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Political Philosophy and Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

Sigurd Burckhardt has rendered a service in providing the occasion for a thematic presentation of the principles underlying the interpretations of Shakespearean drama by Jaffa and me, to which he has taken such exception. The issue does not primarily concern literary criticism but rather has to do with the relation of art to political philosophy and, in turn, with their relation to life. Burckhardt, however, has not joined the debate on the level of the issues. He does not argue against the substance of our interpretations, and does not say wherein and why they are in error. Characteristic of his method is his offer of three statements “admittedly out of context” from my article for which he then proposes the following test: “Choose,” he says, “a jury of widely read, intelligent men, show them these statements (with the information that they are meant to describe two main characters in a play known to all of them), and then make them guess who is being talked about.” Burckhardt thinks he is “safe in claiming that there will not be a single correct identification.” The moment seems somewhat inappropriately chosen for suggesting the method of a quiz program for deciding a matter of validity. But seriously, does any scholar, however he may wish for public acceptance, make this his standard? Agreement may produce peace, but it can never by itself be a criterion of truth. In presenting my conclusions, I have a right to ask that they be tested in the light of my evidence and my arguments. In the court of scholarly judgment it is a weak argument that rests on the number of witnesses who can be summoned to support an opinion.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1960 , pp. 457 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1960

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References

1 The articles in question are: Jaffa, Harry V., “The Limits of Politics: An Interpretation of King Lear , Act I, Scene i, this Review, Vol. 51 (06 1957), pp. 405–427 Google Scholar; Bloom, Allan, “Cosmopolitan Man and the Political Community,” this Review, Vol. 54 (03 1960), pp. 130–157 Google Scholar; Sigurd Burckhardt, “English Bards and APSR Reviewers,” ibid., pp. 158–166. Although the responsibility for this article is my own, I have attempted to answer the criticism directed against Jaffa as well as that directed against what is common to our approaches to Shakespeare. He has seen this response and has expressed his agreement with it.

2 Two further pointe should be answered, although they find no natural place within the body of my response.

(1) Burckhardt accuses Jaffa of contradicting himself, as follows: “It is important for him to prove that Lear had already chosen the Duke of Burgundy to be Cordelia's husband; the textual evidence for this being non-existent, he makes what he can of the fact that, after Cordelia's disgrace, Burgundy is the first to be asked if he will still marry her. … The same fact—the sequences of asking—is used to buttress two hypotheses in such a way that one use invalidates the other; for if the offer of Cordelia's hand has now become an insult (as indeed it has), what are we to conclude from her being offered to Burgundy first?” But Burckhardt does not report Jaffa's article accurately: Burgundy's reply to Lear, that he “crave(s) no more than hath your Highness offered,” certainly is textual evidence, and Jaffa presents it to show that overtures have been made to Burgundy which we have no reason to think have been made to France. Even so, Jaffa was careful to point out that this statement is itself ambiguous, that Burgundy's knowledge of what the dowry would be does not itself mean that he would be the bridegroom. But suppose that only the one fact—the sequence of asking—had been used to buttress two hypotheses, does the one use invalidate the other? Jaffa maintained that Burgundy had been chosen originally because he was the smaller power, and that he was offered the disgraced Cordelia also because he was the smaller power. The fact that in the first instance her hand was an honor, and in the second a dishonor, does not constitute a contradiction.

(2) Burckhardt says I cited only two articles written since 1900. This is true. In my defense, I think I might require of Burckhardt, if he is not merely being pedantic, to show precisely what errors I have made because I did not cite the books which he has read. I would add that, had I undertaken to explain why I had not been content to “accept and retail” what all literary critics have produced and marketed concerning Othello since 1900, I would have required much more space than an entire issue of this Review provides. But is it not a bit curious that someone who pleads for a “mindless surrender” to the text should insist that I rely on an enormous mass of secondary literature?

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