Chesterton on fools

In honor of April Fools’ Day, here’s a quick batch of thoughts on fools and foolishness from GK Chesterton, a man who knew a thing or two about the topic—and also how to enjoy what he often called the “topsy turvy,” which is the essence of the holiday.

Alas, not everyone is a fan of April Fools’ Day. I’ve already seen warnings on social media regarding the precisely proper ways to celebrate it this year, admonitions so stern and moralistic I started checking the posters’ profile pictures for ruffs and broadcloth. I’ve also seen some deeply wise people suggesting we not fool around at all, reminding us that we have apparently evolved beyond the examples of those who survived the plague and religious persecution and the death camps and the gulag and can—and should—now hang up our humor and adopt a properly modern attitude of lugubrious, sorrowful navel-gazing. Which brings me to this line, from “The Neglect of Christmas,” 1906:

“There are those who dislike playing the fool, preferring to act the same part in a more serious spirit.”

Let the reader understand. And there’s this, from “A Defence of Heraldry,” collected in The Defendant, 1901:

“We shall never make anything of democracy until we make fools of ourselves. For if a man really cannot make a fool of himself, we may be quite certain that the effort is superfluous.”

Being foolish is not a choice. There is, indeed, no other option.

Chesterton will begin to make a lot more sense to you once you’ve reckoned with his thoughts on two categories of people: madmen and fools. Madmen, those afflicted with any number of the insanities that have created the modern world, are the tragic endpoint, and much of his writing was concerned with outlining, arguing against, and rescuing people from madness. We are susceptible to madness because we do not begin as a tabula rasa of sanity and then fall away into madness, but begin predisposed to it because we are all, in fact, fools.

This is not the kind of everyone-is-an-idiot cynicism of some modern thinkers and most middle school malcontents. It is not even necessarily a bad thing. That’s because it stems from Chesterton’s beliefs about mankind as informed by Christian doctrine. From Heretics, 1905:

The weak point in the whole of Carlyle’s case for aristocracy lies, indeed, in his most celebrated phrase. Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men. But the essential point of it is merely this, that whatever primary and far-reaching moral dangers affect any man, affect all men.

Chesterton saw the Socratic truth that wisdom must begin from a recognition of one’s own foolishness, a foolishness shared with all of mankind and therefore not just the basis of any real equality but also of any real wisdom. From his 1910 book What’s Wrong With the World, in a passage on the ever-relevant topic of modern education:

“We shall certainly make fools of ourselves; that is what is meant by philosophy.”

This fundamental fact—that we are all fools, disguise it as we may—is also the basis of our one true hope, since only Christianity can acknowledge this universal human defect and not just offer a solution to it but make it one of the instruments of our redemption. From his great 1908 book Orthodoxy:

Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the grey ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of one’s self, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go—as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, quâ man, can be valueless. Here again, in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

No one is too big a fool to be saved. As Chesterton knew, it is the engine of redemption and the acknowledgement that we are fools is a step toward sainthood. Indeed, the foolishness of holiday and ritual are part of the making of saints. Again from Heretics:

“A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions when he is not even ready to wear a wreath round his head for them.”

A good reminder in this self-serious age. Don’t listen to the scolds. Be foolish, and even more importantly, be willing to be fooled. The more that we can do this, the more that we can take ourselves lightly—which, according to Chesterton, is why angels can fly—the more of us that can take that one small step called humility, the closer we fools will draw each other toward salvation.