“A Man’s no Horse”: Reason, Language, and the “Thing which is not” in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

Sa？etak The eighteenth century is known for the emergence of free thought, rationalism and critical thinking, and for the liberation of the arts and sciences from superstition. Jonathan Swift, being a devoted Anglican, was also a formidable critic of the Enlightenment thought, making his skepticism of modern learning a major theme in his writing. In Gulliver’s Travels Swift challenges the idea that truth can be empirically defined by a simple collection of facts, and he argues that humans are not rational animals. In a letter to Pope, Swift wrote that he has material towards a treatise proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale and to show it would be only rationis capax, i.e. capable of reason. This is especially evident in Part IV, in the land of the Houyhnhnms. I will focus on this last part of the Travels and will compare it to the empirical philosophy of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. My aim is to discuss Gulliver’s shift to madness, following his inability to internalize the perceptions of the societies in which he happens to find himself and his irrational aspiration to become one of the “horses”. The current paper will concentrate on the interplay of truth and lies, central to Swift’s writing and language, as the tool for achieving a subtle irony, enhanced by Gulliver’s obsession with truth, self-deception, and constant contradictions. Arguably, the target of Swift’s satire are not lies, but the denial of lies and the pursuit of reason at all costs