On speaking the amen
Augustinian soliloquy in Shakespeare's Metaxu
pp. 285-301
in: Dennis van den Auweele (ed), William Desmond's philosophy between metaphysics, religion, ethics, and aesthetics, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstrakt
This chapter uses metaxology to argue that Shakespeare's Macbeth offers a deeper way to understand the importance of Augustinian soliloquy. It brings together Saint Augustine and William Shakespeare, with whom William Desmond converses as he considers how to appreciate, investigate, and act in the between. For both the saint and the playwright, a soliloquy enables self-knowledge only when porous to a divine hearer and interlocutor. This in turn establishes the foundation for metaxological communities. After establishing and exploring these ideas within Augustine's Soliloquies and Desmond's corpus, the chapter analyses a key moment in Macbeth as a reversed Augustinian movement of discovery. Lord Macbeth's inability to say "Amen" after killing Duncan signifies his isolation from communities of the human and the divine. His speechlessness is a sign that he does not know himself, and that he is unable to communicate with others—true community is no longer possible for him now, and it will become even more impossible in future. Having already begun to 'steep" themselves in blood, he and his wife are caught in what Desmond calls "Sticky Evil". Their further unwillingness to acknowledge a breach of communal order entails their shared clogged porosity.
