In Molière's celebrated Le misanthrope, the spectator is witness to an immensely funny, albeit profound staging of the limits of rationality. The comedy exhibits how an idealist idea of the pure sovereignty of reason is ridiculous, self-contradictory, and mad, since the distinction between ideality and reality, the universal and the particular, the social and the individual, is ignored or even dissolved. The comic art of literature steps forth as a joyous purging and corrective of the highly seductive, but essentially delusional appeals from philosophy and idealism to absolutize reason and thus render oneself sovereign. A totalized reason that nonetheless cancels itself and becomes madness.

中文翻译：

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无节制理性的疯狂：莫里哀《厌世者》中的理性与疯狂

在莫里哀著名的《愤世嫉俗者》中，观众目睹了理性极限的一场极其滑稽而又深刻的演出。这部喜剧展示了理想主义的纯粹理性主权观念是多么荒谬、自相矛盾和疯狂，因为理想与现实、普遍与特殊、社会与个人之间的区别被忽视甚至消失了。文学喜剧艺术的出现是对哲学和唯心主义高度诱人但本质上是妄想的诉求的一种快乐的净化和纠正，诉求将理性绝对化，从而使自己拥有主权。一个整体的理性却自行取消并变得疯狂。