The Collapse of Reason: Enlightenment Rationalism and the ‘Choice of Life’ in Johnson’s Rasselas

 

The Collapse of Reason: Enlightenment Rationalism and the ‘Choice of Life’ in Johnson’s Rasselas

Introduction

Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) serves as a profound subversion of the optimistic rationalism characteristic of the eighteenth century. While the Enlightenment, championed by figures like Locke and Leibniz, posited that the application of human reason could decipher the laws of nature and lead to social perfection, Johnson’s narrative offers a counter-discourse. By situating the prince’s search for a “choice of life” within a landscape of perpetual disillusionment, Johnson argues that human reason is not a tool for achieving happiness, but a mirror reflecting the inherent “vanity of human wishes.”

The Failure of Empirical Methodology

Rasselas’s project—to systematically evaluate different modes of existence—is fundamentally an empirical one. He approaches life as a laboratory, believing that if one gathers enough data points (the hermit, the scholar, the farmer), one can extrapolate a universal truth. However, Johnson utilizes the “conclusion in which nothing is concluded” to satirize this scientific approach. The prince fails because he treats the “choice of life” as an external problem to be solved through observation, ignoring the internal, chaotic nature of human desire.

Comparative Lens: Johnson versus Voltaire

To fully understand Johnson’s skepticism, one must contrast Rasselas with Voltaire’s Candide. Both texts are “philosophical tales” that dismantle the optimism of their time. However, their methodologies differ significantly:

• Voltaire’s Active Defiance: In Candide, Voltaire uses biting satire and farce to expose the brutality of the world. His conclusion—”we must cultivate our garden”—is an active, pragmatic response to misery. It suggests that while the world is irrational, we can exert agency through labor and local action.
• Johnson’s Stoic Resignation: Conversely, Johnson’s Rasselas is characterized by a somber, melancholic tone. Where Candide finds refuge in his garden, Rasselas finds no such closure. Johnson’s characters do not “cultivate” a solution; they return to their origins, accepting that the search for the “choice of life” is a permanent state of longing that no garden can satisfy.

Reason as a Tool of Containment

Within the narrative, the more the characters rely on their “reason,” the more trapped they become. The Astronomer, for instance, is the text’s most vivid emblem of rationalist hubris. He has spent decades mastering the heavens, yet his mastery has rendered him a prisoner of his own delusions. His “reasoning” has led him to the madness of believing he controls the weather. Here, Johnson suggests that Enlightenment rationalism, when decoupled from the humility of lived experience, inevitably curdles into monomania.

The Inadequacy of the “Choice of Life”

The central conceit of the “choice of life” relies on the Enlightenment belief in human autonomy. Johnson dismantles this by highlighting the role of contingency. No matter how rational the choice, life remains subject to death, illness, and the “misery of existence.” By refusing to allow Rasselas to find a “perfect” choice, Johnson aligns himself with a skeptical tradition that prioritizes endurance over improvement. The prince’s return to Abissinia is not a failure of character, but an acceptance of the limitations of the human condition.

Key Themes for Examination: Rasselas vs. Candide

• The Failure of Optimism (Leibnizian Critique): * Both texts dismantle the idea that this is the “best of all possible worlds.”
  • Focus: How Rasselas’s internal void and Candide’s external brutality disprove the rationalist belief in inherent order.
• Epistemological Humility: * The transition from the “hubris” of the Astronomer (in Rasselas) and Pangloss (in Candide) to the need for intellectual modesty.
  • Focus: Rationalism as a potential source of madness or delusion when it ignores human limitations.
• The Geography of Confinement: * Rasselas: The Happy Valley (physical enclosure) $\rightarrow$ The World (intellectual enclosure).
  • Candide: Westphalia (lost innocence) $\rightarrow$ The Globe (chaos) $\rightarrow$ The Garden (bounded space).
  • Focus: The movement from totalizing systems to restricted, small-scale living.
• Agency vs. Contingency:
  • The tension between the Enlightenment belief in “free will” and the reality of external, uncontrollable events (death, natural disaster, political upheaval).
  • Focus: Johnson suggests we endure, while Voltaire suggests we act.
• The “Conclusion in Which Nothing is Concluded”:
  • The hallmark of Johnson’s style is the open-ended, circular narrative.
  • Focus: This refusal of closure is a stylistic rebellion against the didacticism of other 18th-century moralists.

 

Conclusion

Johnson’s critique of Enlightenment rationalism in Rasselas is not an abandonment of the intellect, but a call for its proper orientation. While Voltaire’s Candide offers a path through work, Johnson offers a path through profound existential acceptance. For the Delhi University student, this comparison is vital: it shows that the eighteenth century was not merely a monolith of reason, but a site of intense debate regarding the limitations of human agency.

 

Works Cited

Gabbard, G. N. “The ‘Choice of Life’ in Rasselas.” English Studies, vol. 50, no. 1-6, 1969, pp. 297-302.

Johnson, Samuel. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Edited by Jack Lynch, 2008. Jack Lynch’s Webpage, https://jacklynch.net/Texts/rasselas.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2026.

Kolb, Gwin J. “The ‘Choice of Life’ in Rasselas: A Note on the Unity of the Work.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 53, no. 3, 1954, pp. 368-372.

Voltaire. Candide. Translated by Peter Constantine, Modern Library, 2005.