In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 107-124 [Access article in PDF] Shakespeare and Political Philosophy John D. Cox Though Shakespeare has been praised as one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, he has no standing in the history of Western philosophy, being at best a footnote to the derivative neo-Platonists and skeptics of the late Renaissance. He died in 1616, more than twenty years before Descartes's Discourse on Method (...) heralded the autonomous rationalism of the Enlightenment, and Shakespeare did not achieve a reputation as a deep thinker until the nineteenth century, as a consequence of admiration for his characters. People seemed to think that a reflective and witty prince who could say to his friend, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" must be the product of a keenly philosophical intelligence—never mind that Hamlet is referring to the "antique Roman" philosophy he so admires in Horatio, i.e., Stoicism, which by 1599 was little more than an oft-repeated set of moral and social platitudes. 1 To assert that there are more things in heaven and earth than late Renaissance Stoicism is not to assert very much.But other ways of thinking about Shakespeare philosophically are more promising than character analysis. He was indeed a thoughtful playwright, and though he had no university education, he was a voracious and incisive reader, so the influences on his plays and poems include many writers who have some standing in the history of philosophy. More complex than discerning historical philosophical influences on Shakespeare is what might be called the hermeneutical approach, i.e., the interpretation of the plays and poems with particular philosophers and philosophies in mind, regardless of their possible historical influence in the sixteenth century. To survey the range of philosophical influences and hermeneutical approaches is impossible [End Page 107] in a single essay, but a manageable example of Shakespeare's thinking is his political philosophy, where both ways of understanding him can be discerned. The most influential interpreter of Shakespeare's history plays for the second half of the twentieth century, for example, was E. M. W. Tillyard, who purported to excavate the neo-Platonic assumptions of Shakespeare's political culture: order, degree, hierarchy, and obedience. 2 Though questions were increasingly raised concerning Tillyard's assumptions and documentation, the decisive challenge to his authority was issued in the 1980s by New Historicists and Cultural Materialists, whose allegiance was more or less explicitly Marxist, and who therefore interpreted Shakespeare in light of a particular nineteenth-century philosophy. 3 A clearer example of the difference between history and hermeneutics in understanding Shakespeare is hard to imagine.The clarity of the difference, however, does not mean that the two approaches are mutually exclusive. Tillyard construed Shakespeare's emphasis on hierarchical order as an advocacy of divine-right monarchy, and much in the plays of Shakespeare supports this construal. Despite his sympathetic portraits of particular characters, including commoners, remarks in his plays about commoners taken together ("the people") are always slighting and mistrustful—often indeed scornful—and the proportion of upper-class to lower-class characters reflects their perceived social importance, for the former invariably outnumber the latter, even in the comedies, whereas the aristocracy were a tiny fraction of the total population in Shakespeare's England. Shakespeare's portrayal of pre-imperial Rome, in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, shows little understanding of, and less sympathy with, republican alternatives to one-person rule. Shakespeare was not responsive to Calvin's spirited defense of the "poor common people" against rapacious kings (even, or especially, under godly magistrates), and Shakespeare's plays offer no support to the nascent republicanism of those who took arms against the king of England in the mid-seventeenth century, largely inspired by Calvinism. 4 Shakespeare, in short, was no Milton.This is not to say, however, that he was an uncritically idealizing royalist, as we can see from his first venture into writing about English history: his four early plays on the civil unrest of the fifteenth century. Three of these plays... (shrink)

Josiah Royce was born in California where he began his teaching career.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Uncanonical Dante: The Divine Comedy And Islamic PhilosophyPaul A. CantorThe distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and hisrival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantlein which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped anddisguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far theywere conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted intheir minds between their own creeds and that of the people.Dante at (...) least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it byplacing Riphaeus, whom Virgil calls justissimus unus, inParadise, and observing a most heretical caprice in hisdistribution of rewards and punishments.—Percy Shelley, A Defence of PoetryIThe case of Dante provides an excellent opportunity to open up the question of the Western canon. In one sense, Dante is the perfect example of a canonical author. His name is one of the few certain to appear on anybody’s short list of the truly central authors in the Western literary tradition. But in another sense Dante can be regarded as uncanonical. In his own day he was widely suspected of being heretical in his religious views, 1 and a careful reading of his works does indeed raise serious doubts about his being the pillar of orthodoxy he is often taken to be today. 2 Out of this interplay between the canonical and the noncanonical Dante, I hope to show that the issue of the Western canon is more complicated than either its defenders or its attackers generally present it.In discussing the issue of the canon, it is important to sort out at the [End Page 138] beginning what we do and do not mean by the term. A canonical work may merely be a work that has been accepted into the literary canon, one that has become a touchstone in the reading and teaching of literature. But the term canonical can suggest something else, that the work is orthodox and somehow represents a central authoritative position in Western culture. The word canonical is so loaded with religious connotations that it is difficult to separate the relatively neutral first meaning of the term from the loaded second meaning. Dante is a case in point. When people refer to him as a canonical author, they usually do not simply mean that he is widely read and taught. Most discussions of Dante today treat him as representing an authoritative cultural moment in the Western tradition, as the supreme embodiment of the medieval mind. Viewed that way, Dante becomes an emblem of everything contemporary critics of the Western canon bitterly hate and reject. The reason they feel that they must attack authors like Dante and displace them from the center of literary study is that these authors have come to stand for orthodoxy and thus seem to enforce the hegemony of Western culture.Critics who wish to champion various forms of non-Western culture have a particular axe to grind with canonical authors like Dante. The contemporary debate over the Western canon seems to be premised on a sharp opposition between Western and non-Western cultures, as if they were complete and irreconcilable antitheses, and even wholly unrelated. One of the principal charges against the Western canon is that it is Eurocentric, that it remains confined within a narrow orbit of European ideas and beliefs, thus excluding all other views of the world. A corrolary of the idea of Eurocentrism is the concept of Orientalism, developed by Edward Said. 3 Said argues that throughout its history, the Occident has defined itself in opposition to the Orient, basing its elevated self-image on a debased vision of the cultural Other. In Said’s argument, the Occident views itself as rational as opposed to an irrational Orient, as emotionally disciplined in contrast to an emotionally uncontrolled Orient, and as masculine over against a feminine Orient.In medieval Europe the Orient was chiefly represented by the Muslim world, and one does not have to look far in medieval literature to find the kinds of orientalist stereotypes about which Said writes. The French Song of Roland contains excellent examples, but even the Divine Comedy seems to... (shrink)

Aristotle claims that narrative can depict virtue and vice in particular cases, and that literature's moral meanings are not subject to philosophical paraphrase. He distrusts generalization in ethics, asserting that valid judgments rest on the perception of particulars. But this position is itself an unprovable generalization. If philosophy cannot prove the superiority of narrative over moral theory, perhaps literature can show it. In "Lolita", Nabokov reveals the moral hazards of theory while depicting one man's profound evil. Thus "Lolita" is an (...) illuminating example of pure Aristotelian fiction that serves a moral function without recourse to theory. (shrink)

Introduction to one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written.

A new volume of philosophical essays by Bernard Williams. The book is a successor to Problems of the Self, but whereas that volume dealt mainly with questions of personal identity, Moral Luck centres on questions of moral philosophy and the theory of rational action. That whole area has of course been strikingly reinvigorated over the last deacde, and philosophers have both broadened and deepened their concerns in a way that now makes much earlier moral and political philosophy look sterile and (...) trivial. Moral Luck contains a number of essays that have contributed influentially to this development. Among the recurring themes are the moral and philosophical limitations of utilitarianism, the notion of integrity, relativism, and problems of moral conflict and rational choice. The work presented here is marked by a high degree of imagination and acuity, and also conveys a strong sense of psychological reality. The volume will be a stimulating source of ideas and arguments for all philosophers and a wide range of other readers. (shrink)

The fourth edition of _Ethics in Practice_ offers an impressive collection of 70 new, revised, and classic essays covering 13 key ethical issues. Essays integrate ethical theory and the discussion of practical moral problems into a text that is ideal for introductory and applied ethics courses. A fully updated and revised edition of this authoritative anthology of classic and contemporary essays covering a wide range of ethical and moral issues Integrates ethical theory with discussions of practical moral problems, and includes (...) three essays on theory written specifically for this volume Nearly half of the essays are written or revised exclusively for this anthology, which now also features eleven essays new to this edition, as well as expanded sections discussing theory, reproductive technologies, war and terrorism, and animals Content allows teachers to discuss discrete practical issues, focus on the broader grouping of topics, or focus on common themes which bridge sections Section introductions not only outline the basic issues discussed in the essays, but relate them to theoretical perspectives and practical issues discussed elsewhere in the book. Guides students with supporting introductory essays on reading philosophy, theorizing about ethics, writing a philosophy paper, and a supporting web site at www.hughlafollette.com/eip4/. (shrink)

Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was the leading American proponent of absolute idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. F. Hegel and F. H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in the thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness. Royce also made original contributions in ethics, philosophy of community, philosophy of religion and logic. His major works include The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), The World and the Individual (1899-1901), The (...) Philosophy of Loyalty (1908), and The Problem of Christianity (1913). Royce's friendly but longstanding dispute with William James, known as "The Battle of the Absolute," deeply influenced both philosophers' thought. In his later works, Royce reconceived his metaphysics as an "absolute pragmatism" grounded in semiotics. This view dispenses with the Absolute Mind of previous idealism and instead characterizes reality as a universe of ideas or signs which occur in a process of being interpreted by an infinite community of minds. These minds, and the community they constitute, may themselves be understood as signs. Royce's ethics, philosophy of community, philosophy of religion, and logic reflect this metaphysical position. (shrink)