In general terms the modern world is still in the grip of the influence of the orthodox Judeo/Christian paradigm. This is despite the advances made by Galileo and Darwin. The way of seeing the world has changed, but the way of thinking about it in depth has not been challenged systematically.
Shakespeare’s philosophy is the first to provide just such a systematic challenge with the presentation in the Sonnets of the natural logic of human understanding. He completes the process begun by Galileo and seconded by Darwin.
The irony is that he expressed his understanding 250 years before Darwin published his Origin of Species, and around the same time that Galileo published some of his findings. Yet no one has comprehended the implications of his contribution, much less demonstrated how he articulated his philosophy in the Sonnets as the basis for the plays and poems.
It has been easier for orthodoxy to appreciate and assimilate the advance made by a thinker if the contribution is associated with a technical innovation. Galileo and then Darwin and then Shakespeare are associated in lessening degrees with specific aids to discovery.
Galileo would not have confirmed the heliocentricity of the solar system without turning the telescope to the heavens. Darwin would not have demonstrated human descent from the apes through an evolutionary process of inestimable duration without the evidence gathered during his circumnavigation of the globe. But only in very general terms can it be said that Shakespeare benefited from the Gutenberg revolution, or other features of the Renaissance such as the vogue for sonnets. Technical advances simply cannot account for Shakespeare’s precise presentation of the natural logic of humankind in the Sonnets.
As a corollary, because the astronomical revolution of Galileo had few implications for the workings of the mind, orthodoxy has found it easier to accommodate. Although it has been less easy for orthodoxy to accept the full implications of the Darwinian revolution, especially the idea that minds evolve from the potentialities of previous species, generally its basic tenets were not under threat from his mainly empirical arguments. Christian apologetics has assimilated the challenges by accommodating the new sciences into its mythology.
But Shakespeare’s natural logic completely undermines the edifice of apologetics or the philosophical justification of idealistic dogma. Because the Sonnets issue such an uncompromising challenge to orthodox prejudices about the body/mind relationship, no one in the world has yet seen past the orthodox view to appreciate the philosophy of Shakespeare. Humankind has adjusted to Galileo and Darwin but has not yet squared up to the advance prepared for by the Sonnets.
The mythology that developed while the biblical/Platonic model for the structure of universe and life on earth prevailed has not been questioned systematically. When Kant, for instance, claimed to be bringing about a Copernican revolution in philosophy he simply adjusted Christian ideology to the new discoveries without challenging the underlying mythology that was the basis for the old misconceptions. In the Critique of Practical Reason he revealed his apologist agenda when he reintroduced the ideas of God and immortality dismissed in the Critique of Pure Reason. Traditional mythological misconceptions have prevailed to the present day without a comprehensive logical challenge.
The rise in scepticism over the last few hundred years is another symptom of the inability to appreciate the natural logic given expression in the Sonnets. Scepticism has burgeoned, since the Enlightenment, as a response to the critiques of biblical dogmas by Hume, Kant, etc. There was good reason, it seemed, to be sceptical about the possibility of a definitive understanding of the logic of life if the Judeo/Christian attempt could get it so wrong.
On the evidence presented here, Shakespeare wrote a philosophic tract in the Sonnets of 1609 that critiques the contradictions of traditional mythology by identifying the logical basis of the mythic and so avoids the abyss of scepticism. But a combination of the apologetics typical of Kant and scepticism typical of Hume has ensured the Sonnets have remained buried in psychological speculation for 400 years. The Shakespeare who emerges from this appreciation of the Sonnets and plays and poems is not an apologist or a sceptic, however, but a philosopher who writes mythic poetry and plays based in the natural logic of life. He is, even if it sounds somewhat oxymoronic, a believer in life.
In the Sonnets, the primacy of nature, the priority of the female over the male, the priority of increase over the possibility of mind (and hence the idea of God), are basic tenets of Shakespeare’s natural logic that correct the illogical rationalisations of apologetics. The Sonnets are exceptional in that they present the natural logic of the world in consistent argument and demonstrate the consistency by presenting the argument in peerless poetry.
He articulates the logical conditions for the mythic. In 38 plays he demonstrates how to apply the philosophic insights based in natural logic of the Sonnets to create literature at a mythic level of expression. As a consequence his consistent approach provides a critique of the illogical understanding of mythology typified by the heterogeneous writings of the Bible and other mythologies whose male-based dogmas seem driven by the psychology of socio-political prerogatives.
The natural logic of Shakespeare’s Sonnets provides the basis for the constitution of a society free of the worst vagaries and prejudices of religious belief. For instance, the American Constitution, ironically under the influence of a partial reading of Shakespeare by the founding fathers, goes some way toward remedying the inappropriateness of systems of mythological belief as the basis for a socio-political order.
But American society is typical of cultures that are bedeviled in part by the comic relationship between attributing natural disasters to ‘Mother Nature’ and calling the fortuitous survival of individuals a miracle achieved through faith in a male God. The continued public avowals of a faith in a male God in such cultures creates countermanding personal and public values and practices that reveal the disjunctions that occur when a male God is given priority over nature.
The consistency of Shakespeare’s natural philosophy toward both truth and beauty provides a means to immediately assess retrograde beliefs that are contrary to natural justice and morals. Just as Galileo’s astronomy outmoded the retrograde configurations of Ptolemaic astrology, and Darwin’s empirical findings revealed the hubris in enforcing biblical mythology as fact, Shakespeare’s Sonnet logic establishes the basis for consistent mythic expression.
Traditional misinterpretation of Shakespeare’s works, typified by commentators such as Harold Bloom in his The Invention of the Human, is a logical consequence of the contradiction in values inherent in the orthodox beliefs. By contrast, it is only necessary to read a play such as Coriolanus in the light of the Sonnet philosophy to get a sense of its conformity to the principles of natural logic. But Bloom dismisses Martius Caius Coriolanus as a cardboard character and Volumnia, his mother, as one of the more unpleasant hags in Shakespeare.
Bloom reveals his personal preference when uses the psychology of Falstaff and Hamlet as a literary standard to critique the plays throughout his commentaries. Without an insight into Shakespeare’s philosophy Bloom presents a litany of opinions based on little more than personal taste. When Bloom’s pre-eminence as a literary scholar is considered, the disjunction provides a measure of the light distance Shakespeare is ahead of his interpreters. Needless to say, the characteristics criticised by Bloom find their correct value and purpose in the Sonnet philosophy, of which he demonstrates his complete ignorance.
The universal appeal of Shakespeare’s poems and plays is consistent with a Sonnet philosophy that articulates the natural logic of life. The natural logic of the Sonnets avoids the apologetic philosophy typical of the last few millennia. Even contemporary commentary has failed to discover the inherent philosophy of the Sonnets, plays and other poems. Consistent with the ease of characterisation in the plays, the possibility of understanding the philosophy is inherent in every person.Shakespeares could be considered as a great philosophy because his poems has great insights designed to prove the real nature of the universe.
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