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Double Issue Volume 41 Issue 2 Volume 41 Issue 3 Double Issue 63 Note to Readers Fall 2014 65 Sophie Bourgault The Unbridled Tongue: Plato, Parrhesia, and Philosophy 91 Richard Burrow Fulfillment in As You Like It 123 Alexandru Racu Strauss’s Machiavelli and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor Book Reviews: 163 Steven H. Frankel Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism: Another Reason, Another Enlightenment by Corine Pelluchon 171 Michael Harding Political Philosophy Cross-Examined: Perennial Challenges to the Philosophic Life by Thomas L. Pangle and J. Harvey Lomax 181 Will Morrisey Locke, Science, and Politics by Steven Forde Spring 2015 201 Jonathan Culp Happy City, Happy Citizens? The Common Good and the Private Good in Plato’s Republic 227 Aryeh Tepper The Problematic Power of Musical Instruments in the Bible 247 Julien Carriere & Ancients and Moderns under the Empire of Circe: 279 Steven Berg Machiavelli’s The Ass, Translation and Commentary 313 Erik S. Root Liberal Education Imperiled: Toward a Resurrection of Reason and Revelation in Higher Education Book Reviews: 349 Fred Baumann Leo Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn, translated and edited by Martin D. Yaffe 359 Gregory A. McBrayer On the God of the Christians (and on one or two others) by Rémi Brague 367 Rafael Major Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom by Timothy W. Burns ©2015 Interpretation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. ISSN 0020-9635 Editor-in-Chief Hilail Gildin, Dept. of Philosophy, Queens College Associate Editor-in-Chief Timothy W. Burns, Baylor University Associate Editors Daniel Ian Mark • Geoffrey Sigalet General Editors Charles E. Butterworth • Hilail Gildin General Editors (Late) Howard B. White (d. 1974) • Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Seth G. Benardete (d. 2001) • Leonard Grey (d. 2009) • Harry V. Jaffa (d. 2015) Consulting Editors Christopher Bruell • David Lowenthal • Harvey C. Mansfield • Ellis Sandoz • Kenneth W. Thompson Consulting Editors (Late) Leo Strauss (d. 1973) • Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) • Michael Oakeshott (d. 1990) • John Hallowell (d. 1992) • Ernest L. Fortin (d. 2002) • Muhsin Mahdi (d. 2007) • Joseph Cropsey (d. 2012) International Editors Terence E. Marshall • Heinrich Meier Editors Wayne Ambler • Marco Andreacchio • Maurice Auerbach • Robert Bartlett • Fred Baumann • Eric Buzzetti • Susan Collins • Patrick Coby • Elizabeth C’de Baca Eastman • Erik Dempsey • Edward J. Erler • Maureen Feder-Marcus • L. Joseph Hebert • Pamela K. Jensen • Ken Masugi • Carol L. McNamara • Will Morrisey • Amy Nendza • Susan Orr • Michael Palmer • Charles T. Rubin • Leslie G. Rubin • Thomas Schneider • Susan Meld Shell • Nicholas Starr • Devin Stauffer • Bradford P. Wilson • Cameron Wybrow • Martin D. Yaffe • Catherine H. Zuckert • Michael P. Zuckert Copy Editor Les Harris Designer Sarah Teutschel Inquiries Interpretation, A Journal of Political Philosophy Department of Political Science Baylor University 1 Bear Place, 97276 Waco, TX 76798 email [email protected] Book Review: Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom 3 6 7 Timothy W. Burns, Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, x + 234 pp., $100 (hardcover). Recovering Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom Rafael Major University of North Texas [email protected] Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom, by Professor Timothy Burns, will be a welcome surprise for many of its future readers. Few academics—and con- sequently few undergraduate students—can resist the temptation to speak about the possible meaning of Shakespeare’s plays except in terms of external evidence. Shakespeare’s supposed biography, political events occurring dur- ing each play’s composition, Renaissance historiography, the authoritative meaning of certain literary devices, and almost anything else other than Shakespeare’s text are the usual starting points for scholars, and this includes scholars who are desperate to prove that the plays have no “meaning.” Burns’s critical approach is quite different from beginning to end, and the book as a whole is unapologetically aimed at discerning Shakespeare’s view of the most serious issues the human mind can pursue. Some examples: Is all of nature arbitrary? Does god exist? Is there any basis (even a human basis) for justice? Can the worst imaginable deeds be called inherently evil, or can any prudential decision or action rightly be characterized as abhorrent or shame- ful? These questions are related and seem familiar enough, but Burns takes on the essential task of considering Shakespeare’s view of these questions without forgetting that they cannot be addressed without accounting for the © 2015 Interpretation, Inc. 3 6 8 Interpretation Volume 41 / Issue 3 verifiable human hopes and desires that predispose each and every one of us to decide the issues before we investigate them. It is impossible to judge Burns’s efforts to understand Shakespeare with- out first describing his approach. As the editors of the Recovering Political Philosophy series in which this book appears explain, Burns makes the simple assumption that Shakespeare has attracted generations of readers with “the moving depth and humanity” portrayed in his dramas (ix). Would Shakespeare not also have given a great deal of thought to the precise way we would be moved? An author with the technical ability to excite our passions with such regularity would be very aware of the subsequent inducement for some portion of his audience to try to understand the cause of their experi- ence. To note an obvious and related issue, there are several instances in the dramas where characters play actors, directors, and theatergoers, and it is unimaginable that Shakespeare wrote these lines without reflecting on his own craft as a playwright. But the same logic impels us to consider what Shakespeare thought of the deepest moral, theological, and psychological questions, that is, all political questions. Could Shakespeare move us without himself considering and even understanding—better than we do—the ques- tions that prick human interest? This poet has wisdom. According to Burns, this wisdom is not only what allowed Shakespeare to create exceptionally vivid portrayals of political life, it makes each play a kind of “educational project” (13). Whether we like it or not, these plays shape the way audiences understand the world, and it is the result of a conscientious understanding, not the byproduct of creativity or good “storytelling.” This summary of Burns’s simple approach will be sufficient for those sympathetic to reading and discussing Shakespeare in a similar way, but a deeper explanation is ultimately required.1 I was initially disappointed that Burns did not offer one. Rather than confront examples of criticism and alternative approaches to reading Shakespeare, he chooses to ignore sec- ondary literature altogether. He writes about the plays “naively, without the sophistication that is lent to our thinking by contemporary social science and by modern political philosophy, as well as by contemporary literary criticism 1 For the best introduction to the issues surrounding Burns’s approach to Shakespeare, see the debate in the American Political Science Review between Allan Bloom and Sigurd Burckhardt (APSR 54, nos. 1 and 2 [1960]: 158–66, 457–73); also see John Alvis, “Introductory: Shakespearean Poetry and Politics,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, ed. John Alvis and Tom West (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), 3–26. For an extended defense of reading literature as a necessary supplement to political science, see the contributions of Paul Cantor, Werner Dannhauser, and Michael Zuckert in “Symposium: Literature and Politics,” PS: Political Science and Politics 28, no. 2 (1995):189–200. Book Review: Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom 3 6 9 which is so deeply shaped by postmodern philosophic thought” (2). Because Burns abandons the use of conventional scholarly support for his arguments, Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom can at times be disconcerting or perplex- ing. Reading Shakespeare without contemporary assumptions is appealing, though the procedure potentially exposes the interpreter’s own point of view to undue criticism. This book forgoes the usual protection given to scholars who couch arguments either in opposition to or in agreement with second- ary scholarship. In his own name, Burns gives detailed accounts of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, and The Tempest, but his arguments often hinge on subtle readings of details that are not normally given so much interpretive weight. For example, characters such as Brutus, Macbeth, Antonio, Edmund, Ferdinand, and Miranda each make statements that appear contradictory. These contradictions, according to Burns, are not happenstance or simple indications of the ordinary complexity of human motivations. Rather, the contradictions within the carefully crafted lines of Shakespeare’s text point to the poet’s own assessment and criticism of the principles by which individuals ordinarily claim to be guided. On one level, this approach yields plausible interpretations, but in order to judge if they are correct, readers are ultimately asked to judge issues that are between the lines (217). Many readers are familiar with Shakespeare’s Brutus and Macbeth, for example, but Burns’s treatment of both will likely be a spur to revisit both Julius Caesar and Macbeth. Brutus is often seen as a hero of the ancient repub- lican virtue of Rome. A reader as astute as Nietzsche points to the Roman’s
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