Introduction

Lowell Gallagher

Shankar Raman

pp. 1-29

in: Lowell Gallagher, Shankar Raman (eds), Knowing Shakespeare, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

From the time of Democritus through Shakespeare to Arendt, the proper relationship between the senses and cognition has remained a topic of debate — and an occasion for great art. Both the laughing philosopher and Shakespeare's heroine recognize the impossibility of simply seeing things "as they are." But whereas Democritus wryly concedes the mind's pyrrhic victory in mastering the senses, Portia 'seasons' that skepticism with an appreciation of their suasive power. Her nocturnal rumination eschews the pugnacity and poignancy of Democritus's metaphor, enlarging the field of maneuver. Now contingency appears not only in thought's dependence on the vagaries of sense perception, but also in our ability to profit from this mutability. After all, Portia's own 'season" in Venice has shown her (and her spectators) how mistaking may produce unanticipated "perfection." She is indeed a 'season"d" skeptic, not paralyzed but emboldened by the prospect of double truth in which both thought and senses trade. A wily pupil of Democritus as well as Bellario, the hybrid figure of Portia/Balthasar serves as an apt sentinel to the terrain covered in this book.

Cited authors

Arendt Hannah

Shakespeare William