Double Vision
Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4159259 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charles Altieri (University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 101-103 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/aesthj/aym045 |
| OpenAlex | W2074682265 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
Zamir's book is an intelligent and provocative justification for how literary rhetoric can articulate and test moral belief. He writes with the economy and power of one well-versed in contemporary analytic philosophy, and he offers an impressive grasp of Renaissance drama and classical literature. The book offers three chapters making a theoretical case for ‘philosophical criticism’, then seven chapters each devoted to how a Shakespearean play can produce moral knowledge and even ‘moral growth’ (p. 21). The chapters on Shakespeare show how the plays guide the audience toward moral understanding on diverse issues. Zamir pairs Richard III's focus on ‘amoralism’ with Macbeth's confrontation with ‘nihilism’. Where the former helps with philosophy's difficulty in establishing the limitations of scepticism, the latter makes the audience recognize how nihilism diminishes any satisfying experience of the present, so that no rational agent could prefer that world view. Then Zamir turns to varieties of love. Romeo's ‘erotic’ experience is predicated on the narrowing of perspective, whereas Juliet's is a selective attunement to what she perceives’ (p. 120). But the play structures the experience of the audience so that they understand the costs of the blindness to doubt responsible for the intensities of the lovers. Conversely Antony and Cleopatra offers a romance that refuses to set ‘its intensities at odds with what life is, but rather structures itself through life and the daily pleasures that it affords’ (p. 131). Here Zamir is excellent on how the play challenges the audience to deal with the interplay between doubt and certainly basic to mature love
Aesthetics · Art · Drama · Epistemology · Literature · Nihilism · Rhetoric · Skepticism · Sociology · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,18 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2018 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |