La Siècle de la Raison

The eighteenth century has been called the century of reason. I’ve never understood that: they’re all mad! They give reason a responsibility which it simply can’t bear, it’s too weak. The Encyclopedists wanted to know everything...But that direct relation between the self and – as the Italians say – lo scibile, the knowable, was already broken.
- Samuel Beckett.

I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity as you do, and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy, Brutality, Daemons, Buonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the Burning Brand from Bottomless Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason.
- John Adams.

Comments

  1. Anonymous7/2/11 4:42 AM

    Buonaparte is actually a Corsican variant, sometimes used by his enemies to mock his provincial origin.

    ReplyDelete
  2. C. Van Carter7/2/11 12:04 PM

    Thanks for the tip. Removed the [sic].

    ReplyDelete

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