Welcome back to New Thinkery. I'm David Barr. With me, as always, is my good friend Alex Brieu. How are you, Alex?
I'm doing well, David. How are you? I'm doing just fine. And Greg, how are you?
Hello. I'm doing fine. It's nice to see you. This is generally a much kinder start to the show that I'm used to.
We insult each other for a few minutes. So I don't know if we've all been into use with grace or something, but something's off in the equilibrium. So we'll see how this show goes. I'm excited for our guests.
I'm a little bit upset. I'm in a bad mood because ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, my family hasn't had access to it. Super got it. Yeah.
Yeah. Lee, you listened to some past episodes. Alex has an interesting background. He's descended very wealthy French financiers.
And also he has an Ayatollah on his person's side of the family. Nice. Yeah. It's my total.
It's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's how he found his way to philosophy. I feel like he had it all up. Yeah. So we have Dr.
Ward on the show. I'm excited, Alex. I think you were too in particular. He has this great book called Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire.
No. Okay. You have the meetings. Yeah.
It's a very good book. I'm forcing a different word. Yeah. We'll have to have his wife, Ann, on that book is awesome.
And we've still few books on Herodotus. It's really her book and Ben or Daddy. So I just wanted to pay your wife a slight compliment. So we have Lee Ward on the show tonight.
Baylor University. His most recent book is Modern Democracy and the Theological Political Problem in Spinoza, Rousseau, and Jefferson. The book of his I recall reading in graduate school was John Locke in Modern Life, which was difficult but very good. So it's nice to have you on Lee.
So be here. Thank you. So Lee, I know that I'm I'm leaving out I think your first book, but do you have anything on the horizon before we start the episode? Yeah.
Thanks for asking. I said the new book just came out last month, fought off the press. It's recovering classical liberal political economy, natural rights and harmony of interests and Edinburgh University Press and it starts with Thomas Hobbs, political economy, Hobbs, Locke, Mandeville, the Scottish Enlightenment, John Stuart Mill, and then finishes up with a discussion of political economy of empire. So if you're interested in classical liberal political economy and Adam Smith and Cumin, all those guys, then this is this might be of interest to you.
We should have you back on talking to me. Yeah, it's a play be excellent. And so today we're talking about loves, labors, lost. Before I'll just give a very, very brief overview of the play.
Do we start with the title of David, you want to talk about what you think of the title? That's an I have an X rated interpretation of the title. We can talk about to it at the end of the show. Is it upon Lee that that's all put you on the spot for?
Yeah, it's upon. Yeah, it's pretty revealing though. I mean, it's going to be, you know, Jack has not his Jill at the end, right? That's right.
So let me give a brief overview and then I have a few quick questions about the mysterious origins of the play. I know that. Well, maybe I'll just ask this first. So Lee, is it true that this is his earliest play or is it just something that scholars suspect?
And is it also true that people can't quite pin down the so-called origin stories of this play? Yeah, well, there's a lot of, I guess, debate about it. I mean, I know this earliest that my understanding is that it would have been composed around 1594. So around this, it's not an extreme.
Oh, God. That's sort of the closest played in the time wise. First, perform, I believe, 1597. So we put it almost in the middle, really, of his plays.
The origin stories, yeah, I mean, the question of Navarre, I mean, I make the case that it's meant to be Henry IV, the King of France, who was recently King of Par, although Navarre is never mentioned in the play. It's in the cast of characters in the quarto, but never actually called him Navarre. So there's, I guess, there's an little bit of ambiguity there. Some of the origin stories, yeah, they differ a little bit.
I mean, I think that there's enough contemporary evidence that everybody in the audience in England would know who the King of Navarre is. And it's the really controversial character in France. He was the Protestant King of France, at least for four years, he was the Protestant King of France. But the machinations of the play though are of Shakespeare's own?
Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. The actual visit of the French princesses, and although the names of the of the Navarre's men, because we got their last names, they are actually people who were advisors to Henry IV. Yeah.
And the French ladies are just the first names, Maria, Catherine, and we don't know who they are. But the men, I think, are actually pretty close to actual advisors. Okay. Okay.
So let me let me just do a 10,000 foot description. So you have the King of Navarre, he has three companions, and they swear off the company of women for three years to study philosophy and fast, which is which is what Alex did during grad school at Tulane in New Orleans. He swore off both women and food. It was really smart.
And so things are going along well for a compressed period of time, but the princess of France and her three ladies and waiting come to the kingdom. The lion and short of it is the king and his three buddies, they decide to break their oath and court these women in a fanciful kind of fanciful manner. The play ends in a bizarre kind of a corrupt way. We hear that the princess's father has died.
And so this presumed wedding between the king and his buddies and the princess and her friends have to be delayed for a year. And there's kind of an overture and promise that if things are satisfactory within a year's time, they'll resume the courtship and perhaps the marriage. I get that sort of rightly. I think so.
I'll go with things in the ending. My reading is maybe a little more pessimistic. It's not clear that there's necessarily going to be a happy ending. You're always talking about that.
No, yeah, yeah, great. And so, yeah, that's great. Last question. How does this play categorize generally?
Yeah, so you read that it's a comedy. It's a fact of some comedic flavor because of the seriousness of what's going on underneath. Yeah, it falls into the category of comedy, although it's a very atypical comedy because usually we end up with happy couples, coupleing that's what happens. Here, we get this kind of suspended potential future courtship and consummation.
But there's no indication that anything's a slam dunk. And in fact, we're left wondering if everybody's really learned anything through the course of the play, though they've learned something, but whether they've really learned the lessons they're supposed to. So it's an unusual play. And also, I think in the background, it's a comedy that deals with pretty heavy subjects.
It deals with, well, it was a king, to start with. So it's a real statesmanship. There's themes of religion in the background, which is something Shakespeare generally avoided dealing with too directly. In this case, I think it's much clearer that what he was talking about, the religious wars in Europe.
So it's an interesting comedy precisely because it's really not typical. Can I ask a quick question, sorry, Alex? Is that right? The beginning also, maybe as a, we'll hear what Alex has asked, but as an incision point into the play begins with some discussion of philosophy, which reminds us of the Tempest.
And it seems in both plays, the philosophic life can be destabilizing or lead one, one astray politically too. So I was just curious about that. Absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, I think the, when we compare the tapas with Love's Labor's Loss, in both cases, we see the philosophic, the contemplative life really taking one away from one's duties. And I think, you know, Prospero doesn't really do a very job being a duke and he doesn't follow his responsibilities and he suffers for it, his family suffers for it. And here I think we got right at the beginning, we have Navarre making his commitments and then he's forgotten, or for some reason, he doesn't realize that this diplomatic mission from France is coming and you've just made a rule that no women can be within a mile of your court. And the French princess is basically going to have to sleep in a tense in your front yard, which is not a great move on his part.
So yeah, we're from the beginning. Philosophy seems to lead you to forget pretty basic responsibilities of government. And I forgot. And then I'll shut up.
I apologize. This injunction, not to couple, it's not simply for the king and his friends, it's kingdom wide. Well, it's the whole court, yeah, the area around the court. I don't know how far it extends, but yeah, it's, so it also includes some of the other minor characters in the play who have also been caught with the country girl, Jack Winetta, who is the love interest of various those minor characters and they're all involved too.
So it's not clear how far it extends, but for the group that formed the academy, it's pretty hardcore. It's not only is it a standing from being with women and it's also about fasting, it's also about sleeping only three hours a night and waking up and doing research and you know, it's just basically various static lifestyle for three years. And if a woman comes in today within a mile of the court, she has to have her tongue cut out, which is sort of a nice punishment as well. So they're not too slow.
Yeah, not the most woman friendly place for sure. Hey, Greg, let's take a minute. So I don't want to talk to our sponsors. All right.
Have you ever wanted to read ancient Greek Latin or biblical Hebrew? Well, yeah, but you know, I already know Greek and I don't really want to just sit down and translate isolated sentences with a dictionary. I really want to sit down and read in that language, you know, with with ease and also enjoyment. It was possible to learn this.
That's what the ancient language institute is teaching people to do. You remember all those friends at the ancient languages? Yeah, of course. Just what they do.
Their classes? No. I don't. Media and finance classes in ancient Greek Latin, biblical Hebrew.
And this term begins in May. Shut the front door. Yeah, they're closing the sign up soon. So you gotta go check it out.
Sorry. I'm going to go to Hellenic unless you bone up on your Greek. I will bone up right now. Yes.
So they have a five online courses. Oh, but I've got a very I'm a very busy skit. Oh, all right. It's very flexible.
Yeah. Okay. So we say you go to the ancient language Institute. Where would I go to find that?
Ancientlanguage.com. Oh, that's good. Go guess your ancient language on and now back to the show. Since we're on before we get into the topics every so and so I want to just talk about the political backdrop.
I want to add a little bit more. So he wants to withdraw for three years, but he has this unfinished financial issue with France. They owe him a bunch of money, possibly some land or he's holding the land in the meantime. Right.
And there's also a real disagreement about whether they even owe money. You know, France claims that paid him. She she shows up already knowing that he's established this injunction recently. So it's almost like she's knowingly disrupting this issue and she seems sort of to find it funny.
And one of the things you bring out in your essay is just how playful she is with their sort of foolish sort of philosophic head in the clouds mentality. And lastly, I don't know if this is really well supported. Maybe you can give me a read on this when her dad dies at the end of the play. A messenger is coming.
She goes, Oh, he's dead. She she's the one who reveals it. So she's she must know that he's sick or something like that, or he's quite old and that this is urgent business on some level. So I was I want to have in the background here, maybe you can touch on this now or a little bit later, the princess has own political machinations because she's not devoid of agency and she seems to have a mission and be far more politically cunning.
Well, that's a take much far politically kind of kick it off. But he certainly seems to be have some kind of mission in mind and to be in control in a certain way. But anyways, I don't know if you have anything to say about me. We should jump to our first topic.
Well, I agree with you. I think there's an interesting question of how much you knew beforehand and what's really there do if I'm saying the same suggestion that the word dowry appears and somehow act with pain is the piece of land he's holding. And he claims that he hasn't received the money from France. France claims that they've given him the money.
And this is the context in the background to is these wars going on in France, which is in the Catholic League and it's all very complicated Machiavellian politics. Although he does say it, no, he does say in a moment of lucidity, maybe he recognizes that the princess is pretty sharp customer. He says, well, let me check my receipts on this. And then the French party say, well, we're waiting for the documents to come, right?
So they're going to be coming in the next wave of people in next week or so. But we don't get, we always don't see the receipt coming. What we do get is the message the king has got, which makes us wonder what's really been happening. Yeah, I suspect maybe one possibility of what's happening here is the king has said his daughter sensing death and thinks maybe a marriage would be a convenient way to resolve the issue.
But let's jump right into it. So there's a kind of philosophic group, as we mentioned in this court. And they're resistant, as you said, they're kind of a static. So they're resistant to all bodily pleasures.
One who's less resistant and kind of elective about this is brown or brown. And he, he's not so sure of this, but he ends up going along with it, sensing that it's not going to last very long. So now, what happens over the course of the play is it moves from a sort of group of philosophers to a group of poets, right? And there's a lot of poetic contrivances, spreading love letters and then just full on sonnets, right, to this disguising, pretending to be a bunch of muscovites, and then finally to actual theatrical performance of play within a play.
So there's, as you get this kind of, as you put it right, a kind of caricature of the Republic's philosopher Kings, you end up getting this, this nod or this grand concession to poetry and the erotic life, which is precisely what's depressed in the Republic. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the, the theme of philosophy of poetry now, please. I should just add to the poetic aspect. This, this play, if you don't like wordplay, just stay away.
I mean, it's right with it. That's a very good example. It is. And then there's a lot of humor that's very 1590s-ish, but maybe we've lost a bit of it now.
So, but one of the ladies in particular are very sharp and that they really torment their, their, their, the men that are courting them and really make them jump through hoops, which is, which is fun to watch and fun to see. Yeah, so poetry philosophy, it starts out as this declaration of the establishment of philosopher King and his core in the Ecosity Academy. So it's very clear. It's going to be a philosophical, though it does have a monkish feel to it.
It's very aesthetic. And the analogy I draw is to the thinkers in Aristophanes highlighting that, that particular aspect of philosophical rationalism, one that has a real kind of contempt or scorn for the needs of the body. And of course, it unravels almost immediately. As soon as the princess arrives, they first of all realize they've made a very impolitic decision because they're leaving an important personage out, you know, sleeping on a tent out in the fields.
And then of course, they realize their love interests too, because all of the, all of the vars courts are, have pre-existing relationships with some of the French ladies and waiting. So they kind of know each other. So it's clearly, there's fertile ground for, you know, future coupling here. And when they do decide that they're going to basically purge themselves, each one of them decides individually.
And then they, it was a reveal scene that they discovered a scene where they all realize that they've all written love letters and poems to their, to their ladies, that they decide to form a band of poets, which in itself is kind of funny because the original impulse to poetry is very private and very erotic. And then again, this instinct to form a community, which was another interesting thing about the, the character of philosophy that is maybe, I think, distinctively, reminds me of Aristophanes, was the kind of communal, sort of, character to philosophy in the academy. The desire for like-minded people to live by these very harsh rules that are kind of monkish, kind of, regulations, and taking a certain pride in how, you know, a sphere they are. And the effect is a kind of sectarianism where the sort of philosophy falls into these little schools that are all kind of, you know, distinct from each other and opposed to each other.
And then they do the same thing when they form a group of poets who are all going to woo their ladies, but it doesn't work that way. You don't, you know, courtship doesn't work as a group, we don't do that ensemble and they don't seem to realize that. It takes a while to figure out. So the whole group is basically exposed to the ladies and the ladies realize that they're being courted by the, the French, the Navries men, who for a reason, it's not entirely clear to me, decide that they want to disguise themselves as a band of sort of muscovite actors, I guess, a troop traveling through.
I think muscovite was meant to be very exotic, the idea was to be from the Caucasus or- Well, yeah, I mean, they were these sort of muscovites. So yeah, I would have been, I think the idea is as far in Europe as they could imagine. The sort of, the desire of Russia at the time, I think would have been Ivan Terrell. That probably would have been, you know, a sense of what Russia was, very different, very exotic.
And of course, they're exposed and the whole group has kind of shown through. But the first thing that strikes us when they do want to woo these French women, they don't write a full self-treatist about it and they don't try to get into a dialectical conversation, they go to poetry almost immediately. So we quick question, why do you suspect that Shakespeare uses stroke of philosophy to begin the play? He could have set in motion the action of the events without the conceit of a philosophic, you know, a promise I was forged, in a philosophic veracity.
Why do you suspect he uses that instrument in the play? Yeah, I think it's an effective trope because we have to ask, why would a ruler withdraw from the ruler withdraw from political life? It has to be something that is in itself intrinsically worthwhile. And the way they describe it, the way the weight of art describes it, the very opening speech of the play is eternal fame, the sense of eternity.
And that somehow just the daily business of being a king of the var is really not that important, really not that interesting, and kind of reminds you again of Plato's Republic where the philosopher's philosophy is dragged back into the cave because by comparisons it's just to sit and so contemplate being is the greatest thing one can do. And although even the var, originally sees it as something for which you will get fame. So it's not just contemplating eternal being, it's also somehow getting a name for this as well. So there's a sense that philosophy ups the game beyond politics to a kind of greatness, so a kind of memorableness that will really get too close to eternal.
So studying eternal things equals eternal memory of you. That seems to be the kind of calculation that equals out. I just want to jump in. I just want to jump in.
I actually have two questions. I'll ask the weird historical question first and then the more substantive question is on this question of philosopher kings. First, you know, as sort of parts of my brain and my remembering correctly, is this the guy maybe you don't know the answer to this, but is this the king that Rousseau talks about in his plan for perpetual peace, the guy that could have possibly set in motion some grand piece and Europe through international relations? Am I misremembering that?
Anyway, anyway, sorry, I don't remember. Yeah, we can cut that if I'm wrong. So I weren't disconnected as far as if I'm right about the guy that Rousseau seemed to imply that this guy could have actually had an executed a pretty good plan for some kind of Confederate peace in Europe. And you're in the event.
So I wonder if that is connected in some way, but the second thing is Alex and we're talking about this ahead of time. And we read your article or your book chapter Shakespeare's Partico Flosser Kings and loves the labor is lost. And it was very good really helping me understand the play because as Alex said, there's a lot of word play. I don't understand.
But one of my questions is, is Shakespeare being another one has to be fair in comedy? But is Shakespeare being fair to the philosopher here? Or is it a kind of a caricature? There were a couple places in your piece here where you indicate maybe he's not being entirely fair?
And that just very simply right? Socrates was not an aesthetic. Despite maybe our appearance, I think that was a popular sort of understanding of him. But I mean, even in a republic, he sort of finally comes around to say, actually, you know, these things in moderation are fine, sex is fine in moderation, honors fine in all these things are fine in moderation, so long as they don't impede your contemplation of the eternal beings or something like this.
And so I just wonder if there's, I mean, I don't know, maybe another way to bring this back around is at the end when they talk about love being the thing that went out to study. So the Socrates is already aware of this. So I'm just wondering what extent Shakespeare is fighting a sort of false image of the philosopher or if he's being something serious. But Greg, what wouldn't would another answer be that he's just demonstrating how the soul sub certain beings philosophy just doesn't quite stick or it sticks in it in the wrong way, rather than a caricature of philosophy.
So a caricature of like there's certain types of aspired of loss if you don't actually have a philosophical soul or something like that. That's right. We'll study being what it's like three days and we see some hot chicks. Okay, can I jump piggyback on that a little bit?
Because I think this connects to the cutting the women's tongue. I wonder what happened prior to this that they needed to go to such an extreme solution, right? And specifically, don't let the women too close. If they get too close, I don't trust their cutter tongue out, she can't speak, right?
So there's a sense that they seem, they're withdrawal from all sort of physical or sensual pleasures is born of a distrust and maybe even a susceptibility to it that's really borne out, right? And so that the cynicism and the woman hatred, I think, kind of go hand in hand, right? Because they see in women, so if there's a susceptible to beauty and the sensual pleasure, they're trying to reject it. Women are the master of manipulators of beauty, right?
They know how to speak in a way and to appear beautiful. And the women are constantly talking about this, right? Even the princess makes jokes about how she's not that good right? So there's this, I think these are all kind of connected, right?
That there's this certain type of person that sees in philosophy a cure for kindness, susceptibility, and this leads them into this kind of caricature aversion. Yeah, I think that sort of brings all the points together. I think that you're right. It's a particular kind of philosophy, like it's an academic philosophy, circa 1590s, that doesn't seem at all like the Socrates we see in the Sonic pilots, who is among the people he's engaged in.
I like that he loves to talk to anybody. I think it's an interesting suggestion Alex that maybe there's some kind of backstory here that this is a kind of penance or a kind of recognition of their own predispositions and therefore they have to have this very rigid kind of regimented place because otherwise the fall, the evidence for that seems to be around because he says that he says, I mean, my gosh, we can't talk a little bit about this, but then he's finally kind of shamed into it for the sake of solidarity with the group. The others, I know it seems to be the most, they seem to be quite oblivious to it. They just seem to think it's a sign of your commitments and that's the attraction.
So there's two interesting exceptions that there's Don, is it a ton of Mando? Yeah, it's there. It turns out two months ago he knocked up Jeckitha, right? And then there's also Hall of Fairness or Hall of Fairness, let me pronounce that.
There's that one line that suggests he's fleeting with his female students. These are the parents, yeah. The male students, he's like, oh, these are wonderful. The female students, they study under me and there's a little bit of a joke there.
So you get a sense that there's a kind of suppressoratism, even to all of the industries just like making Latin jokes constantly and the least sexually stimulating publishers. So that would be an interesting possibility, doesn't remind me of a measure for measure in that sense. It seems to be out of hand and we've got to get back to the sort of family values, but how do we do it without seeming too harsh? Well, in measure for measure, we have to bring in the hard man and he's going to do it so the dude doesn't have to do it himself and change it with himself.
Here, they seem to want to do it themselves, like sending a kind of example, perhaps. Yeah, I mean, that's possible. I mean, the way they describe it themselves at the beginning is in terms of this idea of eternal fame and having some kind of transcendence. Although their motivations do seem a little bit suspect because they do want to be known for it.
And you're right, the princess, 40, knows about this academy. I think it's sort of the word, it's out that Henry is doing this. And I think to a lot of people, these seems like he's kind of lost his marbles or the very least, it's a kind of a stunt. And then I think Shakespeare suggests that it probably is a kind of stunt.
But is it a stunt that reflects their, is it not a reflex, their awareness of their own weaknesses or their bodily desires, perhaps? Although I think it's not evidence to suggest that there is a kind of morbid tendency in these men too, like even when Longerville says, when they say who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, what is the rule for a woman coming within a mile? The chorus is always kind of tongue out. And the who said, who, who, who's, I guess was this?
And Longerville says, I was my idea. They seem to be pretty unselfconscious of how callous and cruel this is. So the more blood, the more gore the harsher it is, the better it is. They do seem to have an attraction towards, or they have a kind of personality that attracts him towards a kind of fanaticism.
I think that's, that's the way I interpret it. The Shakespeare is the, he's associating the desire for philosophy among the Henry in his group reflects an unhealthy kind of fanaticism, which might, if Aristotle is right, have some, doesn't reflect a certain aspect of platonic philosophy. There's a kind of a statisticism in that. But when you put it and project it into 1590s Europe, it comes across as much more, harsh, it's monkish, it's ways ideological, it's more sectarian.
And again, I, I don't want to project too much, but I do think the, the religious wars in Europe are in the background, just Henry is, this could have been the Duke of part of my or something, but, you know, some fictional character. The fact that he picked somebody that would be a character the people that time would be, would know, his audience would know this guy and know that he is the Huguenot King of France. I think it suggests to me that its philosophy in modernity is in some way, likely to capture by very extreme kind of, most theological passions. And then when you combine these two things, it's just, you see it in Prospero's Soul also with some of how he treats Ariel in the tyranny.
What were we going to say Greg, sorry? That's okay. I mean, this seemed like a good segue to the, one of the next topics that we'd hope to discuss, but I guess I wondered if, I sort of been suspicious that this is an accurate picture philosophy as I mentioned a while ago, but I did wonder based on your remarks, you know, they're, they're really interested in violence. They have no problem with these things.
And yet they're deeply Christian. So I wondered, maybe this is a good way to transition to the question of religion and politics in this play, but a small bit is, is this somehow scholasticism that's being critiqued and not necessary for a lot, necessarily philosophy per se? Because they're at the very beginning of the play, even, their turn to philosophy is still deeply religious, but then, but then religion permeates the play in other ways, as you said. So I guess what are the overtones?
What are the religious or Christian overtones that sort of look behind the scenes in the play? I guess you already alluded to the worst. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's one of the things that's a good, a good entry to that question.
The way they describe philosophy and the academy and the kind of moral requirements of it, they never actually explain why this is, you have to have such a serious condition. I think Barone, do I take it to be kind of the voice of poetry amongst these, you know, would be philosophers, they never really get the good explanation for why this has to happen. It just seems to be a certain idea of a very kind of, you have to be all in and committed. And I think at a certain, noetic level, scholasticism was open to a similar charge that it required you to just abandon common sense and abandon empirical evidence and just accept the basic premises and then you're caught in these topologies, but as long as we're all committed to them, you know, we can make it work kind of thing.
And maybe there's a sense of philosophy as, as both subjects were at least vulnerable to a kind of religious fanaticism, which I don't think we see in the original time version, but also a much more. Well, Alex, Alex and I've actually argued about this before. I actually do think you do see the roots of this religious fanaticism in Plato, which I don't think you see it as anything to the same degree. And I think, I mean, to be fair, I think the Plato is critical of that.
But I think he's aware that his own philosophy could be, could go in the, the, the, the forms, the ideas, the beings, the symposium, the latter law, right? It's sort of, it lends itself to, I mean, it lends itself, I think, to what became played in this, which was a kind of strange religious thing. Well, the Fido would be the play. Yeah, the Fido, yeah, for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a perversion. I mean, you also have Plato also concedes that Socrates throughout himself with some of these nachobs that became a little bit religiously fanatic, right?
Apollodoriously, he was crying in these guys, he was sedemists who came who are not religious, but still kind of weirdo, extremely sad, if he did surround himself with these types of things. Yeah. I mean, look at the, the more dogmatic or metaphysical kind of platonism, he does lend itself to that. And I mean, I think the more authentic, or I think the truest form of the Socratic philosophy is the dialectic.
And I just don't think you're getting, I don't think that's what inspires these guys. It's just the questioning of things. And what is virtue? Tell me what do you think?
It seems to be this desire for transcendence. That's what I get from that opening speeches. They want to transcend. And there's something great in that, but something dangerous in that too.
There's even an aspect, I mean, you talk about eternity, but there is a kind of desire for glory, right? So, which is just goes to show you how there's otherworldly longing that they have or transcendent longing is not, it's not really that transcendent, right? It's very much, you know, other regarding in respect to this world, thinking about Navarre as having a sort of, sort of a great place, right? They'd be world-run out.
Yeah, it's like putting no on the map, right? It's going to be this place that's going to be like Athens was. Yeah, so now another, another, maybe this is another way to sort of explore this religion versus philosophy or this confusion that's going on with the court. Another thing you talked about in your essay was the basis of oaths or of contracts.
They make this oath to one another, which is to sit around philosophizing, which it would seem could only have a basis in a sort of intrinsic love of the good and recognition of what's good. But at the same time, it's so obviously animated by other concerns, right? This sort of anti-essentiality, anti-body, anti-female, anti-arose, all these sort of physical aspects. So it seems like the contracts are bound to break down because they're so obviously confused about what their good is.
So yeah, maybe talk about that. And then I was very interested because this is such a big theme throughout the play is the relationship between this contract, the need for a sort of basis, which points to religion on the one hand. And then this kind of this other theme of erotic transgression where they catch each other one after another. And finally, they give in though somewhat, who grudgingly is their own sort of poetic tendencies.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's the issue of oaths and promises is crucial. I mean, the first thing that strikes me is the commitment to philosophy. I can't think of anything that's in some ways less, less, less, less identified with vows.
You don't make a vow. It's not pretty something vows to philosophize. It's the passion to do it. You can't live any other way, right?
It's the unexamined life's not worth living. They have to sort of compel themselves to a vow, this external kind of principle of discipline to make them do it. So right off the bat, you know, they're not really philosophers. You have to make a vow.
But you do make vows in religion. You do make vows in marriage. And you do make vows in all kinds of relationships that are central to political life and the community. I think in a way, Shakespeare is examining the question of contract, even though he doesn't call it that.
But I think we do have some notion of contract theory beginning to take root in this period, among Huguenot, again, Huguenot is the French Protestant resistance theory. The idea of covenant theory, you see an notion of contract in Richard Hooker. And then, of course, the judge of scholastics around this time, as far as the Bellarmine are also thinking of society in terms of contracts. Of course, fast forward, a couple generations, your pops and lock.
And you contract as the dominant motif to explain political society. I think in a way, Shakespeare is anticipating where the idea of contract is going, where that motif is going. And I think he's critiquing it. I get the sense that Shakespeare recognizes that there is some value in talking about contracts, because when the characters and the never-he's men perch of themselves, they're aware that they've done something wrong.
And in fact, they're aware of their own contradictions. They're, you know, how are we going to woo these ladies if they see that we've already broken our rap? You know, we're not reliable people. How do we get out of this mess?
And that's when the term, the poetry, I think, is a rejection of that more contractual approach. But it seems that Shakespeare is appealing to something that's a richer idea of what whole society is going to something that can't be reduced to a contract. So you can't think romantic love can't be reduced to contract. Family can't be reduced to contract.
The kinds of effective bonds that people have in the forms of society can't be reduced to contract. So that risk of sounding a little bit outlandish. I think Shakespeare is critiquing an earlier version of the contract theory that is going to become really important in the decades to come. And even for that alone, I think it's an interesting kind of reflection on politics and political community that, you know, contract has its place, but it's a really limited concept in terms of capturing the whole kind of complex array of relationships that make life.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you put it because you have the contract among the courtiers, right, deciding to study philosophy. But in a way, the central contract that motivates the whole action of the play is the contract between friends and of our right, a contract that the word you use, which I was hesitant to use myself, it seems right to me Machiavellian sort of machinations of the princess, right, versus the sort of platonic sort of play, you know, such as that, or scholastic other world, you know, transcendence of this, this court. But what gets in the way of the contract, ultimately, is the love of a daughter for her father, right? And what would have won the contract had that not happened is love and poetic sort of courting, right?
So there's this suggestion that even as she's there for this very mercenary purpose, right, and somewhat manipulative, there are these deeper longings even to her as there are to him. And there's a suggestion that what would really make the political situation resolve would be that sort of bond that goes beyond just the shape of hand, right? A kind of courtship, yeah, again, to know each other. I think you're right.
I think the princess knows a lot more than she lets on because at one point, when she's preparing to for the deer hunt, she's preparing to stop the deer, she looks out and says, well, it's right, the king, right, and so it may or not be the king, but clearly the king's on her mind. She's just thinking about him, and he's certainly thinking about her. And yet there's something that's obstructing this, what would be a more natural courtship that they seem to be compatible, they seem to be interested in each other, freely, politically, it'd be really good for both parties to sort of resolve these, just to feed over the decks, and it would definitely be proven of our situation. And what is it that gets in the way?
In the one sense, there's that stupid oath they made at the very beginning, that they're committed to, so now he has to verge himself in order to even have a normal conversation with her. And then we have the death of the king, which again, his response to it is not the greatest. His first response when he discovers that the princess's father's died, he says, well, that's sort of bad news, but we're not going to let back in the way of our courtship. And she's like, well, actually it is, totally is.
We don't make, you know, now and for eternity decisions at moments like this. So there's that kind of just Henry shows a certain lack of basic human empathy and just sensitivity to the other person. And it's not these hopeless. I think Shakespeare gives us enough to think that, you know, Henry in his manner, you know, redeemable, but the great speech we get from Barone, I think you refer to that's called the Promethean fire speech.
And he says, you know, ultimately, you learn more in the eyes of a beautiful that you love than you do from all the books you ever read. And what you see there is you see yourself and you learn about yourself. And he has this beautiful line that's something like, I want to get it right, learning is about an adjunct to our stuff. There's something outside of ourselves, in which we learn.
So in the eyes of the other, we really see both access to ourselves and to be it. So it's not a form that we're contemplating in this very detached speculative way, but to have an intense personal relationship with somebody who loves is that's really knowledge. And I think he knows that and all in every snow that, but it's a frustrated and a frustrating comedy because it's not resolved at the end. It's not clear to me that's resolved.
And Shakespeare, I think gives us enough to know enough sense that comedy doesn't always win. And there's a comedy that's aware of its own limitations. And that I think makes love, like, was that kind of, again, another interesting kind of, is that a different kind of comedy? Real quick, it sounds to me like you were saying what the main point or the main teaching of this play is that the path to wisdom is somehow in romantic love and our attempt to sort of understand the beautiful and maybe helps us understand ourselves.
But I guess one is, was that correct? Is that actually not actually correct about the world, which is fine to answer that? Is that what Shakespeare is saying? But then just a quick, you know, what doesn't the title, would the title call that into question at all?
Or am I just thinking about this in the wrong way that actually the labor of love would not be lost? That it maybe leads us to this greater understanding of human affairs? In other words, I guess what I'm asking is the title, I was persuaded by what you just said, but then I thought, well, the title seems to maybe call that into some question or am I mis-understanding? So I think you're right that the play is sort of is the point of the play that it's kind of critique of philosophy as the path to self-understanding and that poetry or even sort of, I don't know, love is the path to self-understanding.
Okay. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that Shakespeare, again, it's not me, I'm not editorializing, but because I think what Shakespeare seems to be saying is that love and pleasure are indicative of these are things that lead us to real understand, real transcendence, instead of a monkish kind of unclavable philosophers where you can't possibly have children and you get into it that way, you know, you get it through love and the products of love and children and poetry too. Poetry itself seems to be able to capture eternal questions in a way.
But I think you're right, why doesn't it result at the end? Why isn't love's labor's gained? And something about poetry seems to be aware of the limits without it necessarily being tragic and without it necessarily saying, well, if I can't know everything, I can't know anything, which is admittedly, that is also a caricature of philosophy. But there's a kind of logic to the philosophic light, just I can't know that I can't know anything.
Poetry tells it is more moderate. We do have to accept limits to things, but we can still enjoy and we can know when we can, and we can, you know, transcend in that way. But it's, yeah, ultimately, it's, let me mess here. The philosophy wants to be.
Very cool. I think it's a shame, along this topic, I want to read a few lines. I think it's a shame if we have episode of Shakespeare, we don't read any of it. I think there's some beautiful lines of this.
But this is from Act 4, C3, and this is Barone's Great Speech. I think it's the Prometheus speech, right? Well, maybe I've got to confuse. But he says he has the statement about the relationship between love of the beautiful and knowledge and a kind of perceptiveness that comes from.
He says love first, learning in a lady's eyes lives not alone in the earth, but with the motion of all elements courses as swift as thought in every power and gives to every power, a double power above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye, a lover's eyes will gaze on the eagle blind. Love that line. But this idea that love, which you first learned in a lady's eyes, it might not be the ultimate application of it, has a kind of heightening ability, right?
Or sort of, well, one, it'll make you more capable and two, also, it's a crazy thing, right? For the beloved, but also it has this kind of perceptive relation. There's this other line that the princess utters where she says, where fair is not praise cannot mend the brow saying, look, poetry can only make things so beautiful. There is, so I wonder whether there's a subtle suggestion here that you love beauty.
It has a heightened perceptual effect that that perceptual effect might also expose the limits of the beautiful image. And that to that extent, that would be like losing the labor of love, right? Love has this heightening, but then it can sometimes out of its perceptiveness and it's sort of all sort of consuming love and love of the beautiful thing as a whole, you can start to notice all the flaws and defects as a result in your obsession, your attraction, maybe that's another way in which loves labor, maybe lost. That's great.
Yeah, I think that sounds great. I mean, one of the things we see in the play, and this is, I guess, a kind of common trope in Shakespeare's comics, is lovers sort of misjudging and mistaking each other for other people. And we have in this play, when the ladies know the musk of bikes are coming, really, they're lovers. They switch favors, so they wind up giving undying promises of love to the wrong women.
And of course, then they torment them for doing that. And there's this sense that love is so powerful, that it's so overwhelming, it's so hypercharges the senses that it can also be almost a force of nature in some respects. It has repercussions, we get control, and we become almost pawns in the hands of these greater forces. And yes, I think that's right.
I think there's definitely the sense that love is never going to be methodical. It's not going to have the romance, it's not going to have that same kind of clear resolution that we expect from a syllogism or from a really good dialectical examination, we're always going to be left with those questions. But even just in the passage you read a moment ago, I can read just a little bit further down. This is again in Acts 14, 3, a little bit further down from Alex, a moment ago, from women's eyes, this doctrine I derived, the sparkle is still the right for me, the fire, they are the books, the art, the academies, the show contained and nourish all the world.
So that even if love is romantic love is incomplete, it's at the very least, add something that our scholarly pursuits don't satisfy, and maybe even correct some of the tendencies. I mean, from me, the fire, from Prometheus is a god, but it was a god who gave knowledge to humans, here he's saying just a mortal woman that you love, gives you that same gift that Prometheus gave to humanity. So there's something bumbling about it, but also kind of great, because it's accessible in a way to all of the things, or capable of being in love and hopefully being loved to. Great.
I feel like we've covered the last topic which was we were going to talk about romantic love and Shakespeare's political education, or maybe you want to add something on that. That's beautiful. I think that's a great note to end our discussion of the text, I don't know what you want to. No, I think it's one thing I'll say about this play again, this is sort of a topic, because I think it's a really interesting play, is that we get the line from Barone who says, you know, Jack hath not his joke.
This was the post-and-differently, but I did. Right. I'm the death of the King of France, and some of the machinations that went on, maybe things extended it too long, and it just, life has that kind of contingency to it as well, and that's part of the mix. And maybe philosophy doesn't do such a great job explaining it, but poetry kind of does.
Is this the least comical ending of Shakespeare's comedies? Is that fair? Is that like, it doesn't end with everyone pairing off and getting married? It doesn't end on a happy note.
There's the potential that maybe they'll get married in a year, but I think you're suggesting that actually it's postponed indefinitely. It's pretty good. In which case, this would be similar to a good point, but this would be similar to Aristophanes clouds, which also ends on a sort of dark note for a comedy. I think so.
Yeah, I mean, I think the King is, his penance basically, he has to spend a year in a hermitage. So in a way, he's condemned to isolation. Barone, I mean, it's maybe a little harsh on him, but he has to spend a year in hospital with people who are ill and dying, and has to make them laugh, and he says, how can I do that? And Rosalind says, well, that's basically your penance for your rudeness.
You have a sharp tone. So yeah, we're left with the feeling that it hasn't resolved well. And in fact, Barone has a wonderful line, right? At the end where it shows into limits of the the the dramatic device too, because Barone says we have a year, right?
So we have a year to do this kind of this task. And he says, a year is too long for play. It's like, he's saying it's breaks, he almost breaks the the the the fans are so that the Oxford, he says, why we're gonna play here, we can't do this. So it's wonderful reflection Shakespeare on his own thing.
David, you had a play in mind that ends on a dark note, another comedy? No, but there are other comedies that aren't so funny. Also, I mean, this is a measure for measures still considered a comedy. They're very dark aspects.
Jude, Romeo and Juliet. Yes, that's a tragedy. Yeah. It's a comedy.
Oh, very true. Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah.
Really quick. Sorry. I'll say this is a play just rife with work. Like, was there one particular one that stuck out that you really liked, just one little pun or?
Well, yeah, it was a couple that have to keep it cubed in this appears a couple of times. And there's one just because it mainly kind of confirms my theory, but the origin story, where the princess says from St. Denis, St. Denis, St.
Cupid and St. Denis was the town where Henry of Navarre and Jared Calvinism and became a Catholic to famously said Paris is worth a mass. So I thought it was a kind of clever work. Like, it sounded like St.
Denis is just the picture of St. Francis, but he's actually there's more to within that. Pretty cool. And we really quick before we turn to your origin story.
Are you I got the very end. Are you pessimistic or optimistic that they reunited love after a year's time? I guess my original feeling was I was a little pessimistic because I thought the ladies had actually misjudged things too. I'm not sure they've been fully educated as well because my immerseal thought was that the punishments that they imposed on the men were ones that they were already on for clipping to anyway.
So it's kind of a scatacism and sort of fanatical austerity. I would have liked to have seen them give them much more sociable, gentler punishments and they would have broken them out of their mold a bit better than they did. So I was a little suspicious. Although I have our conversation tonight, I'm a little more optimistic actually, but maybe in fact, everyone has learned something and there's a recognition that they just need to have a kind of a breathing space to absorb the power of love.
And it's the princess that line, you don't make forever any eternity decisions at moments like this. You take a little more time to think about it. But I would suggest there's some really strong passions there. So you guys just want to be over.
Maybe it's a more optimistic than I was. I mean, one thought is that they've been subordinating all these desires for what they're still living in aesthetic lifestyle, but now they have a real reason, right? Like to actually win love. And you also mentioned right how they're sort of rudeness and their ruse has really put a sort of bad taste in the women's mouth.
So you can guess that they would like some kind of grand sign. And even with Barone, there's no guarantee, right, that he's going together at the edge. She's sort of like, yeah, we'll see. I mean, she's really standoffish.
So she wants a grand gesture with little promise and he'll still do it if there's going to be any hope of reciprocation. Right. Yeah, I like that's very, you know, this is great. I don't know.
Yeah, for the bio. Okay. So we before we get to the Craig's questions, I'm curious about your origin story. Are you a son of Canada?
And so just your journey to ongoing philosophic life. And in particular, teachers who have impacted you on the journey and any contemporaries or classmates, who were always in how you were first charmed by the great books. Well, I mean, I could pinpoint exactly that was University of Toronto undergraduate. And I took intro to political theory, I was interested in history and politics, political science, not really theory.
And it was intro to political theory class by Thomas Pangal. And I just loved it. We were a year long force. So we did the public, we did the science and we just, it was such a wonderful class.
And from that point on, I took every class I could, I was first Pangal. And I started thinking about political philosophy instead of, so I stopped thinking about, you know, you know, NATO and things like that. So I think about Plato and that was my original kind of interest. And then we had a play to the leeward story.
It is speaking a word play. Yeah. And then it was in then he said, okay, graduate school. And my wife, of course, as we already know, is the is the talents of political theorists of her own life.
Her and I decided basically when we got married, at the same time, was going to grad school. So we started our master's together. We had a wonderful teachers at Brock University. You met you met Anne at a Toronto.
Cool. Oh, that's awesome. As weird as this sounds actually, we've known each other since the third grade. We went to the same elementary school, met up again, we weren't they, but we met up again at university and infaspangels last actually.
Oh, that would be a great story if she said what you had. All these people are amazing. I agree. That's incredible.
Yeah. Yeah. And we went to so we went to Brock University and wonderful teacher, Professor William Mathie, great teacher and Leah Bradshaw. I was there as well, another great teacher.
And from there, we went to Fortum University to our PhD. And Dr. Mary Nichols, who was just a fantastic scholar, a wonderful human being. Michael Davis, he was one of our teachers as well.
He taught us their own Lawrence, but he always had our super adjunct in Fortum. So we had him in our class teaching us every, I think every semester I took a class with Michael Davis and I could, Michael's look at it as well. He was at Fortum at that time. It was just, we have this wonderful collection of people there.
People don't talk about that that much. You know, there's people talking about, you know, stressing, you know, the BC and Chicago and E.T. Austin, but Fortum seems like it was between the zooker, it's the nickels and Michael Davis was teaching there. And I think also at the new school as well.
But wasn't better, Daddy, doing intensive Greek at Fortum also? Yeah, he did in summer, but that was the thing, one of the nice things before him too, was we would go down to the audipenade classes as well. And in fact, and my wife took his role as one of his daughter's classes at NYU. And I remember sitting in on the Tameus class at the new school, and that was such a great bonus to just live in New York at that time.
And it's fine because Michael Davis was our teacher and he would sit in on separate classes as well. So it was fun. You can see the kind of the generations all in the same room. Yeah, so that was a wonderful experience.
Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. Thank you.
Okay. Okay, Greg. We'll finish the bio. Okay, now we come to the fun part of the show.
We have a, we like all lightning round here. Many of our peers and political philosophy around the country. I think that lightning comes in the jar of molasses. So they think that it's very slow.
So feel free to answer your speakers. Like, obviously, good point. We got an nimble word here. You're also welcome to pass, of course, questions too deeply personal or whatever.
So feel free. We always had stuff out. So all right, first question, favorite philosopher? No, no, no, favorite philosopher.
The one, the favorite philosopher was the one I'm into at the moment. And I've been with Locke for a long time, a lot of Locke and a lot of us go back to it. So right now, it's been time to us through Mill. Right now, I'm sort of moving into the Germans.
So I just love it. I'm just, okay, I'll take, it's like the, you know, the skittles. They all take straight to me. Yeah, I can't, it's going to be the one you love, love the one you're with.
Like favorite work of philosophy. I feel right now the answer. Wow, that's a good question. I mean, in terms of one book that I would read over again, I live the Republic, but also the meal, I think, I'll be teaching a meal again in the fall.
And I always learned something new. But if anybody have a book, a book like commentary on the meal yet. I mean, Bloom hasn't, that's a really nice answer. Yeah, yeah, I told him.
I just thought by now somebody would have had just not a meal. No, not at all. There are some dissertations out there that nobody's published. All right, how about a favorite work of literature?
I have to tell you what I think. Yeah, yeah, maybe not a kind of a work piece. I really want to be a fellow. I thought I was a professor.
Okay, I like Richard and Larry J. myself. I like those Fs together. I think we're heading nicknames.
My ancestors are Irish and Irish always use word boy to people with almost like an H. So, Lee boy was a kid. I was a little boy. So, Danny boy, Lee boy, Billy boy, Danny boy, if you're Irish, you get a boy in your name.
I like that. Yeah, cool. What was your first car, Danny, Lee boy? That I owned?
Not sure drove whatever. My mom had a car to even think that they had this car America was in Canada. It was called Pontiac Firefly. It was a three cylinder engine.
It was basically a go car essentially. Yeah, I drove it into the ground. So that was my first car to Pontiac Firefly. I'm at the Google Image Search site.
I don't know another car. Yeah, Firefly. Oh, I know this car. Yeah, yeah.
This is popular, I think with the gangsters in Los Angeles now, but it's like lowrider. It was a similar brand or a Ford Fiesta. It's kind of like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Totally. Very good. It was your first job. My first job?
Well, I guess I was a really bad maintenance man. I just changed light bulbs. I was working in some of the office towers in Toronto. Anything that required more than changing a light bulb, you've had to call in a professional, but I can do that at least.
Very good. All right, you're Canadian. So we'll have maybe a throw us for a lubier, best politician in your lifetime. Wow.
Well, it doesn't mean, well, that's a good question. Pardon me? Justin? Well, you know, I don't underestimate him.
He's actually his father. I'm not a member of his father. His father was a pretty formidable customer, pretty weighty intellectual, but Justin is not weighty intellectual, but his political instincts are pretty sharp. He's pretty kind of the closest parallel I can think of between Justin Trudeau and American politician Bill Clinton, who I thought was also a skillful politician, whether he's a foreigner or not, nobody had to teach him how to tell the politician.
Justin Trudeau's father's peers who don't. Or for now, I don't know. Oh, geez. Well, the joke was he got his mother's brain and his father's looks.
I only like one of my favorite comic strips going up was Dune's theory. So I always heard that you're the last name through that comic. Gary Trudeau. Yeah.
I guess they're related. No, really? What do you think you would have done had you not become a professor? I don't know what I would have liked it.
If I second chance, we cannot do that. You can't write. I think it would have been something to do with biology. It's become an expert on something in a natural science, like bats or frogs or something.
I just the idea of taking that one small part of nature and just being on that. I think that's awesome. I would love to be the world's expert on frogs or something. That would be awesome.
That would be cool. You can still do it Lee with Aristotle's regard. Yeah. That's true.