Barbara C. Bowen's 1972 article "Cornelius Agrippa's De Vanitate: Polemic or Paradox?" (Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 249–256) is a compact but analytically precise generic study of De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium, arguing that the work belongs primarily to the humanist tradition of paradoxical rhetoric — the tradition of the declamatio paradoxa exemplified by Erasmus's Encomium Moriae — rather than to the tradition of systematic philosophical scepticism. The article anticipates several of Van der Poel's (1997) arguments and shares their basic methodological commitment to reading De incertitudine through its rhetorical genre, but it focuses more specifically on the Erasmian analogue and on the structural features of the work that mark it as comic-paradoxical rather than earnestly sceptical.

The Title's Ambiguity and the Question it Poses

Bowen's title — "Polemic or Paradox?" — frames the interpretive choice precisely. The "polemic" reading takes De incertitudine as a sustained, sincere attack on the corruption and futility of contemporary learning: Agrippa genuinely believes that grammar is useless, medicine is dangerous, philosophy is vanity, and magic is diabolical, and the work is a catalogue of these failures for the purpose of reform. The "paradox" reading takes it as a formal exercise in paradoxical encomium: Agrippa is arguing the negative case against all learning with the maximum of rhetorical skill and entertainment, without sincere commitment to the positions argued, in the tradition of a recognizable humanist genre.

Bowen argues for the paradox reading, but she does not argue for it crudely. The paradox reading does not mean that the work is trivial, insincere, or without intellectual content: the Encomium Moriae is neither trivial nor insincere, and yet it is a paradoxical encomium rather than a philosophical treatise. The paradox reading means that the generic frame shapes what kind of statement the work is making and how its arguments should be assessed — not as direct expressions of belief to be evaluated as true or false, but as demonstrations of a rhetorical and satirical intelligence that illuminates its targets through the extremity of the position argued.

The Structure of De incertitudine and the Encomium Moriae

The structural parallels Bowen draws between De incertitudine and the Encomium Moriae are the heart of the argument. Both works proceed through a comprehensive survey of human activities, institutions, and forms of learning, demonstrating in each case that the thing surveyed is vain, foolish, or corrupt. Both use a persona — Erasmus's Folly, Agrippa's sceptical catalogue-maker — to say things that would be dangerous or absurd if said in the author's own voice. Both conclude with a Christian pivot: after exhausting the vanity of human wisdom, both works turn to the paradox of divine wisdom, which is foolishness in the eyes of the world (1 Corinthians 1–3) but surpasses all human learning. Both, in other words, are structured applications of the Pauline theology of wisdom and folly to the institutions of Renaissance learning.

The specific parallels are multiple: the critique of grammarians and rhetoricians who mistake formal technique for genuine wisdom (present in both works); the attack on professional philosophers for generating empty controversies without practical benefit; the satirical treatment of medicine and physicians who harm more than they help; the critique of lawyers for making law a labyrinth rather than an instrument of justice; the critique of theologians for scholastic elaboration of what should be simple evangelical truth. In both cases the catalogue is entertaining, relentless, and organized for maximum rhetorical effect rather than logical completeness.

Bowen also identifies the self-undermining quality of both works as a generic feature rather than a logical defect. Agrippa attacks grammar while writing in correct Ciceronian Latin; he attacks rhetoric while deploying its techniques with obvious skill; he attacks magic and occult philosophy in a work that was composed alongside the DOP. These apparent contradictions would be devastating objections to a sincere polemic, but in the context of paradoxical encomium they are part of the joke: the paradoxical encomist knows that he is using the tools he is attacking, and this self-awareness is itself part of the performance. Erasmus's Folly similarly knows that she is giving a paradoxically foolish defense of folly, and this awareness of the performative dimension is what distinguishes the Encomium Moriae from a straightforward praise of foolishness.

Scepticism Without Sceptics

One of Bowen's more pointed observations is that De incertitudine is not a work of philosophical scepticism in the tradition of Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, or the later Academic tradition. The ancient sceptics developed careful logical arguments for the impossibility of certain knowledge — the ten modes of Aenesidemus, the five modes of Agrippa (a different Agrippa — the sceptic Agrippa of Nettesheim is coincidentally named after one of the ancient sceptics), the various arguments about the criterion of truth. None of this apparatus appears in De incertitudine. Agrippa does not argue for scepticism in the philosophical sense; he demonstrates the vanity of specific disciplines through satirical attack and rhetorical accumulation. This is a very different operation from philosophical scepticism, even if the conclusion (human learning is uncertain and futile) superficially resembles the sceptical conclusion.

This observation is important for distinguishing Agrippa from the tradition of Renaissance scepticism — Montaigne, Charron, La Mothe le Vayer — that is sometimes identified as his intellectual offspring. While there is a genuine connection between Agrippa's attack on academic learning and the development of Renaissance scepticism, the connection is not through philosophical argument but through the more general humanist critique of scholastic learning that Agrippa shares with Erasmus, More, and others. Bowen's insistence on the genre distinction keeps this connection appropriately qualified.

Relationship to Van der Poel and the Declamatory Tradition

Van der Poel (1997) takes Bowen's genre analysis further, situating De incertitudine within the classical declamatory tradition (from Quintilian through the Renaissance) rather than specifically within the paradoxical encomium tradition of Erasmus. The two analyses are complementary: the paradoxical encomium is a specific Renaissance form of the declamatory genre, and Bowen's more specific focus on the Erasmian analogue enriches Van der Poel's more general account. Together they constitute a strong case for the generic-rhetorical reading of De incertitudine that has been the dominant scholarly position since the 1970s.

Miles (2008) extends this analysis in a different direction, focusing on the macro-structural occupatio in the DOP rather than on the generic context of De incertitudine. The three analyses — Bowen, Van der Poel, Miles — each illuminate a different aspect of Agrippa's rhetorical practice: the paradoxical-encomium genre, the classical declamatory tradition, and the structural deployment of classical rhetorical figures. Taken together, they establish the interpretive framework within which Agrippa's sceptical writings must be read if they are to be understood on their own terms rather than as direct statements of philosophical position.