Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [30]
But the Report does not merely divert. Rather, by transporting “the Nation” to a realm where claims of seriousness can be interrogated, it serves essential political functions. It might seem sheer nonsense that we play at worrying about “People Destroying America,” or that we learn on a weekly basis about “The Number One Threat Facing America: BEARS!” But in a corporate-media-saturated political culture where the politics of fear are manipulated both by politicians and those intent to raise ratings alike, these bits are revelatory. Colbert teaches us freedom by disclosing the sources of manipulation, reminding us of the fact that we are being played but need not be. To follow the metaphor of the Platonic puppet, we might say that by continually parodying seriousness, Colbert loosens some of the hard, brittle cords so that we may better dance with the golden thread pulling toward virtue.
Sin, Play, and the “Synagogues of Satan”
Unlike Heraclitus and Plato, Aristotle didn’t think highly of play, deeming it primarily for rest and relaxation. In later centuries, Aristotle’s preference for “the serious” was taken up by Christian theologians, Catholic and Protestant alike. At the gloomy extreme are thinkers generally hostile to play (a.k.a. pagan festivity). In the much cited words of the early Christian John of Chrysostom: “It is not God, but the devil, who is the author of fun.”61
More gently, in the late Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) found a wholesome dimension in the pervasive play of the medieval period (when somewhere near a third of the days of the year were reserved for festival). In his monumental Summa Theologica, the “angelic doctor” judiciously determines that, while we would not want to confuse serious virtue with play, because play facilitates “friendly human interaction”, “eutrapelia,” there is sin in “a lack of play.”62 Aquinas here follows Aristotle’s slight qualification of the “serious man” (for one must have a few friends for pleasure). Nevertheless, Aquinas assures the reader that faith takes the path of seriousness and that play is directed toward rest and relaxation.
Three centuries later, in The Praise of Folly, the Renaissance hero Erasmus (1466-1536) takes Aquinas’s tentative affirmation of play to another level, essentially inverting the traditional hierarchy of seriousness over mere play. Striking a pose remarkably similar to Colbert’s “well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot,”63 Erasmus, the quintessential court jester speaking truth to power (both secular and ecclesiastical), speaks in the voice of the goddess Folly (Silliness, Stupidity, Foolishness). Herself an illegitimate “playchild,” raised by Drunkenness and Ignorance, companion of Self-love, Laziness, Pleasure, Flattery, Madness, and Forgetfulness, Folly disparages book-learning and ignores traditional Christian worry about sin. Like the fool Stephen Colbert, who deems himself a divine gift, Folly boastfully sings her own praises: “The nature of all things is such, that the more of Folly they have, the more they conduce to Humane Life, which if it were not pleasant, would not be worth living!”64
Inverting the traditional opposition between seriousness and play, Erasmus offers critique, but also thoughts about virtue—even the virtues of faith and piety. From the standpoint of the ridiculousness of human behavior, history appears in a bright, often harsh light. In the pose of the unreasoning fool, Folly artfully indicts the Catholic Church and its officials for dogma, superstition, hypocrisy, and corruption. She is no less scathing when it comes to the greed, belligerence, and incompetence of kings, princes, courtiers, and merchants. What readers of Erasmus and viewers of Colbert must keep in mind, however, is that there is a substantive analysis of virtue