The Shakespearean Spirit

It is interesting that Rousseau was convinced we are free and that the world can be fixed if only we will it. I came up with an aphorism that I gave to my fictive hero Tyler Parker. It goes:

There are only two kinds of fools in this world: Those that think we can't change anything, and those that think we can change whatever we want.

If Rousseau had been a deep Shakespearean, a Fierce Bardolater, he would have realized that all of Shakespeares greatest villains feel themselves free in the universe to do as they please. Hamlet believes in fate. There are solid objects in the world and there are hard walls that we come up against. Mere thinking doesn't make anything so -- doesn't get rid of it either. Who can add a cubit to his height by thinking, Jesus asks. There is something essentially conservative about this -- at least at the philosophical level. We may want to change things -- and we should -- but there are some things that will never change and that are forever beyond our capacity. These things work to shape us. Limits define us. Finis means an end. This is the paradox of Hamlet, both the play and the character. We could scarcely ever end mining either. Certainly the play has a limit that puts the character through a tragic plot. His death is not as horrifying as the death of Cordelia, yet no death would be fitting for the vital prince. He shows us both the evil and the necessity of death for each individual because he is more alive than most of, who, paradoxically, have actual lives. To be human means to live under threat of death, and then to die. The rest is silence -- and no amount of will can change that. We all have to die, but how shall we live?

That is the question.

twL