Double Vision: Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama

DOUBLE VISION

DOUBLE VISION

Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama

Tzachi Zamir

P R I N C E T O NU N I V E R S I T YP R E S S

P R I N C E T O NA N DO X F O R D

Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University Press

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Double vision : moral philosophy and Shakespearean drama / Tzachi Zamir.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN: 978-1-40082-743-5

1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Criticism and interpretaion. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Philosophy. 3. Philosophy in literature. 4. Literature—Philosophy. 5. Literature—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 6. Criticism—Moral and ethical aspects. 7. Literature and morals. I. Title.

PR3001.Z36 2007

822.3'3—dc22 2006012108

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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

HOW FINE IT WOULD BE, AGATHON, HE SAID, "IF WISDOM WERE A SORT OF THING THAT COULD FLOW OUT OF THE ONE OF US WHO IS FULLER INTO HIM WHO IS EMPTIER, BY OUR MERE CONTACT WITH EACH OTHER, AS WATER WILL FLOW THROUGH WOOL FROM THE FULLER CUP INTO THE EMPTIER. IF SUCH IS INDEED THE CASE WITH WISDOM, I SET A GREAT VALUE ON

MY SITTING NEXT TO YOU."

SYMPOSIUM

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I: PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM IN THEORY

The Epistemological Basis of Philosophical Criticism

The Moral Basis of Philosophical Criticism

Philosophical Criticism and Contemporary Literary Studies

PART II: PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM IN PRACTICE

A Case of Unfair Proportions

Upon One Bank and Shoal of Time

Love Stories

Making Love

On Being Too Deeply Loved

Doing Nothing

King Lear’s Hidden Tragedy

Appendix A:

A Note on Lear’s Motivation

Appendix B:

A Note on Shakespeare and Rhetoric

Works Cited

Index

Acknowledgments

SOME CHAPTERS in this book were first formulated as part of a Ph.D. dissertation at Tel-Aviv University. I take this opportunity of thanking (again) my supervisor, Marcelo Dascal, for his intellectual influence and committed supervision. I am also indebted to Elizabeth Freund, Zephyra Porat, and Shirley Sharon-Zisser for their willingness to initiate a philosopher into the interests and motivations of literary critics. Eddy Zemach is among the few people who are practicing philosophers as well as literary critics, and his comments and friendship have meant a great deal to me and to the literary and theoretic orientation of that Ph.D.

The book was completed during a post-doc stay at the University of Chicago, enabled by a Rothschild fellowship and a grant by the Fulbright program. The University of Chicago is where some of the best work on philosophy and literature is done, and my firsthand acquaintance there with the people doing this work was the best intellectual gift I could have received. I am grateful to both foundations for making the stay possible.

Faculty members at the University of Chicago have been very generous in communicating their comments on shorter and longer portions of this book. I am obliged for such important input to David Bevington, Wayne Booth, Daniel Brudney, Bradin Cormack, Robert Pippin, and Richard Posner. I have also benefited from eavesdropping on seminars given by David Bevington, Joshua Scodel, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Strier, as well as a workshop on Shakespeare and law, jointly taught by Martha Nussbaum and Richard Posner. My debts to Nussbaum are great and of several kinds: the initial impact of her writings has inspired me to take up this project in the first place. Yet, more than a formative influence, readers who are familiar with Nussbaum’s writings will easily note the tight and ongoing dialogue that this book conducts with her thoughts. Finally, her comments on the entire manuscript have substantially transformed it at a crucial stage.

Chapters in this book have been published in previous forms in various journals. An earlier version of chapter one appeared under the title An Epistemological Basis for Linking Philosophy and Literature, and appeared in Metaphilosophy 33 (3), April 2002, pp. 321–36. Earlier versions of chapters four and five appeared in New Literary History [A Case of Unfair Proportions: Philosophy in Literature, (3), 1998, pp. 501–20, and Upon One Bank and Shoal of Time, (3), 2000, pp. 529–51]. Earlier versions of chapters six and seven appeared in Literature and Aesthetics ["Love Stories: A Reading of Romeo and Juliet, 1999, pp. 71–98, and Mature Love: A Reading of Antony and Cleopatra," 11, 2001, pp. 119–48]. An earlier version of chapter eight originally appeared in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 35 (3) September 2002, pp. 167–82). An earlier version of chapter nine appeared in Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas [On Being Too Deeply Loved, 2 (2), June 2004, pp. 1–26]. I would like to thank these journals for permission to revise and incorporate this material here.

Introduction

HATRED, IT SEEMS, cannot be bought. They try, several times, doubling and tripling the money owed. But he persists in refusing. No amount of money will buy Shylock. In this he stands alone. Within all other relationships around him, emotions are inseparable from financial gain: Portia and Jessica are rich—not merely fair—a fact that never escapes their lovers or their own perceptions of these lovers. Male friendship too—the idealized commitments between Bassanio and Antonio—is contaminated by financial dependency. Hatred alone achieves purity in the moral cosmos of The Merchant of Venice, the only emotion that will remain distinct from prudence, the one emotion that they will insist on not understanding (Bassanio: Do all men kill the things they do not love? Shylock: Hates any man the thing he would not kill?). Knowingly going to trial with a losing suit—and suppose that the law authorizes him to kill Antonio, what then?—turns this trial into a presentation of something that Venice is unwilling to hear (Duke: Upon my power, I may dismiss this court!). Shylock, the dramatized oxymoron of a money-shunning Jew, will soon disappear, to everyone’s relief, including our own. But not before he registers a complaint that he refuses to express directly (I will not answer that!; I am not bound to please thee with my answers!).

What is Shylock’s complaint? Law is conceived in The Merchant of Venice as more than means for adjudicating between conflicting claims or enforcing norms. Like theologized money (my Christian ducats), law is a vehicle for communication between a Jewish outside and a Christian nexus. Shylock’s deployment of law thus parallels similar attempts by marginalized characters to trespass into formally impenetrable power structures (a disguised woman attempting to infiltrate the masculine world of law; another woman trying to use money so as to buy her way out of Judaism). The confrontation between Shylock and Portia within the context of the law thereby presents two symbolic outsiders who turn the law into a means of contact: Shylock directly and Portia through disguising herself as a man, thus gaining momentary power and agency, and breaking out of the passive role of an exquisite trophy in which she is cast at the beginning of the action. The outcome, read politically, is unsurprising: the play allows for a successful penetration into power only indirectly, momentarily, under camouflage, whereas when it is explicit and unveiled (The Jew) it will be annihilated financially and spiritually.

Within this legal context, Shylock will put himself on record. His resistance is subtle, since law itself seems to be presented in the play as a majestic force that will not be manipulated, and one that would ultimately cohere with justice by managing to block a fiendish plea. Law appears to be a legitimating marvel: it includes religious values—the numerous appeals to Christian-colored virtues such as valuing mercy over justice, the latter being a mere cardinal virtue to which the morality of the Jew is limited. But when religion cannot suffice, law generates a technical vocabulary of its own that guarantees that justice will be done. The Merchant of Venice thus plays up the anxiety of a rupture formed between law and justice, but also appears to reinforce a vision in which both happily seem to overlap. What Shylock can hope to create, is a momentary gap between Venice’s self-image and its fantasies of moral coherence (I stand for judgment. Answer: Shall I have it?). Wanting to be a Jessica in the beginning of the action and to merge happily with his surrounding (why else would he lend out money gratis to Antonio when he has no reason to think that Antonio will be unable to return the debt?), he finally moves into acceptance of his alienation, and a desire to place a wedge between various constituents that form Venice’s pride. He succeeds and their jubilance over Portia’s technical solution in effect reduces them into relieved sophists. His hatred will be contained and then dismissed, but it will not go away. For it is precisely through the monstrosity of his suit, its horrid colorfulness and self-destructive irrationality, that Shylock will force his story to be told and retold, read and acted. Over and over, the play will generate the spectacle of distilled hatred, an alien’s hatred, whetting his knife with his scales in hand, being the villainous dog they always said he was. Unlike Jessica, whom we tend to recall only upon rereading the play, Shylock will never elope: he is in our minds for good.

It is at this point that questions about general meanings—philosophical questions—become unavoidable. Villainy, justice, mercy, suffering—notions that surface in any detailed response to the play—demand clarification. How to strip away the hypocritical from the genuine, and how to assess the merit of that which presents itself as the genuine? Do we learn anything from this play about the mechanics of alienation and response to it? And if we do, can such knowledge be reapplied? Such concerns constitute much of our response to the play. They always did. Yet it is precisely here that various approaches within contemporary literary studies and within philosophy are prompted to hold up No Entry signs. Philosophically attuned criticism, it seems, ignores weighty considerations. When it does not imply aesthetic or political naiveté, philosophical reflection on literary works is simply useless: an unnecessary detour that appeals to the bookish, but is pointless for those who seek philosophical understanding.

This book is about philosophy and literature. If its philosophical argument is correct, it is also about epistemology and moral philosophy. If its literary readings are persuasive, it is also about the value of literature. The primary ground for choosing Shakespeare is the gratifying insights that his writings yield when brought into close dialogue with philosophical concerns. Showing that these insights are not divorced from the plays’ literary merits but rather constitute them is one of the principal aims of this book. The secondary reason for choosing Shakespeare is that his work exemplifies literary excellence. The uncontested aesthetic value of his plays enables investigation into what makes up that value without the need to prove first that it exists.

After years of relative neglect, debates about the relations between philosophy and literature were reopened in the 1980s, most notably in the work of Martha Nussbaum and Stanley Cavell. Many have formulated excellent critiques of these pioneering works. Aesthetes worry that philosophical readings are reductive and ignore literary merits. Others dislike the way philosophical interpretations plead for one cause or another, thereby obliterating the borders between philosophy and education. Many distrust the chiseling out of general meanings from their material, ideological, or historical context. Such critiques require a fundamental reworking of the underlying premises and interpretive procedures through which the general (or the potentially reapplicable) is to be derived from a literary work. This book attempts to set a theoretical framework for philosophically oriented literary criticism, one that responds to the concerns of both literary critics and philosophers. It also unfolds a thesis regarding the question of method in philosophy.

The introductory chapters address the two very different disciplinary frameworks and motivations of philosophy and literature. I argue that an integrated philosophical criticism—my label for philosophical readings of literary works—can substantially compensate for some limitations of nonliterary philosophical argumentation. Philosophical criticism can also answer some institutional, professional, and personal worries that are now voiced with greater urgency as the turn toward a cultural focus in literary criticism is being reassessed. Readers who come to this book primarily as philosophers or as Shakespeareans will probably find it more rewarding to access its general argument through the parts that directly address their different professional agendas as I conceive of them—and to a certain extent simplify them—in these introductory essays. Separate access routes need not, I hope, hide from view deeper impasses in the philosophy-literature question that arise when disciplinary concerns are jointly considered. For example, explaining the cognitive gains of literary as opposed to non-literary articulations of the same philosophical insight will typically draw the philosophical critic into a roughly formalist stance. Irreducible aesthetic experience will strongly suggest itself. Culturally oriented Shakespeareans will worry that this solution is conceptually artificial and politically naive.

Making sense of philosophical insight as part of reading literature need not ignore the concerns of many contemporary culturally oriented literary critics. The introductory parts of this book outline and defend a theoretical possibility that seeks to further these critics’ cause. The readings that follow the introduction exemplify this possibility and show how philosophical criticism can draw out rewarding and unfamiliar aspects of well-known plays. It is not my aim in the studies of the various plays simply to make the same theoretical points in different settings, varying my arguments only insofar as I apply them to Othello instead of Richard III. Instead, I try to highlight different aspects of the overarching theory so as to open up the fuller potential of this kind of criticism. The theoretical overlap that remains is intended to emphasize the shared core of the readings and to promote the metaphilosophical argument of the book as a whole regarding intellectual attunement and the meaning of understanding.

Philosophically oriented Shakespeare criticism in the past tended to look for signs of a philosophical thesis within the plays. Recent work has wisely given up this attempt. And yet, this book has a close affinity with the older, philosophically disposed Shakespeareans. A return to the ancients is hardly my aim. Yet, stripped of some inadequate trappings, the best moral critics of the late nineteenth century, as well as some of the great critics of the twentieth century that preceded the cultural turn, still offer valuable insights in a philosophically oriented dialogue about Shakespeare. The book will hopefully unsettle simplified distinctions between timely and obsolete criticism and may thus be discomfiting to those who relate to Shakespeare through rigid agendas.

The book will avoid traditional formulations of debates over the moral dimension of Shakespeare’s plays. The merit (or lack of merit) of Shakespeare’s supposed indifference to morality, the forces that make up the ethical world he creates, the morality implicit in his characterization—all such issues will be disregarded. Shakespeare’s own real or implied moral beliefs, to which all these formulations ultimately relate, will be set aside. My goal will be to communicate with the moral potential of Shakespeare’s plays in a way I see as rewarding. Convergence between what I take this potential to be and what Shakespeare may have inserted into his work is by no means ruled out (I regard such convergence, if it can be demonstrated, as a strength of the reading, and I will sometimes argue for it through source-play comparisons). But such overlap is in no way essential to the validity of the readings. Elizabethan moral thought in general will also be played down. I will sometimes relate ideas to traditions of thought that may have reached Shakespeare, but I shall do so only to dispel a sense of anachronism, a suspicion that particular thoughts in such texts could not have been formulated. Causal connections between abstract theses and Shakespeare’s mind will not be suggested.

Rhetoricians form the third group of readers I intend to address, particularly by exploring and furthering criticisms of the Cartesian and Ramist intellectual ideals that still dominate Anglo-American philosophy. Chapter two makes explicit the ways in which philosophical criticism takes up the call of Cicero and Quintilian for an integrative form of thought, giving this possibility substantial content. Early-modern rhetoric, with which Shakespeare was acquainted, was familiar with this integrative ideal. Justifying it philosophically requires reflecting on those older approaches in terms of a distinction—usually left unarticulated in Elizabethan rhetorical texts as well as in their Latin sources—between psychological effectiveness and argumentative justification. Rhetoric, as this book will develop the notion, makes room for this crucial distinction, specifying relations between effectiveness and justification that will constitute my proposed account of understanding.

In what follows, I claim that by allowing the two distinct outlooks of philosophy and literature to interplay when some issues are at stake there emerges a kind of thought—a form of double vision—that opens up important modes of understanding.

PA R T I

P H I L O S O P H I C A L C R I T I C I S M

I N T H E O RY

The Epistemological Basis

of Philosophical Criticism

ACUCKOLDED MAN yells at his unfaithful wife. She has just written a letter to her lover, which her husband has intercepted. The betrayed husband describes his own experience through a metaphor of authorship:

Thou trothless and unjust, what lines are these?

Am I grown old, or is thy lust grown young,

Or hath my love been so obscured in thee

That others need to comment on my text?

Is all my love forgot which held thee dear,

Ay, dearer than the apple of mine eye?

Is Guise’s glory but a cloudy mist,

In sight and judgment of thy lustful eye?

(The Massacre at Paris, xv.23–30)

Imaging his wife as his text (which is only one of several possible readings of the line), turning her from possession into intellectual property, serves to color the meaning of gendered ownership. She becomes words—his words, his lines, his precious production. This constitutes not only an intriguing form of objectification but also of articulating erotic bonding. The beloved, likened to one’s expressed language, is being fantasized as the lover’s externalized and objectified thought, which is also disturbingly out of control. Beyond ownership or love, figuring cuckoldry in terms of a commented text imports texts into the world of erotic ownership. The alarming perception of one’s text being modified by another, noting its loose and prostitute-like nature, says something about the meaning of writing. Metatheatrical awareness deepens this dimension of the metaphor: this text, Marlowe’s text, being sold to others to be changed and acted by them—Marlowe himself turning, as it were, into a cuckold forced to watch.

By saying that moments such as these exclamations of the Guise are pregnant with insights—insights about the meaning of erotic possessiveness, about relating to what one writes—we are registering an awareness of literature’s capacity to awaken a realization, to inform, to create knowledge. Is this faith in literature’s instructive power justified, or does this talk of insight perpetuate a misleading mirage? Does anything distinguish such knowledge, if it is one? Is it possible to strip away the literary dressing from what is credited as knowledge, or is the medium somehow necessary, and if so, why? Any examination of the relations between philosophy and literature requires facing these familiar questions. If the above literary excerpt informs, there must be something in the lines, in the configuration of the words, in the arrangement of the images, or the imagined or perceived vocalization of them, which is doing important and mysterious epistemic work.

Five features are needed for the epistemic (knowledge-yielding) linking of philosophy and literature.¹ A complete account regarding literature’s contributions to knowledge needs to: (I) elucidate how a literary work can support a general claim; (II) show what is uniquely gained by concentrating on such support-patterns as they appear in aesthetic contexts in particular; (III) clarify whether and how features of aesthetic response are connected with knowledge; (IV) maintain a distinction between manipulation and adequate persuasion; (V) achieve I–IV without ending up with what David Novitz has called a shamelessly functional and didactic view of literature. I shall postpone discussion of the connections between literature, epistemology, and morality until the next chapter.

LITERARY LANGUAGE AND LITERARY EXPERIENCE

Many theories explain the ways by which literature yields knowledge. Some say that literature enables forming hypotheses, thereby creating beliefs—albeit not necessarily justified ones.² Others argue that reading a literary work creates coherence in our beliefs by revealing possible discrepancies between our general convictions and detailed contexts.³ A third view is that a literary work can advance knowledge by functioning like an example⁴ or a prolonged thought-experiment⁵ in which conceptual insights are gained through engaging with the rich and complex contexts of lifelike occurrences. Others maintain that literature establishes knowledge not of the actual but of the possible.⁶ For the purpose of investigating the relevance of literature to philosophy such suggestions cannot suffice. At best, such accounts will show philosophers that rigorous philosophical reflection requires examples, thought-experiments, or a delineation of the possible, not that it needs literature. In order to convince philosophers that they need literary examples, or literary thought-experiments, it is necessary to delineate an epistemological gain stemming either from features peculiar to literary language or from the experience that literature creates.

The first option, appealing to aspects particular to literary language for the purpose of advancing knowledge, will fail. Oppositions that were employed in the past to articulate the distinctiveness of literary discourse (figurative/literal, particular/general, emotions/thoughts) are no longer generally accepted. One cannot then claim that emotional appeals, particular descriptions, or figurative constructions make for distinct, irreducible, and nonparaphrasable forms of knowing. A further obstacle is that, again, all these aspects are not essentially related to literature. An elaborate case for the importance of figurative language, for example, will merely succeed in proving to philosophers that they require figurative statements, not the rich, involving experience of the literary work.⁷ This rather underrated objection is also fatal to other suggestions as to how and why literature is philosophically relevant. Consider the suggestion that literature formulates in words what has hitherto been unexpressed or not fully described. Poetic articulation can thereby form or re-form a philosophical position.⁸ But descriptions of this sort require nothing as intense as involvement with literature. Citing or paraphrasing the appropriate sentences is enough. Appeals to literature’s particularity lead to the same objection.⁹ Particular descriptions presuppose general assumptions. A uniquely particular mode of thought is thus an illusion. Besides that, particularity is not unique to literature.

Literary experience is our second option. Colin Falck writes that literature operates through tapping into preconscious moods, thereby circumventing a more aware experience. Martha Nussbaum characterizes literary experience as one in which certain emotions are drawn out, emotions that constitute specific beliefs that cannot otherwise surface.¹⁰ Neoromantic accounts of reading experience stress the role of the imagination in belief formation. If the imagination plays a constitutive role in belief formation, we need to involve ourselves with the imaginative realm (literature).¹¹ Empathic beliefs are another popular suggestion: literary reading experiences involve knowledge of what it will be like to live through the situation portrayed. Shared by all these suggestions is the objective to connect qualitative features of the literary reading experience (not the makeup of literary language) with cognition.

Qualitative uniqueness, however, cannot suffice. Claims do not turn into justified beliefs merely by being contemplated in an involved and emotionally attuned state. Powerful discovery never constitutes justification. ¹² The same holds for empathy. Knowing what it can be like to have a particular belief or what can make someone have that belief is not a justification for the belief itself. In fact, a recurring objection to claims on behalf of literature’s moral import highlights the threat that empathy poses to a just moral assessment—the danger of developing a selective sense of justice.¹³ Empathic knowledge thus seems helpful only if literature’s contribution to knowledge resides in the insights gained from it regarding processes of belief formation. But if justified beliefs are being sought, being empathic or nonempathic to the positions discussed is clearly insufficient.

Qualitatively oriented explanations, therefore, all relate to types of belief formation, to the unique ways in which literature creates beliefs, not to the assessment of those beliefs (whether or not these are the beliefs one ought to have). Formation and assessment of beliefs can be combined, and Nussbaum attempts to integrate them by asserting that some beliefs could not be assessed at all if one did not employ emotional, empathic, or imaginative processes that enable one to form them in the first place. Nussbaum’s integration of formation and assessment is sound, but can be synthesized into a broader account, which I will now outline.

LITERARY ARGUMENTS

I propose a conception of rational justification that can accommodate the idea of literature as knowledge yielding. I begin with theories of argumentation that employ more than deductive or inductive inference patterns as rational means of establishing propositions. Aristotle’s account of examples and enthymemes in his Rhetoric remains the fountainhead for such theories (although the idea is older). Aristotle argued that in some domains, what we take to be a credible source of knowledge is the reapplying of a principle that was successfully applied in another known case.

Examples of this kind do not make for inductive inferences, but only for a kind of induction (I.ii.13).¹⁴ The notion of induction does not include learning from the local incidents that make up our lives and from which we reasonably establish many of our attitudes. Learning in such ways is a noninductive yet rational reapplication of a principle that emerged in a similar context. The principle in question is not a categorical "For all cases of type X, Y is the case but is a particular affirmative or negative judgment of the form: For some cases of X, Y is the case".¹⁵

At first, employing Aristotle’s analysis in the context of the philosophy-literature question seems to simply lead back to the idea mentioned earlier: a view of the process of learning from fictional happenings as analogous to that of learning from examples. But Aristotle’s rhetorical analysis allows for relocating the literature-as-example idea from being only a suggestion linking aesthetics with cognition to an argumentational move justified through rhetorical theory. This is not a terminological shift. Such relocation explains not only the plausibility of the move from one case to the other but also delineates the contingent logical status of some of the philosophical beliefs with which literature deals. For Aristotle, the need for rhetoric arises when discussing assumptions and beliefs that can be other than they are—claims that can be derived from premises that are usually not