the sleep of reason

For a long time, I misunderstood Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Goya wanted to express that when Reason is absent, the forces of irrationality, ignorance and folly take over, with dire results. A typical Enlightenment point of view. Or maybe, as the Wikipedia page says, the etching is a Romantic embrace of unbridled imagination and emotion, wherever it leads. Either way, both the Enlightenment and Romantic interpretations agree that it is the abeyance of Reason's restraining powers what brings about the horrors —or the creative efflorescences.

But for me, Goya's engraving suggested something very different: that when Reason dreams, when it frees itself from the constraints of reality and the obtuse and paralyzing absurdity of the world, when it attempts to completely fulfill itself according to its own principles... that's what ends up creating the monsters. Is not the owl a symbol of knowledge, after all? For me the sleep of Reason didn't represent an abdication, but a momentary glimpse into its own apotheosis —which turns out to be a nightmare.

I suppose mine was a very Post-enlightenment, post twentieth-century interpretation. I think it is in line with Poincaré's assertion that "logic sometimes breeds monsters", although he was talking about deeply counterintuitive and seemingly aberrant mathematical results:

Logic sometimes breeds monsters. For half a century there has been springing up a host of weird functions, which seem to strive to have as little resemblance as possible to honest functions that are of some use. No more continuity, or else continuity but no derivatives, etc... Formerly, when a new function was invented, it was in view of some practical end. Today they are invented on purpose to show our ancestors’ reasonings at fault, and we shall never get anything more out of them.