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This paper deals with a paradox described by Montaigne and several seventeenth-century authors: that one can be a scholar and a fool at the same time. The truth is not something that can be simply stated: it requires something else, namely an appropriate way of saying it. If we say something false, it is not a foolish thing: it is only an error. Analyzing the paradox of foolishness leads Montaigne to emphasize that foolishness is nothing else than telling the truth in a foolish manner. We will clarify the important concept of “manner.” Then, we will point out a new paradigm emerging at the end of the seventeenth century, a mechanicist interpretation of foolishness inspired by Cartesian philosophy. La Bruyère puts it vividly: one is a fool when one speaks and acts as a machine.