shakespeare philosophy

8/8/2019 Shakespeare Philosophy

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o Shakespeare's philosophy

Shakespeare is often commended for his "timelessness,"

rightly so, but of course he also wrote at a particularperiod in history--the end of the sixteenth century andthe beginning of the seventeenth. For my purposes, themost relevant fact about this period is that it precedesthe Scientific Revolution, so that science was in itsinfancy in Shakespeare's day. Very little that we now takefor granted was understood--in astronomy, physics,chemistry, and biology. The achievements of Descartes,

Leibniz, Galileo, Newton, Locke, Boyle, and other heroesof the Renaissance were still in the future. The laws ofmechanics were unknown; disease was a mystery;genetics was unheard of. Intelligent people believed inwitchcraft, ghosts, fairies, astrology, and all the rest.Eclipses were greeted with alarmed superstition.Scientific method was struggling to gain a foothold(Francis Bacon was laying the groundwork). The

conception of the world as a set of intelligible law-governed causes was at most a distant dream. The mostadvanced learning available came from the ancients;intellectually things hadn't changed much in twothousand years. When Shakespeare looked up into thenight sky, he had very little idea of what he was seeing,and the earth was still generally considered the center ofthe universe. Nor was much known about the extent ofthe earth and of other cultures (though global explorationhad already begun). It can be hard to remember thiswhen we are confronted by Shakespeare's sophisticationin other matters. Nothing much was known about thenatural world then, and this was known to be so;uncertainty and ignorance seemed man's natural lot. To
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give one striking example: so little was understood aboutthe plague that devastated Europe in the late sixteenthcentury that orders were given in London to exterminateall cats and dogs--which were in fact the best enemies

ofthe true carriers of the germs responsible, rats.It wasalso a period of religious upheaval in which the source ofdivine authority was very much in doubt. The ProtestantReformation had challenged Catholicism, and thequestion of how we might know God was intensely real(you could die for taking the wrong view).Shouldbelievers rely on their own unaided reason to knowGod's ways, or must they depend ultimately on church

dogma? How to interpret Scripture was a vexed question,with a great deal turning on it. Thus there was a stronginterest in knowledge and how it might be acquired, butnotvery much that seemed to qualify as beyond doubt. Itwas an age of uncertainty, following a period (the MiddleAges) of dogmatism, and preceding the age in whichhuman reason seemed to achieve undreamed-ofunderstanding of the universe (the Age of Enlightenment

in which we still live). It is fair, I think, to characterizeShakespeare's time as transitional--as one kind ofauthority (the church, monarchy) began to give way toanother (science and human reason, a new social order).We might say, simplifying somewhat, that Shakespearewas "betweencultures." Questioning is the spirit of this period, and asense of shifting foundations. It would not be surprising,

then, to find doubt and uncertainty running throughShakespeare's plays. And these aporias would run deep:the nature of man, his place in the cosmos, the verypossibility of knowledge. There are three areas in which Ithink this spirit of uncertainty pervades the plays:knowledge and skepticism; the nature of the self; and the


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character of causality. I shall consider these in turn.Knowledge and Skepticism Aristotle begins hisMetaphysics with the terse sentence: "All men naturallydesire knowledge." That sounds like a truism, but if it is, it

is a truism with profound consequences. There are threeparts to it: that it is in man's nature to desireknowledge,part of man's essence, a condition of hisbeing; that it is natural for man todesire knowledge, toseek it, to yearn for it, to value it highly; andthat thisdesire is for knowledge--not just belief or probableopinion or faith. We could paraphrase Aristotle as sayingthat human beings have an innate propensity to seek and

value true justified beliefs--andwhat they value above allis certain knowledge. We desire solid, reliable knowledge,a state of epistemological perfection, not false beliefs andshaky inferences. Why we desire such a thing is a furtherquestion, but Aristotle is surely right that we do.Ignorance is something we scorn and try to avoid. Anenormous part of Western civilization (and others too) isfounded on this desire--we are a knowledge-hungry

species--and no teacher ever got very far by promising tofill you with error and groundless opinion. Men indeednaturally desire knowledge. It was Plato who made thedesire for genuine knowledge a central component of thegood life. His whole philosophy is based on the premisethat we need to penetrate the clouds of appearance andacquire authentic knowledge of reality. The parable of thecave is a warning that knowledge is not easily obtained,

and that distortions and error are not readily detected bythe knowing mind. ( Still, Plato firmly believed thatknowledge was possible, that our epistemological desirescan be fulfilled: we really can attain the desirable state ofknowing truths about the world. In Plato's system, thepinnacle of such knowledge is knowledge of the Forms--


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those timeless, abstract, unchanging entities that Platotook to be the most real of things. The ultimate aim of lifewas to come to know these resplendent Forms-- truth,

justice, beauty, mathematics. Aristotle had a different

view of what constitutes ideal knowledge--closer to theempirical science of today- but he too did not doubt thatknowledge is possible, though the road to it may bearduous. For these founding thinkers, our desires arecapable of fulfillment.Socrates, the "gadfly," also valuedknowledge, but he was acutely sensitive to impostors toknowledge. He demonstrated time and again how peopleoverestimate their capacity for knowledge. The Socratic

lesson is that ignorance is a lot more prevalent than wesupposethat we really don't know as much as we thinkwe do. Thus Socrates advises caution and the suspensionof belief; we shouldn't let our strong desire to know foolus into misconstruing erroneous belief for real knowledge.We are chronic epistemological overreachers, accordingto Socrates, always taking ourselves to beepistemologically richer than we really are. We can't even

define our most familiar terms--such as "just" and"good"--let alone aspire to plumb the secrets of theuniverse. Socrates counseled epistemological modesty.Itwas left to the Greek skeptics, notably Sextus Empiricus,to pushthe Socratic lesson to its conclusion: thatknowledge, however desirable, is simply not within ourgrasp. Plato's entire philosophy therefore founders, sinceit is just not possible to know anything

worthwhile, let alone the nature of those impossiblytranscendent Forms. Man does not have the capacity tosatisfy his epistemological desires--he is too prone toillusion, error, and uncertainty. We cannot be sure thatour senses are not deceiving us, or that our reasoningfaculties yield sound inferences, even whether we are


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dreaming. Man is a small and feeble creature,epistemologically blighted, and not able to comprehendthe universe. At its extreme, such skepticism claims thatno belief has any greater justification than any other

belief, sothat belief itself is an irrational act (this is theschool known as Pyrrhonism). The skeptics acceptedAristotle's dictum but argued that it is in man's naturealso to be thwarted in his desire for knowledge. What hasthis potted history of Greek thought about knowledge gotto do with Shakespeare? First, these worries aboutknowledge, in the air since the time of the Greeks, wouldattain a new level of intensity in Shakespeare's day, given

the growing awareness of how little human beings knewof the world. The questions were being asked--about whateclipses are, about what causes the plague, aboutwitchcraft and astrology--but no clear answers seemedforthcoming. The crisis in church authority, the splitbetween traditional Catholicism and the ProtestantReformation, in which the possibility of our knowledge ofGod's will became a subject for debate, only added to this

sense of being epistemologically at sea. The ancientskeptics seemed to be roundly vindicated. Shakespearewould have absorbed these currents of thought; and they are manifest in several of his mostimportant plays, particularly A Midsummer Night'sDream, Hamlet, and Othello. But, secondly, there is amore specific reason to link Shakespeare to skepticism:Michel Montaigne. Montaigne was born in 1533,

Shakespeare in 1564, and the French aristocrat was awidely celebrated author when the English commonerwas composing his most famous plays. Moreover, it hasbeen established by scholars that Shakespeare hadstudied and absorbed Montaigne's writings (what hadShakespeare not absorbed?): there is, for example, a


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virtual quotation from an essay of Montaigne's in TheTempest. Montaigne was especially noted for his eloquentrevival of Greek skepticism, particularly in his long essay"An Apology for Raymond Sebond." Here he dwells with

some relish on the limitations of man, his feeble senses,his preposterous overconfidence, his desire not just toobey God, but to imitate Him. In Montaigne's view, man isbut a paltry animal, inferior to many animals in his acuityand good sense, far too fond of his Reason (John Locke, acentury later, would argue much the same point). SoShakespeare would be exposed to full-blownphilosophical skepticism in Montaigne's writings, and in a

form I suspect he would have found especially appealing--since Montaigne is a dramatic, anecdotal, poetic, andpowerful writer. Not for Montaigne the dry tomes of thetraditional philosopher; his essays are personal, lively,and pungent. I myself, some five hundred years later, findthem unusually persuasive and affecting, full of ruggedwisdom and brutal honestythe very characteristics,indeed, which leap from the page of Shakespeare. The

word "unflinching" aptly describes the style of bothauthorsyet with a wry humanity. The great subject ofdeath is never far from either writer, with a steady-eyedcontemplation of its terrors and mysteries. But most of allit is Montaigne's contrarian skepticism that seems tohave impressed Shakespeare--as it did so many of hiscontemporaries. I shall be arguing in subsequent chaptersthat Montaigne had a profound influence on

Shakespeare's works--or, to be more cautious, that manypassages in Shakespeare echo passages from Montaigne.In particular, a skeptical thread can be seen runningthrough the plays, which draws upon the kind of skepticalthinking Montaigne revived from the Greeks. What I thinkShakespeare added to this ancient skepticism was a


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specific form of skeptical concern--the problem of otherminds. This is a multifaceted problem, but its moststraightforward statement is simply this: How do we knowwhat other people are thinking, feeling, and intending?

Can we know these things? The problem arises from abasic duality in human nature--the split between interiorand exterior. It seems undeniable that all we observe ofanother person is his or her body--that is all that we cansee and touch and smell. But another person's mindbelongs to the interior aspect of the person-- which wecannot see, touch, or smell. There is something hiddenabout other people's minds, which we can only infer from

what is publicly available. People can keep their thoughtsand motives to themselves, simply by not expressingthem, and this puts us in a position of not knowing. Weare all aware of this from our own case: we know thatwecan prevent other people from acquiring theknowledge of our own minds that we immediatelypossess. I may know that I have dubious motives inregard to someone else, but I also know that you do not

know thisand I know that I can easily prevent you fromknowing it. This is whatmakes deception possible--theasymmetry between my knowledge of my mind and yourknowledge of my mind. There is a sense, then, in whichmymind is private, and known to be so, while my body ispublic property.

Shakespeare'sPhilosophy

I have recently been reading Colin McGinn's book

Shakespeare's Philosophy. The opening chapter

provides a really good overview of some of the
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The problem has seemed so acute to some that

they have dismissed the quest for knowledge. The

school of thought known as Pyrrhonism, for

example, argues that it is irrational to believe inanything, given our knowledge-accessing

problems.

Shakespeare was exposed to the writings of one

arch-sceptic Michel Montaigne. Montaigne wrote

brilliant essays that fused personal anecdote with

serious intellectual concerns (he should be an

inspiration to all bloggers!). In a famous essay "An

Apology for Raymond Sebond", Montaigne expertly

articulated the sceptical position. McGinn argues

that Montaigne had a profound influence on

Shakespeare.

In addition to this, Shakespeare is himself an

expert articulator of the problem of other minds.

This concerns our difficulties in knowing what

others are thinking, plotting, hoping and

intending. The plays are replete with characters

who misunderstand each other. Indeed, the

comedies are usually premised on

misunderstanding of some sort.

(b) The Self

Drama is all about selves. A play is usually an

assemblage of characters or selves engaging in

activities and events. These activities and events

constitute the "plot". The question that arises is

whether the self remains constant throughout the
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teleological principle. This would explain events in

terms of the whims, desires, preferences or

intentions of some agent, usually God. This

principle imbues events with great moral andethical significance. For example, if a battle is won,

it is because God favours us; if a person is injured,

it is because God is angry.

The second type of principle would be naturalistic

and amoral. It explains events in terms of mindless

processes and mechanisms What morality and

purpose there is in the universe is projected onto it

by us, it is not out there. This is an atheistic view,

one that I personally share.

McGinn argues that Shakespeare is sceptical about

teleological causation. In his comedies and

tragedies he seems to reject the idea that there is

rational purpose or order in the universe. The

universe is unruly, morally blind and even

sometimes unintelligible. McGinn thinks that this

scepticism is what gives Shakespeare's plays their

great worth: they challenge complacent views

about causality.

Mr Syed Alam NUML Campus Peshawar.

shakespeare philosophy

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