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Philosophy and Shakespeare: Transcendental Spectacles for all seasons from the Cosmopolitan Theatre of Life
“The growing secular/scientific spirit of this century perhaps was beginning to take shape during the Renaissance but certainly reached some kind of zenith with the “new men” of the twentieth century who adopted a scientific spirit of social engineering to the political task of wielding power in the name of “final solutions” to the Jewish problem, the problem of the bourgeoisie and the Japanese problem. With the collapse of the political party system at the end of the 19th century, and the emergence of the masses for whom nothing seemed possible anymore, the promises and rhetoric of these new men must have lifted everybody’s spirit and it was in this toxic environment that the belief in “final solutions” in the spirit of Hegel and Marx appeared on the agendas of tyrants and democratically elected leaders alike (President Truman). The power of technological transformations to transform the physical external aspect of society also accompanied the underlying forces that were taking shape in our societies, strengthening the manic view that man was the master of nature. This was the background to the changes that were occurring in the name of the hidden plan of Kant, in the name of democracy, freedom, and justice. The immediate aftermath of the second world war which was punctuated by the act of dropping enormously powerful atomic bombs on civilian populations in Japan, resulted in the establishment of the Kantian idea of the United Nations whose remit was the establishment of Peace in the world and respect for Human Rights in all member states. This remit has expanded considerably and many internationally valuable projects emerged as a consequence in the name of this Kantian “hidden plan”. Freud was of course not alive to see these developments but he was alive not only to the threat of dictatorships but also to the threats of both the USSR and the US to peace and the project of establishing an international system of Justice.These subsequent positive developments testify to not just the reasonableness of the belief in a hidden plan when discontentment is widespread, but also to the fact that the one hundred thousand years is sufficient time for the achievement of the telos of the plan. There is a reverse side of the oracular proclamation that “everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”, namely, Dictators will die, and even if they return to destroy again they will forever in the future be measured by the standards of peace, human rights and international justice: i.e. their creations will also be subject to ruin and destruction. There can be no more cosmopolitan institution than that of the UN, and this too reminds us not just of Kantian cosmopolitanism but of Shakespearean cosmopolitanism (of the kind we encountered in Venice in both the Merchant of Venice and Othello).”
Philosophy and Shakespeare: Transcendental Spectacles from the Cosmopolitan Theatre of Life