schall shakespeare as pol thinker

7/28/2019 Schall Shakespeare as Pol Thinker

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TheSupernaturalDestiny of ManShakespeare as a Pol i ti cal Thinker, editedby John Alvis and Thomas G. West,Durham CarohmAcademicPres, 1981.306 $p. $19.95.OME


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motivations and institutionsas political andthereby prevented any adequate comprehen-sion of why men really acted in major areas oftheir lives.The narrowness of such modem politicalphilosophy forced the Straussians and theVoegelinians, as the major proponents of therevival of the classics, to treat revelation withextreme care, if not actually in secret writing.

Noone wanted to scandalize, s it were, theacademic moderns by appearing to takerevelation too seriously, even when it was clearthat faith must be taken into account ifpolitical philosophy itself were to understandeven itself and itsown intrinsic limits. Athens,Jerusalem, Rome-even Mecca, as Strawrecognized-loomed in the background of adiscipline that prided itself on imitatingmodem natural science. The endeavor of be-inglike unto science, however, did not reckon,as StanleyJaki has shown, with the relationofthis same science to the doctrines of creationand finite essence, doctrines, theological or

classical, of medieval, and of modem thoughtwithout ignoring or distorting the Judaeo-Christian revelational factor, which itself, asmuch as the classics, made Westem civiliia-tion unique and gave truth a further univer-sal, not merely parochial or cultural, claim.This remarkable book lies squarely within thetradition of Leo Straw n particular. That isto say, it lies within the only academic tradi-tion that is intellectually willing and, moreimportantly, able to ask what differenceChristianity makes to the classics and tomodem theory. The Thomist tradition usedto be a major factor here, as Straw recog-nized, but with the exception of the papacyand a few advanced places l i e the Universityof Dallas, from where many of these essaysoriginated, this tradition has largely beenabandoned or rejected by believers them-selves, who, under the aegis of liberationtheology, or ecology, or liberalism, have large-ly embraced the modem project itself, as ifthe Enlightenment were what religion is now


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this relationship are Simply remarkable. Theseessays were in part written for an Inter-collegiate Studi es Institute Conference at theUniversity of Dallas, in part written for thebook itself. They treat the major politicalworks of Shakespeare-his tyrants, best kings,common men, bishops, matrons, and villains.The realization that Shakespeare is as pro-found as Cicero or Aristotle in political thingsshould comeas asurprise to no one. Yet, it isa surprise, as political thinkers have leftShakespeare largely to the literary scholars,just as they have left the Bible largely to thetheologians, that is to say, in both cases, topeople themselves largely ignorant of politicalthings. Political science, the highest of thepractical sciencesas Aristotle called it in TheEthics, has in the modem era acted as if itsarea of reality were meant to narrow itself sothat it focused only on the political,whereasit was meant, by its own reality, to expanditself so that it could see and account for allthere was, even something that came from no

political theory precisely in its relation to theclassics and to revelation.In the beginning of The City and ManStrauss remarks that we ought to study theclassics in order to grasp what man can learnby his own powers so that we could learnabout the limits of the queen of the socialsciences. John Alvis likewise concludes: Toknow what extends beyond politics, ithelps toknow the full scope of the political realm.Shakespeares poetry assi sts us in under-standing whatsurpasses politics by allowingusto grasp how far politics extends in the deter-mination of human lives. That politics oughtto be a consummation of human lives, of themortal while heismortal, as Hannah Arendtwould say, isno more than Aristotles dictumthat we are by nature political beings. We dowhat we are. But that politics ought to con-sumeall of human life is totalitarianism, inwhatever formitmight appear. It isprobablyno accident that no Shakespearean play de-picts the life of a modem totalitarian state


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about Shakespeares treatment of Sir ThomasMore. Bloom continues:

There are two sins mentioned in RichardI I : the sin of Adam and the sin of Cain.They seem to be identical, or at least oneleads to the other. Knowledge of practicalthings brings with it awareness that inorder for the sacred to become sacred, ter-rible deeds must be done. Because Goddoes not evidently rule, the founder ofjustice cannot himself be just.

We have here, I suppose, what Frederick D.Wilhelrnsen worried about in hisChnjtianityand Political Philosophy, the relation ofJewish to Christian intelligence, both revela-tional, both related to the classics, to modem-ity, and to each other.For the Christian intelligence, as I havesuggested elsewhere (The Christian Guard-ians, Downside Review, January, 1979), thereality of a religious elite and of a drive toGod and higher excellenceis not designed todeny the normalcy of politics nor to turn

Louise Cowan puts her finger on this issue:Noman isable to performhistask perfect-ly; in the Biblical tradition within whichShakespeares magination works, all earth-ly things are flawed and yet all are camersof something flawless. Shakespearesees thehuman enterprise as a series of catastro-phes, brought about by the clash of humanwills; yet within this turbulent and painfulchronicle he testifies to the gradualmysterious growth of the kingdom.

Shakespeare showsus that human com-munities and political regimes exist inorder to further what Allen Tate has calledthe one ost truth that must be perpetuallyrecovered- the supernatural destiny ofman. It is in the constant rediscovery ofshared love- between all sorts and condi-tions of men-that the true meaning ofhuman history lies concealed.The recovery of the supernatural destiny

of man, which elites and mystics really seekto understand and to achieve, is alone what


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philosophy now lying within the ken of thereligious subject who knows that politicsproduces of itself no everlasting kingdom,even when proposed by elites, by the-ologizers, clerical or lay. While we can agreewith Straw that it is not sufficient foreveryone to obey and to listen to the Divinemessage of the City of Righteousness, reflec-tion on the political thinking in Shakespearewill also teach us that it is not sufficient toneglect this same Divine message.

schall shakespeare as pol thinker

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