar sino
con la vana esperança de que
algun tienpo[1124] ha de tener
grandes tesoros que la dar, y ansi
ambos dos confiados de aquella
vanidad llegan a la vejez
mantenidos de solo el deleyte que
aquella vana esperança les dio,
abiertas las bocas hasta el morir,
y se tienen estos por muy
satisfechos porque gozaron de vn
contentamiento que les entretubo
el viuir, avnque con trabajo y
miseria. Desta manera se an los
que viben en el palaçio, y avn es
de mejor condiçion la esperança
destos miseros amantes que la de
que se sustentan los que viuen de
salario y merçed, porque aquellos
permaneçen en su señorio y
libertad, y estos no. Son como los
compañeros de Ulixes, que
transformados por Cyrçes en
puercos rebolcandose en el suçio
çieno estimauan en más gozar de
aquel presente deleyte y
miserable contentamiento que ser
bueltos a su humano natural.
Miçilo.—¿Y no te pareçe, gallo,
que es gran feliçidad y cosa de
gran[1125] estima y valor tener a la
contina comunicaçion y
familiaridad con ylustres,
generosos prinçipes y señores,
aunque del palaçio no se sacasse
otro bien ni otro prouecho, ni otro
interes?
Gallo.—Ha, ha, ha.
Miçilo.—¿Y de qué te ries, gallo?
Gallo.—Porque nunca oí cosa
más digna de reyr. Porque yo no
ternia por cosa más vana que
comunicar y asistir al Rey más
prinçipal que en el mundo ay, si
otro interes no se sacasse de alli:
¿pues no me sería igual trabajo
en la vida que auer de guardar
tanto tienpo aquel respeto, aquel
sosiego y asiento, miramiento y
seueridad que se deue tener ante
la presençia y acatamiento de la
gran magestad del Rey? Agora,
pues que emos tratado de las
causas que les traygan a estos a
vibir en tal estado de
seruidunbre [1126], vengamos
agora a tratar los trabajos,
afrentas y injurias que padeçen
para ser por los señores elegidos
en su seruiçio, y para ser
preferidos a otros que estan
oppuestos con el mesmo deseo al
mesmo salario; y tanbien veremos
lo que padeçen en el proçeso de
aquella miserable vida, y al[1127]
fin en que acaban[1128]. Quanto a
lo primero es neçesario que si has
de entrar a viuir con algun señor,
que vn dia y otro vayas y vengas
con gran continuaçion su casa, y
que nunca te apartes de sus
vmbrales y puerta, aunque te
tengan por enojoso y importuno, y
aunque con el rostro y con el
dedo te lo den a ententer, y
aunque te den con la puerta en
los ojos no te has de enojar, mas
antes has de disimular, y comprar
con dineros al portero la memoria
de tu[1129] nonbre, y que al llegar
a la puerta no le seas importuno.
Demas desto es nesçesario que
te vistas de nueuo con más
sumptuosidad y costa que lo
sufren tus fuerças conforme a la
magestad[1130] del señor que
pretendes[1131] seruir. Para lo
qual conuiene que, o vendas tu
hazienda[1132], o te empeñes para
delante pagar del salario[1133] si al
presente no tienes qué vender, y
con esto has de vestirte del color
y corte que sepas que más vsas o
le aplaze al señor[1134] porque en
cosa ninguna no discrepes ni
passes su voluntad, y tanbien has
de mirar que le acompañes con
gran cordura do quiera que fuere,
y que mires si has de yr adelante,
o detrás: en que lugar, o mano. Si
has de yr entre los prinçipales, o
con la trulla y comunidad de
familia por hazer pompa y aparato
de gente; y con todo esto has de
sufrir con paçiençia aunque
passen muchos dias sin que tu
amo te quiera mirar a la cara, ni
echarte de ver, y si alguna vez
fueres tan dichoso que te quisiere
mirar, si te llamare y te dixere
qualquiera cosa que él quisiere, o
se le viniere a la boca, entonçes
verás te cubrir de vn gran sudor, y
tomarte vna gran congoja, que se
te çiegan los ojos de vna súbita
turbaçion, prinçipalmente quando
ves los que estan al rededor que
se ryen viendo tu perplegidad y
que mudo no sabes qué dezir. En
tanta manera que a vna cosa que
acaso te pregunta respondes vn
gran disparate por verte cortado,
lleno de empacho[1135]. Y a este
embaraço de naturaleza llaman
los virtuosos que delante estan
verguença, y los desuergonçados
lo llaman temor[1136] y los
maliçiosos dizen que es neçedad
y poca esperençia; y tú,
miserable, quando has salido tan
mal desta primera conuersaçion
de tu señor quedas tan mohino y
acobardado que de descontento
te aborreçes, y despues de auerte
fatigado muchos dias y auer
passado muchas noches sin
sueño con cuydado de asentar y
salir con tu intinçion y quando ya
has padeçido mil tormentos y
aflicçiones, injurias y afrentas, y
no por alcançar vn reyno en
posesion, o vna çiudad, sino
solamente vn pobre salario de
çinco mil marauedis, ya que algun
buen hado te faboreçio, al cabo
de muchos dias vienen a
informarse de ti y de tu
habilidad[1137], y esta esperiençia
que de tu persona[1138] se haze
no pienses que le es poca
vfaneza y presunçion al[1139]
señor, porque le es gran gloria
quererse seruir[1140] de honbres
cuerdos y habiles[1141] para
qualquiera cosa que se les
encomiende; y avn te has de
aparejar que han de hazer
examen y informaçion de tu vida y
costunbres. ¡O desuenturado de
ti! que congojas te toman quando
piensas si por maliçia de vn ruyn
vezino que quiera informar de ti
vna ruyn cosa, o que quando
moço passó por ti alguna liuiana
flaqueza, y por no te ver
auentajado, por tener enuidia de
tus padres, o linaje informa mal
de ti, por lo qual estás en ventura,
de ser desechado y excluido; y
tanbien como acaso tengas algun
opositor que pretenda lo que tú y
te contradiga, es neçesario que
con toda su diligencia rodee todas
las cabas y muros por donde
pueda contraminar y abatir tu
fortaleza.
Este tal ha de examinarte la vida
y descubrirte lo que esté muy
oculto y enterrado por la
antigüedad del tienpo[1142] y
sabida alguna falta, o miseria, ha
de procurar con toda su industria
porque el Señor lo sepa. Que
tengo por mayor el daño que
resulta en tu persona saber el
señor tu falta verdadera, o
impuesta, que no el prouecho que
podra resultar de seruirse de ti
todos los dias de su vida.
Considera ¡o Miçilo! al pobre ya
viejo y barbado traerle en examen
su cordura, su linaje, costunbres y
ser; de lo que ha estudiado, qué
sabe, qué ha aprendido; y si
estaua en opinion de sabio hasta
agora, y con ello cunplia, agora
ha de mostrar lo que tiene
verdadero. Agora, pues,
pongamos que todo te suçeda
bien y conforme a tu voluntad.
Mostraste tu discreçion y
habilidad[1143] y tus amigos,
vezinos y parientes todos te
faboreçieron y informaron de ti
bien. El señor te reçibio; la muger
te açepto; y al mayordomo
despensero y ofiçiales y a toda la
casa plugo con tu venida. En fin
vençiste. ¡O bienauenturado
vençedor[1144] de vna gran
vitoria!; mereçes ser coronado
como a trihunfador de vna antigua
Olinpia[1145], o que por ti se ganó
el reyno de Napoles o pusiste
sobre el muro la vandera en la
Goleta. Razon es que reçibas el
premio y corona igual á tus
méritos, trabajos y fatigas. Que de
aqui adelante vibas descansado,
comas y bebas sin trabajo de la
abundançia del señor, y como
suelen dezir, de oy más duermas
a pierna tendida. Mas ante todo
esto es al reues. Porque de oy
más no has de sosegar a comer
ni a beber. No te ha de vagar,
dormir ni pensar vn momento con
oçio en tus proprias miserias[1146]
y neçesidades; porque sienpre
has de asistir a tu señor, a tu
señora, hijos y familia. Sienpre
despierto, sienpre con cuydado,
sienpre soliçito de agradar más a
tu señor, y quando todo esto
huuieres hecho con gran
cuydado, trabajo y soliçitud te
podrá dezir tu señor que heziste
lo que eras obligado, que para
esto te cogio por su salario y
merçed, porque si mal siruieras te
despidiera y no te pagara, porque
él no te cogio para holgar. En fin
mil cuydados, trabajos y
pasiones, desgraçias y mohinas
te suçederan de cada dia en esta
vida de palaçio; las quales no
solamente no podra sufrir vn libre
y generoso coraçon exerçitado en
vna[1147] virtuosa ocupaçion, o
estudio de buenas letras, pero
aun no es de sufrir de alguno que
por pereza, cobdiçia y ambiçion
desee comunicar aquellas
grandeças y sumptuosidades
agenas que de si no le dan algun
otro interes más que[1148] verlas
con admiraçion sin poderlas
poseer. Agora quiero que
consideres la manera que tienen
estos señores para señalar el
salario que te han de dar en cada
vn año por tu seruiçio. El procura
que sea a tienpo y a coyuntura y
con palabras y maneras que sean
tan poco que si puede casi le
siruas de valde, y pasa ansi que
ya despues de algunos dias que
te tiene asegurado y que a todos
tus parientes y amigos y a todo el
pueblo has dado a entender que
le sirues ya, quando ya siente que
te tiene metido en la red y
muestras estar contento y hufano
y que preçias de le seruir, vn dia
señalado, despues de comer
hazete llamar delante de[1149] su
muger y de algunos amigos
iguales a él en edad, auariçia y
condiçion, y estando sentado en
su[1150] silla como en teatro, o
tribunal, limpiandose con vna paja
los dientes hablando con gran
grauedad y seueridad te
comiença a dezir. Bien has
entendido, amigo mio, la buena
voluntad que emos tenido a tu
persona, pues teniendote respeto
te preferimos en nuestra
compañia y seruiçio a otros
muchos que se nos ofreçieron y
pudieramos reçebir. Desto, pues,
has visto por esperiençia la
verdad no es menester agora
referirlo aqui, y ansi por el
semejante tienes visto el
tratamiento, orden y ventajas que
en estos dias has tenido en
nuestra casa y familiaridad.
Agora, pues, resta que tengas
cuenta con nuestra llaneza, poco
fausto, que conforme a la pobreza
de nuestra renta viuimos
recogidos, humildes como
çiudadanos en ordinario comun.
De la mesma manera querria que
subjetasses el entendimiento a
viuir con la mesma humildad, y te
contentasses con aquello poco
que por ti podemos hazer del
salario comun[1151], teniendo
antes respeto al contentamiento
que tu persona terna de seruirme
a mí, por[1152] nuestra buena
condiçion, trato y familiaridad; y
tambien con las merçedes,
prouechos y fabores que andando
el tienpo te podemos hazer. Pero
razon es que se te señale alguna
cantidad de salario y merçed, y
quiero que sea lo que te pareçiere
a ti. Di lo que te pareçera, porque
por poco no te querria desgraçiar.
Esto todo que tu señor te ha dicho
te pareçe tan gran llaneza y fabor
que de valde estás por le seruir, y
ansi enmudeçes vista su
liberalidad; y porque no ve que no
quieres dezir tu pareçer soys
conçertados que lo mande vno de
aquellos que estan alli viejos,
auarientos, semejantes y criados
de la moçedad con él. Luego el
terçero te comiença a encareçer
la buena fortuna que has auido en
alcançar a seruir tan valeroso
señor. El qual por sus meritos y
generosidad todos quantos en la
çiudad ay le desean seruir y tú te
puedes tener por glorioso, pues
todos quedan enuidiosos[1153]
deseando tu mesmo bien;
avnque[1154] los fabores y
merçedes que te puede cada dia
hazer son bastantes para pagar
qualquiera seruiçio sin alguna
comparaçion, porque parezca que
so color y titulo del salario te
pueda[1155] mandar, reçibe agora
çinco mil maravedis en cada vn
año con tu raçion; y no hagas
caudal desto que en señal de
açeptarte por criado te lo da para
vnas calças y vn jubon, con
protestaçion que no parará aqui,
porque más te reçibe a titulo de
merçed, debajo del qual te espera
pagar; y tú confuso sin poder
hablar lo dexas ansi, arrepentido
mil vezes de auer venido a le
seruir, pues pensaste a trueque
de tu liberdad remediar con vn
razonable salario toda tu pobreza
y neçesidades con las quales te
quedas como hasta aqui, y avn te
ves en peligro que te salgan más.
Sy dizes que te den más, no te
aprouechará y dezirte han que
tienes ojo a solo el interes y que
no tienes confiança ni respeto al
señor; y avnque ves claro tu daño
no te atreues[1156] despedir,
porque todos diran que no tienes
sosiego ni eres para seruir vn
señor ni para le sufrir; y si dixeres
el poco salario que te daua,
injuriaste, porque diran que no
tenias meritos para más. Mira
batalla tan miserable y tan infeliz.
¿Que harás? Neçesitaste a mayor
neçesidad; pues por fuerça has
de seruir confiado solo de la vana
esperança de merçed, y la mayor
es la que piensa la que te haze en
se seruir de ti, porque todos estos
señores tienen por el prinçipal
articulo de su fe, que los hizo tan
valerosos su naturaleza, tan altos,
de tanta manifiçençia y
generosidad que el soberano
poder afirman tenersele[1157]
vsurpado. Es tanta su presunçion
que les paraece que para solos
ellos y para sus hijos y
desçendientes es poco lo que en
el mundo ay, y que todos los otros
honbres que en el mundo viben
son estiercol, y que les basta solo
pan que tengan qué comer, y el
sol que los quiera alunbrar, y la
tierra que los quiera tener sobre
sí; y teniendo ellos diez y
veynte[1158] cuentos de renta y
más, no les pareçe vn marauedi:
y si hablan de vn clerigo que tiene
vn beneffiçio que le renta çien
ducados, o mil, santiguanse con
admiraçion: y preguntan a quien
se lo dize si aquel beneffiçio tiene
pie de altar; qué puede valer; y
muy de veras tienen por opinion
que para ellos solos hizo
naturaleza el feysan, el francolin,
el abutarda, gallina y perdiz y
todas las otras aues preçiadas, y
tienen muy por çierto que todo
hombre es indigno de lo comer.
Es, en conclusion, tanta su[1159]
soberuia y ambiçion destos que
tienen por muy aueriguado que
todo honbre les deue a ellos
salario por quererse dellos seruir;
ya que has visto como eligen los
hombres a su proposito, oye
agora cómo se han contigo en el
discurso de tu seruiçio. Todas sus
promesas verás al reues, porque
luego se van hartando y
enhadando de ti, y te van
mostrando con su desgraçia y
desabrimiento que no te quieren
ver, y procuran dartelo a entender
en el mirar y hablar y en todo el
tratamiento de tu persona. Dizen
que veniste tarde al palaçio y que
no sabes seruir y que no ay otro
hombre del palaçio sino el que
vino a él de su niñez. Si tiene la
mujer o hija moça y hermosa, y tú
eres moço y gentil hombre tiene
de ti zelos, y vibe sobre auiso
recatandose de ti: mirate a las
manos, a los ojos, a los pies.
Mandan al mayordomo que te
diga vn dia que no entres en la
sala y comunicaçion del señor, y
otro dia te dize que ya no comas
en la mesa de arriba, que te bajes
abajo al tinelo a comer, y si
porfias por no te injuriar mandan
al paje que no te dé silla en que te
asientes, y tu tragas destas
injurias dos mil por no dar al vulgo
mala opinion de ti. ¡Quanta
mohina y pesadumbre reçibes en
verte ansi tratar! y ves la nobleza
de tu libertad trocada por vn vil
salario y merçed. Verte llamar
cada hora criado y sieruo de tu
señor. ¿Qué sentira tu alma
quando te vieres tratar como a
más vil esclauo que dineros
costó? Que criado y sieruo te han
de llamar; y no te puedes
consolar con otra cosa sino con
que no naçiste esclauo, y que
cada dia te puedes libertar si
quisieres, sino que no lo osas
hazer porque ya elegiste por vida
el seruir, y quando ya el mundo y
tu mal hado te ven ya desabrido y
medio desesperado, o por
manera de piedad, o por te
entretener y prendarte para mayor
dolor, date vn çevo muy delicado,
vna dieta cordial como a honbre
que está para morir, y suçede que
se van los señores vn dia a holgar
a vna huerta, o romeria, mandan
aparejar la litera en que vaya la
señora y auisan a toda la gente
que esté a punto, que han todos
de caualgar; y quando está a
cauallo el señor y la señora está
en la litera, mandate la señora a
gran priesa llamar. ¿Que sentira
tu alma quando llega el paje con
aquel fabor? Estás en tu cauallo
enjaezado a toda gallardia y
cortesania, y luego partes con vna
braua furia por ver tu señora qué
te quiere mandar[1160]. Y ella
haziendose toda pedaços de
delicadeça y magestad te
comiença a dezir: Miçilo, ven acá;
mira que me hagas vna graçia, vn
soberano seruiçio y plazer. Haslo
de hazer con buena voluntad,
porque tengo entendido de tu
buena diligençia y buena
inclinaçion que a ti solo puedo
encomendar vna cosa tan amada
de mi[1161], y de ti solo se puede
fiar. Bien has visto quanto yo amo
a la mi armenica perrica graçiosa;
está la miserable preñada y muy
çercana al parto, por lo qual no
podre sufrir que ella se quede
acá. No la oso fiar[1162] destos
mal comedidos criados que avn
de mi persona no tienen cuydado,
quanto menos se presume que
ternan de la perrilla, avnque
saben que la amo como a mí.
Ruegote mucho que la traigas en
tus manos delante de ti con el
mayor sosiego que el cauallo
pudieres lleuar, porque la cuytada
no reçiba algun daño en su
preñez; y luego el buen Miçilo
reçibe la perrilla encomendada a
su cargo de lleuar, porque casi
lloraua su señora por se la
encomendar, que nunca a las
tales se les ofreçe fabor que suba
de aqui. ¡Qué cosa tan de reyr
será ver vn escudero gallardo,
graçioso, o a vn honbre honrrado
de barba larga y grauedad lleuar
por medio de la çiudad vna
perrica miserable delante de sí,
que le ha de mear y ensuçiar sin
echarlo él de ver! y con todo esto
quando se apean y la señora
demanda su armenica no le
faltará alguna liuiana desgraçia
que te poner por no te agradeçer
el trabajo y afrenta que por ella
pasaste. Dime agora, Miçilo,
¿quál hombre ay en el mundo por
desuenturado y miserable que
sea, que por ningun interes de
riqueza ni tesoro que se le
prometa, ni por gozar de grandes
deleytes que a su imaginaçion se
le antojen auer en la vida del
palaçio, trueque la libertad, bien
tan nunca bastantemente
estimado de los sabios, que dizen
que no ay tesoro con que se
pueda comparar; y viban en estos
trabajos, vanidades, vurlerias y
verdaderas niñerias del mundo en
seruidumbre y captiuerio
miserable? ¡Quál será, si de seso
totalmente no está pribado, y mira
sienpre con ojos de alinde las
cosas, con que todas se las
hazen muy mayores sin
comparaçion? ¿Quién es aquel
que teniendo algun offiçio, o arte
mecanica, avnque sea de vn
pobre çapatero como tú, que no
quiera más con su natural y
propria libertad con que naçio ser
señor y quitar y poner en su casa
conforme a su voluntad, dormir,
comer, trabajar y holgar quando
querra, antes que a voluntad
agena viuir y obedeçer?
Miçilo.—Por çierto, gallo,
conuençido me tienes a tu opinion
por la efficaçia de tu persuadir, y
ansi digo de hoy más que quiero
más vibir en mi pobreza con
libertad que en los trabajos y
miserias del ageno seruiçio viuir
por merçed. Pero pareçe que
aquellos solos seran de escusar,
a los quales la naturaleza puso ya
en edad razonable y no les dio
offiçio en que se ocupar para se
mantener. Estos tales no pareçe
que seran dignos de reprehension
si por no padeçer pobreza y
miseria quieren seruir.
Gallo.—Miçilo, engañaste;
porque esos muchos más son
dignos de reprehension, pues
naturaleza dio a los honbres
muchas artes y offiçios en que se
puedan ocupar, y a ninguno dexó
naturaleza sin habilidad para los
poder aprender; y por su oçio,
negligençia y viçio quedan torpes
y neçios y indignos de gozar del
tesoro inestimable de la libertad;
del qual creo que naturaleza en
pena de su negligençia los privó;
y ansi mereçen ser con vn garrote
vivamente castigados como
menospreçiadores del soberano
bien. Pues mira agora, Miçilo,
sobre todo, el fin que los tales
han. Que quando han consumido
y empleado en esta suez y vil
trato la flor de su edad, ya que
estan casi en la vejez, quando se
les ha de dar algun galardon,
quando pareçe que han de
descansar, que tienen ya los
miembros por el seruiçio contino
inhabiles para el trabajo; quando
tienen obligados a sus señores a
alguna merçed, no les falta vna