By drawing on the two waves of critique of the Enlightenment and its version of reasonone after the French Revolution and the other after WWIIthis research pushes the timeline to an even earlier point and tries to study the critique of the Enlightenment and its version of reason within the Enlightenment itself. In doing so it chooses the English/Irish writer Jonathan Swift for case study, because in his works he repeatedly levels scathing criticisms of his age and the reason upheld by many of his contemporaries.;In his critique of the Enlightenment and its version of reason Swift appeals to a long tradition in Western intellectual history which regards human reason as twofold: a discursive part which proceeds in a step-by-step manner, through analysis, calculation, and demonstration; and an intuitive part which reaches the conclusion directly, immediately, and with much certainty. The Enlightenment, however, breaks the balance between the two by promoting discursive reason and eliminating intuitive reason. As a result, discursive reason is easily instrumentalized without the check of intuitive reason, which is thrown into oblivion.;Swift's critique is essentially a protest against this trend that was going on at his time. In contrast to it, he denounces discursive reason while champions intuitive reason. In his critique, the main target is discursive reason, and it necessarily also involves the most representative embodiment of discursive reason that was prospering at the time, namely, natural science. The critique of discursive reason and of science is made partly by relying on intuitive reason, which makes it, in a sense, also reason's critique of itself.;Of course, Swift does not regard human reason, either intuitive or discursive, as the panacea for human beings. As a priest of the Anglican Church, he thinks reason should always be subordinate to faithin other words, reason is limited. But perhaps ironically, in his emphasis on the limit of reason and the consequent need for faith as embodied and ensured in an authoritative institution, Swift reveals his own bigotry, intolerance and authoritarianism, which shows how he was historically and ideologically limited.

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This thesis presents a the satire of Jonathan Swift's writings framed within the context of the historical events and conditions as they existed during his lifetime.

In Swift's works, both heroes and madmen are characterized by supra-normal aspiration, imagination, individuality, and pride, and the mad hero becomes an effective emblem for the chaos arising when individual vision challenges traditional authority in religion, politics, and literature. Swift's view of madness as the willful perversion of reason tends to be traditional, though his sense of its pervasiveness creates a subversive skepticism. Consistently throughout his works, Swift posits conscience as the only safeguard against the madness of pride. Swift views the traditional hero as subversive, typically portraying him as mad while presenting the sane man as unheroic. As the Tale-teller argues, the traditonal hero is a successful madman. Swift's later works demonstrate that madness and heroism often coincide because of the mutually reinforcing relationship between power and ego, and he asserts that the will to power, manifested in the heroic imposition of one's will upon others, is a form of madness. As an alternative to the asocial and amoral traditional hero, Swift promotes a moderate hero in the figures of the Church of England Man, the Examiner, and the Drapier: the one just man, motivated by Roman and Christian virtue, in a mad society. But even the vir bonus remains susceptible to challenges of authority, for in a mad and corrupt society his singular vision cannot appeal to common sense. Moreover, if he becomes powerful, he risks madness, and if he retreats from madness, he becomes impotent. As a consequence of this double bind, the satirist himself suffers a profound alienation. Swift recognizes that by engaging in the controversies of his age, he himself becomes liable to charges of the madness of pride. Even as he harangues the world, his recognition of the heroic conceit in establishing himself as satirist is evident in the self-satire of A Modest Proposal and the verses on his death. Similarly, the self-portraits in his poetry and Gulliver's Travels demonstrate his conscience at work as he satirizes his own indignation and reforming urges, striving thereby to maintain a modicum of humility and thus sanity, and, in laughing with the reader, striving to maintain common sense as well.

Swift appears in many of his poems either in his o person or behind a poetic mask which does little to conceal his identity. The poems contain Swift's view of his own character. Even in the poems addressed to others, the most important subject is Swift himself. This study is divided into chapters which examine the various roles Swift assumed in both his private and public lives. Following a brief introduction are two chapters of more interest than significance. The first of these is concerned with poems on Swift as a houseguest. These poems frequently relate the difficulties Swift's eccentric behavior caused his hosts. The second deals with poems on Swift's relationships with friends such as Thomas Sheridan and Patrick Delany, as well as with a public adversary, Jonathan Smedley.