Pantagruelism

Pantagruelism (a term coined by Francois Rabelais, pictured at right) is my religion.

It is the unwavering belief in the redemptive possibilities of laughter. Rabelais was himself a Pantagruelist of the Erasmian school. Erasmus, the reader will recall, was the author of the learned treatise "In Praise of Folly" and argued, during the Protestant Reformation, for an alternative to the movement of Luther and Calvin: something he called the "Philosophy of Christ"--a sane and humanistic interpretation of Christianity.

Henry Miller was no doubt a Pantagruelist of what he termed the "Rosy-crucifixion" school, a kind of hermetic neo-paganism. Mazeppa's wild ride aux loups was a kind of "Rosy Crucifixion."

Among philosophers, Voltaire may have been the most accomplished of Pantagruelists. And he was no atheist (a charge typically leveled at my co-religionists). He simply insisted upon the right to practice a faith purged of credulity by the disciplined application of doubt.

I myself am a Pantagruelist of the school of Jahiz (al-Jahiziyya): a Pantagruelist avant la lettre (pictured above at left).

Jahiz was himself associated with the Mu'tazila, or rationalist school of Muslim theology. He was also an African who mastered Arabic prose and was famed in his day as a satirist.

As I often say, in a truly civilized society, you would never hear someone say, "You'll be hearing from my lawyer." In a truly civilized society, the appropriate retort is: "You'll be hearing from my satirist."