Patrick Gray, professor of literature at the new University of Austin (UATX), was recently interviewed on Peter Adamson’s podcast The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. He argues there that Shakespeare was combating a neo-Senecan ethics of autonomy in much the same way that common good conservatives today combat the liberal/Kantian ethics of autonomy:
Rome for Shakespeare is the Rome of Seneca. This connection is important not least because Seneca is the model and inspiration for a contemporary of Shakespeare, the Dutch political philosopher Justus Lipsius, who in turn exercises a considerable influence on Kant. Kant’s emphasis on individual autonomy as in effect the greatest good is a legacy of the influence of Seneca. And it is a touchstone for the present-day liberal consensus as regards morality as well as politics. To put the connection a different way, when I was working on Shakespeare’s Roman plays, I wanted to find a contemporary point of view that most closely resembles his. Is he conservative? Progressive? Marxist? Libertarian? What? And what I realized is that the closest analogue of Shakespeare’s thought about politics in our time is what has come to be known as “post-liberalism” or “common-good conservatism,” such as we find in the works of authors such as Alastair MacIntyre and Patrick Deneen. Moreover, that similarity makes sense. Both authors, Deneen and Shakespeare, argue that a society where each individual is trying to maximize his or her autonomy at the expense of everyone else is a society that is doomed to oscillate between brittle autocracy and merciless civil war. Shakespeare sees this dynamic in a pre-Christian society, Rome; Deneen sees it in a post-Christian society, our world today.
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