Joss Whedon as Shakespearean Moralist by J. Douglas Rabb

Author:J. Douglas Rabb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2014-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

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The Moral Imagination in Shakespeare: Pre-Modern and Early Modern Ethics

Citing Lily B. Campbell’s Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion, the entry on tragedy in Paul Edwards’ eight volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy, states that “English Renaissance tragedy, including that of Shakespeare … constitutes a shift from the mere presentation of the fall of princes to the justification of evil in the retribution of God against those who bring evil upon themselves in their exercise of passion. Tragedies thus become exempla of moral philosophy, admonishing men to attend to the lessons of the consequences of evil in order to avoid ruin and misery” (Vol. 8, 157). While we do not disagree with this standard interpretation, we think Shakespeare offers a very much more complex form of narrative ethics. We utilize and extend the insightful study by James A. Knapp titled, Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser. Knapp allows that “Shakespeare’s plays invite characters and audience alike to draw on certain principles that govern appropriate moral judgment. Thus, we learn from Shakespeare that tyranny (The Winter’s Tale), overwrought ambition (Macbeth, Coriolanus), inaction (Hamlet), etc., are wrong, and that mercifulness (The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure), forgiveness (The Tempest), loyalty to just authority (King Lear, 1 Henry IV), etc., are right. Arguments that derive these principles from the plays can be convincing, and they have the added appeal of providing a rationale for Shakespeare’s ongoing popularity because his plays demonstrate universal human values” (20). However, the real importance of Shakespeare lies in the particularity of the embodied action of his characters on the stage, which suggests that ethical decisions can be hindered rather than helped by such moral precepts or principles. As Knapp himself argues, “ethical situations in Shakespeare regularly hinge on visual images that cannot be distilled into moral precepts. To make the point clear … morality can produce stable precepts that are often useless or unmanageable in actual situations” (24–25). Hence, the moral imagination becomes more important than rational precepts and principles. Shakespeare’s literary imagination thus becomes the moral imagination.

Macbeth’s reasoning concerning his murder of Duncan is a case in point. Macbeth’s ambition to be king has been fueled by the prophecies of the witches on the blasted heath: “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!” (1.3.50). J. Gregory Keller’s analysis of the crucial Act 1, Scene 7 of the play, in his “The Moral Thinking of Macbeth,” explores in some detail Macbeth’s cogent reasons for not murdering his king. They are considerably more particular than the precepts “regicide is wrong” and “thou shalt not kill.” Keller argues that an “evil action is in part known as such for its power to rebound upon the doer. In one sense, Macbeth names an antecedent to [Kant’s] categorical imperative: by acting he would assign to his act, to the maximum of his will, both a commendation to others and a universal value. He also anticipates Sartre’s idea that in choosing, one chooses for all humanity” (43–44). As Macbeth himself puts it: “we but teach / Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague th’inventor.

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