Macbeth and Time: Imagination and Memory

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I mentioned previously that I was reading Colin McGinn's book Shakespeare's Philosophy. Well, I just finished his chapter on Macbeth (and another one that I'll be posting on in a couple of days) and thought some of the comments on the role of time in Macbeth were interesting.

The role of time in human life is a topic that fascinates me, so I thought I'd share some of McGinn's comments, intermixed with some of my own.

Let me begin by saying that Macbeth was my first exposure to Shakespeare. I studied the play for 3 years in second-level and so it has a certain nostalgic value for me (memory and time!). Of course, it doesn't hurt that it is a genuinely great play (indeed, it is "timeless"!).


Tragedy and Time
Human life is embedded in time: we remember the past, we plan for the future and we live in the present. We swim in an ever-rolling stream.

In my post contrasting comedies and tragedies, I noted that time plays a crucial role in a tragedy. The clock is always ticking, a foreboding soundtrack to a character's ineluctable and unfortunate end. Macbeth is perhaps the purest example of this.

Macbeth, more than any other Shakespearean character, is mesmerised and haunted by time. To be clearer: Macbeth is mesmerised by an imagined future and haunted by his memories of a blood-soaked past. Consider both of these phenomena -- imagination and memory -- in more detail.

Who Will be King Hereafter
In his discussion of Macbeth, McGinn gives a broad treatment to the topic of imagination. For instance, he provides copious commentary on the hallucinated dagger that leads Macbeth to Duncan's bedchamber. I want to consider imagination more narrowly, as a speculative conduit to the future. In other words as a psychological faculty that tempts us towards a particular vision of our future lives.

Understood in this sense, Macbeth is a play all about imagination. Indeed, the play begins with a temptation. Macbeth and his friend Banquo, returning victorious from battle, are waylaid by three witches. The witches greet Macbeth with a prophecy. They say that he shall be king hereafter. As an ambitious warrior, the prospect is a good one, or is it? Macbeth ruminates:

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature.

There is something so tantalising, tempting and terrifying about the witches' prophecy. It appeals to Macbeth's vaulting ambition, but it is also destabilising. Before the prophecy he was a reasonably high-ranking thane, and he was probably expecting no more from life (there was limited social mobility in Scotland back then), now he is not so sure. After all, the prophecy is no more than a glimpse of a possible future, the road that will take him there is unclear.

He sends word of the prophecy to his wife (Lady Macbeth). She too is tempted but she also sees clearly the path to the future:

Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and I feel now the future in an instant.

The path will require the murder of the present king.

The deed is carried out, but then Macbeth realises that the glorious future he imagined is never quite secure: his kingship is illegitimate and unnatural, he must continually fight off potential threats. In short, more blood must be spilled. Macbeth has become trapped by an imagined future.

The most startling illustration of Macbeth's uneasy relationship with the future comes with the murder of his friend Banquo. Banquo had also received a prophecy from the witches. He was told that although he would not be king, he would "beget" kings. Indeed, his seed would give rise to a whole dynasty. Macbeth cannot allow this, and tries to have Banquo and his son killed. Banquo is dispatched, but the son escapes.

It was pointed out to me that Macbeth's desire to prevent Banquo begetting a dynasty is odd. There is no mention in the play of Macbeth's children. They are conspicuous by their absence. So there is no realistic prospect of Macbeth having his own lineage. He must surely know that his kingship will be an ephemeral and temporary thing? Something to be enjoyed while it lasts.

But he cannot seem to accept this; he is always fighting the future.

Out Damned Spot
It is not just the future that is a problem for Macbeth, the past is also an issue. Macbeth thinks that the murder of the king will be a one-off event, something that can be done and then forgotten about:

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.

But just as imagination provides a conduit to the future, memory provides a conduit to the past. And Macbeth's memories of the dreadful deeds he has performed to become king stalk his every step. Perhaps the most famous illustration is the scene in which the bloody ghost of Banquo interrupts Macbeth when he is having a banquet.

And it is not just Macbeth who is haunted by the past; his wife suffers more than he. This is exquisitely portrayed in her sleepwalking scene. She is constantly rubbing her hands, trying to get rid of the bloodstains that she remembers from the murder of the king.

Out damned spot! Out, I say!... Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

In short, both Macbeth and his wife were tempted by an imagined future and haunted by a remembered past.


The Brief Candle
No discussion of the role of time in Macbeth would be complete without mentioning the famous last soliloquy. And mentioning this segues neatly with what I was just talking about. 

Lady Macbeth eventually loses her battle with sanity and kills herself. Macbeth is told of this by his trusty aide Seyton and it prompts the following reflection:

She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

This passage is truly beautiful. An example of the soaring literary heights that Shakepeare can reach. It almost needs no commentary, but I can't help myself.

I think this passage signifies Macbeth's mature understanding of time. He began the play with a naive understanding of time. He was tempted by an imagined future, and tricked into thinking this would be easy to obtain. He eventually realised the errors of his ways: the future is never secure and the past can never be escaped. He now sees that he has lost the battle with time: he made the wrong choices and failed to make his life a unified, and meaningful narrative.

Now, this final soliloquy could, of course, be interpreted as a global pessimism about human life. That it is short, petty and signifies nothing, and that this is true of all people. I think it is better to see it as connected directly to Macbeth's choices, and that life can be fulfilling if we reject Macbeth's naivete.

This is a theme I will be exploring in more depth in my series on the Divine Comedy's Promenade.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 9): The Argument from Convergence

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The ninth argument covered by Oppy is a neglected historical oddity. It is attributed to Henry Sidgwick (who did not endorse it) and is known as the argument from convergence. Take a look:

• (P1) What I have most reason to do is what will best secure my own happiness.

• (P2) What I have most reason to do is what morality requires.

• (P3) If there is no moral government of the universe, then what will best secure my happiness is not always what morality requires.

• (C1) Therefore, there is a moral government of the universe.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

This is actually a pretty profound argument, and more deserving of consideration than the tawdry argument from the need for justice (which is similar in content). I think it neatly summarises certain opinions and intuitions that we have about the nature of morality. In particular, it captures the tension that most people see between self-interest and morality.  


Anyway, there is no need to wax lyrical on it for too long, we need to know whether the argument is successful.


Analysis
Sidgwick rejected the conclusion of this argument for one simple reason: he thought it more likely that there was a fundamental irreconcilable tension in the faculty of practical reason, than that there was a God to reconcile them. I tend to agree.

Oppy notes, as I did a moment ago, that the argument equivocates between prudential reason and moral reason. One way to resolve the tension is to reduce moral reasons to prudential reasons or vice versa. Many secular theories of morality do this. For example, Hobbes reduced moral reasons to prudential reasons of a particular sort.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 8): The Argument from Conscience

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The eighth argument dealt with by Graham Oppy is the argument from conscience. Something like this seems to lie behind many religious believers acceptance of a moral law. The argument has the following form:

• (P1) Conscience, as a sanction of right conduct, induces feelings and experiences of fear, shame and responsibility.

• (P2) Such feelings require a person who is their 'focus', that is, a person to whom one is responsible, before whom one is ashamed and so on.

• (P3) No human being can systematically be the focus for these feelings.

• (C1) Therefore, conscience logically requires a relationship to an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

Reading that cannot help but evoke H.L. Mencken's immortal words: "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody might be looking."

Let's see whether we can beat Mencken's mordant wit.


Analysis
Beginning with P1, we have to ask about the ontological status of conscience. It seems that it is simply a label for a cluster of emotions or feelings we have about our own conduct. We need to be clear that this is the meaning being employed because some might argue that conscience is mystical or sui generis. Understood as a label for a cluster of emotions, "conscience" clearly exists.

Moving to P2, we must ask whether it is true that conscience requires a personal focus. Could there not be a general, untethered sense of guilt just as there can be a directionless feeling of anger or a vague sense of unease?

Maybe this is not a good objection, but it is worth considering. More substantive is the question about the need for a single person to play the role of the focus. Why not many different people, at different times? There seems to be no good answer to that question.

P3 is perhaps the most dubious of all (at least from my perspective). Oppy does not pursue the matter in great detail (he speaks only of the plausibility of a naturalistic explanation for conscience), but I am pretty sure that there is one person, who is not God, who can be the focus: yourself. If we adopt a transtemporal theory of self, i.e. a view based on the idea that the self exists through time, there is no difficulty with believing that you can have certain expectations of your own conduct at T1 which you fail to live up to at T2 and which thereby induce feelings of guilt or shame at T3. (See Ainslie's The Breakdown of the Will for some of the theoretical basis for this).

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 7): The Argument from Heavenly Reward

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The seventh argument to get the Oppy-treatment is the argument from heavenly reward. This is a presumptuous argument with the following form:

• (P1) People who fail to believe in an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god are guaranteed to miss out on the benefits of infinite heavenly reward.

• (P2) No sensible person chooses to miss out on the benefits of infinite heavenly reward.

• (C1) Therefore, every sensible person believes in an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (P3) What every sensible person believes cannot be false.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

This must have been cooked-up in some theistic genetics laboratory. It is a strange hybrid of Pascal's wager and an argument from authority. Is this new creature any less troubling than its fallacious forebears? Let's find out.

Analysis
P1 assumes what needs to be proved. The argument is trying to establish the existence of God from certain moral considerations, but right there in P1 is the assumption that God exists ("those who fail to believe...are guaranteed...". Furthermore, it assumes that one particular interpretation of God's justice is true, namely: that he will punish wrongdoers forever. Even some Christians are willing to doubt this.

In addition to this, the argument assumes we have access to the "secret handshake" that gets us into heaven. But different religious sects have different understandings of this secret handshake forcing us into a type of moral epistemological nihilism. Thus, the pragmatic appeal of the argument is lessened.

Finally, P3 is not obviously true. There seems to be no reason to accept that sensible (by which is meant "prudent" in this argument) people have true beliefs.

Table of Contents

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This is a table of contents for the blog. I have organised it into different categories of philosophy. There is some overlap between them.


General

• Philosophy 101
• Argumentation Schemes Part 1 and Part 2

Epistemology and Explanation

• What Good is an Explanation (Peter Lipton) Part 1, Part 2
• Explanations: A Gentle Introduction
• Explanations: Breadth and Depth
• Theism and Explanation by Gregory Dawes
• Neuroscientific Explanations with Carl Craver
• Evidence and Evolution
• Causal Models
• Oppy on Disagreement Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Moral Philosophy

• Blackwell Companion to Ethics
• The Dialectical Necessity of Morality
• Oppy on Moral Arguments
• Wes Morriston on Theistic Morality
• Why be Moral?
• Hobbes's Moral Theory
• Maitzen on Morality and Atheism
• Hume on Morality
• Wielenberg on Morality
• Metaethical Constructivism with Sharon Street
• The Epistemological Challenge to Metanormative Realism (Enoch) Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Religious Philosophy

• The Non Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt
• C.S Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion by John Beversluis
• Oppy on Moral Arguments
• Wes Morriston on Theistic Morality
• Why be Moral?
• Hume on Religion
• Maitzen on Morality and Atheism
• Wielenberg on Morality
• Posts on Common Sense Atheism
• Gwiazda on Swinburne
• The End of Skeptical Theism

Law and Society

• Musings on the Economic Analysis of Law
• How Does Society Work?
• Psychology of Religion

Podcast

• Index

Aesthetics

• Promenade by the Divine Comedy
• Shakespeare's Philosophy
• Shakespeare's Comedies (under construction)

Evidence and Evolution (Index)

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One of the more rewarding books to cross my desk in the past year was Elliot Sober's Evidence and Evolution. The name might be deceptive: this is not an easy-to-read book setting out various bits of evidence for evolution (like Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True); this is a long, technical and difficult book on epistemology and the philosophy of science.

It was rewarding because it introduced me to a new way of looking at certain issues. Prior to reading Sober, I was a bit of Bayes-virgin. I have now been engrossed in the topic for six months or so (I'm still little more than a dabbler).

Sober covers four topics in what are really four separate books:

1. The different statistical tools we can use to assess theories (Bayesianism, Likelihoodism, and Frequentism).
2. Intelligent Design (focusing a lot on the correct formulation of the design argument and the testability of hypotheses).
3. Natural Selection (comparing it to other theories of evolutionary change).
4. Common Ancestry (testing the theory of branching descent).

As a good philosopher, Sober reaches no firm conclusions on any of these topics.

I am going to do occasional posts on this book. I will not go through it in the same detail as I am doing with other books on this blog. That said, I am going to take a considerable whack at the chapter on Intelligent Design simply because it straddles two of my own interests: philosophy of science and religious philosophy. I am also going to use some of the material from chapter one in a series covering Bayes Theorem.

I will take this at a fairly leisurely pace. This is a book to be savoured and chewed-over, not gulped down at one sitting.

Anyway, this post will, eventually, serve as an index for all others.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 6): The Argument from the Costs of Irreligion

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The sixth argument that Oppy looks at often comes up in non-philosophical conversations. It is the argument from the costs of irreligion. It looks something like the following:

• (P1) Loss of belief in God has coincided with a rise in social evils: divorce, murder, lack of respect for authority and so on.

• (C1) Therefore, loss of belief in God is the cause of modern social evils.

• (C2) Therefore, we should all return to belief in an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (P2) One cannot have an obligation to adopt false beliefs.

• (C3) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

There is always going to be something fishy about an argument with three conclusions drawn from only two premises: it is likely that unwarranted or suspect inferences are being made. Let's see if we can pinpoint those suspect inferences.

Analysis

This one could be thrashed out for hours, with numerous stats and historical examples being offered by both sides.

First off, Oppy thinks we may have reason to doubt the very idea that there has been a rise in unbelief. Given that it was often dangerous to profess unbelief in the past, it may be that the recent increase is simply due to a more tolerant social environment. Oppy doesn't go beyond a mere suggestion, but Jennifer Hecht's book Doubt: A History shows that religious scepticism has a long and noble tradition.

Second, Oppy thinks there is no clear evidence to suggest that the world is getting worse. Some, like Steven Pinker, have argued that things are getting better. A rhetorical question might help to underline the point: if God gave you a choice to live at any other moment in history, would you choose pious Medieval Europe, wracked by plague, corruption, torture, witch-hunting and war? Oppy argues it is unlikely that you would.

Let's concede the first premise. It still does not follow that unbelief causes social evils. Correlation does not prove causation, as people are fond of reminding us. Other factors may be causally relevant, e.g. massive increase in population, increasing urbanisation (a good predictor of crime). There is no non-question-begging reason to causally link unbelief with the rise in social evils.

One could push this further by arguing that an increase in belief would only add fuel to fire. The world is a melting pot of different religious beliefs and fundamentalisms. Getting more people to believe might simply accentuate the latent conflict in ideologies.

Finally, the jump from P2 to C3 is chasm-like in proportions. There are different senses of obligation, and no reason to suspect that a moral obligation must be based on true beliefs. I covered this earlier in the series.