Poetics of Justice by Shakespeare - Essay Example

?Shakespeare’s Poetics of Justice Introduction The modification of poetry for the intentions of philosophy is what Martha Nussbaum tried to accomplish in her emphasis on the ‘poetics of justice.’ Nussbaum illustrated this objective in a more impartial statement: For the Greeks of the fifth and early fourth centuries b.c., there were not two separate sets of questions in the area of human choice and action, aesthetic questions and moral-philosophical questions, to be studied and written about by mutually detached colleagues in different departments. Instead, dramatic poetry and what we now call philosophical inquiry in ethics were both typically... seen as ways of pursuing a single and general question: namely, how human beings should live.1 Poetic justice, basically, aims to use literature as an instrument for educating the emotions and the mind. It is hence a typically Platonic argument.2 Nussbaum firmly claims that a good judge appreciates the poetics of justice. Essentially, the argument of Nussbaum implies that a good judge fulfils his/her professional existence most wholly when s/he is equipped to defend and oppose, and be condemned or repealed, in seeking justice. The clash between the natural law and positivism should be very definite if a judge is to depend on the notion of poetic justice to the core of fair dealing. The judge should make a decision: does this positivistic law go against the heart of my responsibility to humanity and to self? The endeavour is exceptionally challenging. To society it is normally baffling. That challenge is not yet met, albeit the insistent demand by judges for justice and rationality. The objective of this essay is to discuss the argument of Nussbaum in light of the two novels of William Shakespeare, namely, Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice. The discussion will revolve around the specific themes of law and morality: Christianity, common law, and the debate of natural law and positivism. Poetic Justice in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure Modern-day discourses about the inherent morality of judgment (natural law) and the actual exercise of authority (positivism) are acted out in Measure for Measure. The clash between natural law and positivism is proclaimed in the first long address of Duke to Escalus and Angelo. The Duke cautions Angelo that individual morality should be enacted freely or in public3: Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, ‘twere all alike As if we had them not.4 The above statement is reminiscent of a passage in Matthew 5:15-6, the Sermon on the Mount: “Nether do men light a candel, and put it vnder a bushel, but on a candelsticke & it giueth light vnto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may se your good workes, & glorifie your Father which is in heauen.”5 The character of Angelo is recognised for his self-control and accuracy, although illustrations of him lean more on apathy than virtuosity. The glorified personal moral principles of Angelo are now subjected to criticism in his recently assigned public position. The conflict between the concept of natural justice and positivistic law, at this point, came in Angelo’s encounter with Isabella. Isabella speaks up for mercy on the basis of understanding of one’s immorality and emulation of Christ’s life. Unluckily, Angelo is not convinced. Insincerity may be criticised by the passage ‘judge not’, yet it is not banned by the law, an argument Angelo has already stated earlier in the novel.6 Isabella justifies her argument when she implores Angelo to think about the judgement of God: “How would you be, /If He, which is the top of judgment, should/ But judge you as you are?”7 The allusion of the overgenerous mercy of Christ requires that the ‘human’ or deficient Angelo ought not to give judgment on other mortal beings, a claim that appears to hark back Schleitheim Confession’s article 68: The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and puts to death the wicked, and guards and protects the good. In the Law the sword was ordained for the punishment of the wicked and for their death, and the same (sword) is (now) ordained to be used by the worldly magistrates.9 Ultimately, referring to the public duty of Angelo, Isabella claims that compassion, not the ‘judge’s robe’ or the ‘deputed sword’ of public position10, is the most favourable accessory of leaders. Isabella, reminiscent of Anabaptism, situates the sword outside Christ’s rightness and excellence, the spiritual, personal domain of compassion and integrity which she dwells in.11 Public authority emerges in Angelo. When Angelo is introduced to the readers, he appears to have virtually no personal virtues whatsoever; Angelo is his position, all adjudicator and no individual.12 The law that is supported by him is completely indifferent and distant. The points that Angelo puts forward in justification of his sternness clarify this argument. Primarily, Angelo claims that if laws will not be implemented, they will stop preserving order, repeating the earlier opinions of the Duke.13 Moreover, failure or refusal to impose punishment negatively affects those who will eventually be harmed by the absolved perpetrator. Angelo, on the basis of his own position as judge, states that the law can merely sanction crimes that are publicised by it, not those offences that evade public scrutiny14: “What’s open made to justice, /that justice seizes.”15 It is not important if people who put the law into effect are accountable to several offences themselves, for they are not subjected to trial. Even if Christianity may advise people to detest the sin but feel affection for the perpetrator, the law does not consider the sentiment of the criminal, but the public behaviour of the criminal and their outcome as established by the law16: Why, every fault’s condemn’d ere it be done: Mine were the very cipher of a function To fine the faults, whose fine stands in record, And let go by the actor.17 Apparently, Angelo is embodying philosophies that were and are norms of law in Western societies. The law should act distantly otherwise it becomes a means to personal interests. Judges should carry out their duties whether or not they are morally upright. Laws are present to sustain order, to safeguard the underprivileged from the dishonest privileged, to control offenders for the good of themselves and society. Angelo, as an embodiment of the law, is performing faithfully what the Duke expected him to do, that is, controlling Vienna’s ‘headstrong jades’18 and bringing back peace and order. Angelo lends his character as the representative of justice; in his own way, a detached ruling scheme justly and distantly put into effect.19 Angelo differentiates the position from the individual in it, dividing personal and public identities: “It is the law , not I, condemn your brother; / Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, / It should be thus with him.”20 The imperfection surfaces in the farthest to which Angelo shoves his position, too far which even his character appears to become a construct. The dilemma of resolving these conflicting norms of personal compassion and public justice rests with the Duke. The Duke, as argued by N.W. Bawcutt, displays no indication of meddling with the judgments of Angelo until he listened to the vivid dialogue between Claudio and Isabella in the prison cell.21 The reaction of the Duke to the vice of Angelo is finally an effort to reconcile the conflicting features of personal and public, justice and compassion. When the Duke presents himself at the closing of the third act, he proclaims a judgment criterion for leaders that echoes Isabella’s22: He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe: More nor less to others paying Than by self-offenses weighing. Shame to him whose cruel striking Kills for faults of his own liking!23 The Duke constructs the ultimate judgment event to reconcile personal and public, and particularly to reveal the two-facedness of Angelo as a public servant while drawing out Isabella’s own definition of mercy. The highlight arrives in the vivid denunciation of Angelo by the Duke24: The very mercy of the law cries out Most audible, even from his proper tongue: “An Angelo for Claudio; death for death. Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.25 Distinct from Christian compassion, which absolves despite of personal value, justice is a justified feature that considers the entirety of conditions around behaviour in evaluating judgement on that behaviour. Even-handedness had a definite position in the legal system of the UK.26 No exact contribution of justice as a legal system is apparent in the novel, but the notion of justice is evidently specific in the ultimate judgments of the Duke. Poetic Justice in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice Evidently, the tradition of common-law justice, which is resisted by the courts of justice, whose power was rooted in the common law’s weakness to the demands of equity and the requirement of another foundation of equity, royal principles, to solve that insufficiency.27 To remedy the epistle of the law with its essence was only to verify the common law’s absolute nature. Due to this the philosophy of purpose is insistently not the source of the impartial judgment of Portia.28 Portia disregards purpose as a way of remedying the inadequacies of the epistle of the law as she firmly recognises that the epistle of the law and the essence reinforces the argument of Shylock29: “the intent and purpose of the law/ Hath full relation to the penalty, / Which here appeareth due upon the bond.”30 While the novel struggles to show, the law of contract’s purpose is to safeguard the inviolability of agreements from outside meddling in order to ascertain the rights of people who conduct trade in Venice, despite of the definite provisions of these agreements.31 The philosophy that Portia exercises in making her judgment is not the alleviation of the epistle of the law by its essence, but the similarly honoured principle which assumes that equity may alleviate the unfair outcomes of the essential generality of the law by considering the features of a particular instance of which the law disregards.32 This idea of justice is reminiscent of Aristotle’s Ethics, wherein he declares that “all law is universal but about some things it is not possible to make a universal statement which shall be correct... this is the nature of the equitable, a correction of law where it is defective owing to its universality.”33 Basically, justice was both essential and essentially greater to the common law, taking precedence over the latter when the enforcement of its common codes to a particular case generated obvious prejudice.34 It was this equity assumption that was at the core of the assertions of the Crown to legitimate power: because although greater wisdom of the essence and epistle of the common law should be granted to the judges of common law, the personalised prerequisites of equity were morality’s realm35: “the examination of the case by circumstances... doth necessarily appertayne to the high courte of Chauncery... by an Equity that is drawne from the only conscience of the Lord Chauncellor.”36 The requirements in the judgment of Portia regarding the ‘spilling of blood and the removal of an exact weigh of flesh’37 emphasise the grisly details ruled out from the generality of the common law while they put to rights the wrong generated by that segregation. Neither the essence nor the epistle of the law grant allowances for agreements similar to Shylock’s; the mitigation of the consequences of the generality of the law is at the hands of justice and Portia by taking into account the conditions of the case under consideration, ruling against the conditions of the law in order to meet those of equity.38 The argument that Shylock puts forward for the implementation of his bond lies on several points: first, the self-incriminating exercise of the law to the case under consideration; second, that law’s primacy over any other authority, public or private; and third, the value of that primacy to state’s institutions.39 As the trial begins, Shylock notifies the Duke, “I [have] sworn/ To have the due and forfeit of my bond. If you deny it, let the danger light/ Upon your charter and your city’s freedom!”40 These different points were the groundwork of the argument used by the common law’s proponents in their theoretical and jurisdictional clash with the courts of justice.41 In reinforcing the sanctity of the power of the common law they claimed that the defence and stability of the country dwelled in the arbitration of its ever more intricate network of duties and rights.42 Viewed from the twofold standpoint of political and legal history, the danger created by Shylock to the peace and order in Venice is basically the same danger that Lord Chancellor Ellesmere identified almost two decades after in what was at that time part of mounting incidences of legal defiance to the socio-political supremacy of the Crown.43 The exercise of the common law by Shylock signified to a modern-day audience an issue not only of jurisprudential philosophy, but absolutely of “the power and prerogative of the King.”44 Also, in spite of the value of his defeat in identifying and mitigating the contradiction for the audiences in the royal authority’s interests, the philosophical struggle in Shylock v. Antonio would attest to be a premature battle in the war between the emerging and the powerful elites45 that was to control political life in the UK in the next century. Conclusions The justice of Shakespeare and Nussbaum is of the poetical form. As shown in the above discussion, Nussbaum and Shakespeare’s idea of a moral judge is quite rigorous, in several instances. However, this rigorousness is moderated by, and relaxes, the feature of lenience where in both of them excel. This lenience is no way an indication of complacency: justice thwarts that, as well as rationality. Shakespeare and Nussbaum never belittle or underplay anything, especially with regard to justice. However, as they both recognises everything, hence, without precisely absolving it, they consistently espouse a rigidly objective and unbiased attitude towards justice. Read More