Reading Caesar I (Redux)
July is literally for Julius Caesar
Do you know what time it is? If so, you will not really wonder why our workouts will begin with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, or as the full title indicates, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. It is important to think about why Shakespeare titled the play as he did; why didn’t he title it “The Tragedy of Brutus,” for instance? Caesar dies about halfway through the play, and yet it is still named after him. Moreover, the play begins on the second to last day of Caesar’s life. By choosing this moment for the setting, Shakespeare may be implying that there is something very illuminating about Caesar’s death for his life – just like Socrates, or that other guy with the initials J.C.
[Free readers note: this is where the paywall would have been placed. For this week, however, we wanted you to get a taste of the flavor of what is on offer going forward.]
In beginning with Shakespeare we take up a play, one that asks the questions, ‘what is the good life?’ or, ‘what is the highest form of life?’ While the answers are not explicit, since you have to infer them from their representative characters, you should nevertheless not give up – good things are hard, they are hard but worthwhile.
You might wonder why we are reading a play, a piece of literature, a piece of poetry when we should be working out—is not fiction fanciful and intended for a reader seeking to escape from reality?
First, Shakespeare is considered by many to be the greatest poet to have ever lived – but this simply raises the question as to what makes a poet great. The greatest poet gives the best account of the world; what makes the poet great is an account that is true to life despite being fictitious. Really, if the poet did not speak about the world would we be interested in what he had to say?
Second, while poetry is typically seen as beautiful writing, philosophy is assumed to be dry and boring. On the one hand, you have beauty; on the other hand, you have truth. Which of these two is higher? Which is more praiseworthy? Is it that which moves the passions or that which convinces the mind? Which gives an account of itself and argues why it is highest?
Or, is it even about which is highest, either the poet-philosopher or the philosopher-poet, Shakespeare or Plato? Is not some combination of both needed to teach, especially since our nature, human nature, is both passionate and rational? Is poetry, or rather philosophic poetry perhaps the solution to the political problem of man’s divided nature? If you have read the Republic (if not, we’ll get there eventually), you may recall the city in speech and the noble lie, the necessity of political mythologizing, that is, you saw how creating metaphors and myths can help to educate, to teach, that such things can be more convincing than mere arguments of which we might be skeptical.
To will mention something worth keeping in mind: there are so many books, too many in fact, to read – so our problem is which ones should we read? The greatest book would have to be a book of philosophy because it provides a defense of why it is best, it would justify its existence, it seeks to convince the reader’s reason. Books of religion rely upon faith. Any book that tries to give a rational account thereby concedes the primacy of philosophy. In fact, any book can seek to provide just such an account and thus any book of poetry or history would qualify, provided it is philosophic – Julius Caesar is just such a work of poetry.
Like Plato, Shakespeare wrote all of the parts of the play, and like in life not all of the characters’ judgments are correct. Moreover, how they make their errors is revealing. You need to think through each factor, just like in life; however, the play has one great advantage, it is perfect in a way life can never be, they are radically fictitious, there is a denial of chance, every event is there for a reason. In short, it is because poetry is fictitious, even radically so, that there is a denial of chance – nothing happens by chance in the play, everything is determined by the intention of the author, thus you must ask the question, ‘why did this happen?’ The question is, can you understand why Shakespeare has the character say and do what he did?
You must be careful. What you must try to avoid is reducing Shakespeare’s rich characters down to your friends: your friends are quite likely boring in comparison, and certainly have not and likely will not try to take over the world.
Also, pay attention to the facts of the play, things like the title, the list of characters, the scenes, the weather, the time, timeline, patterns of speech, metaphors, interruptions, unfinished thoughts, the order of the scenes – you should always assume Shakespeare’s choice, no matter how puzzling, makes sense until you can prove that it does not.
An important series of facts in the play are the followers of the various philosophic dogmas: Cassius is an Epicurean (an atomic materialist who takes pleasure to be the only real good), for instance, and although we do not find this out until later, we nevertheless can see him as such in his behavior, for example, in his reaction to the thunderstorm.
To begin with a little bit of history: Julius Caesar was a real, very famous conqueror, who essentially ruled the known world, started the Roman Empire, and the line of Caesars. Octavius (Augustus Caesar) became the first Caesar. Interestingly, it is from the word Caesar that we derive the words Kaiser and Czar. What is important is that a Caesar is supposed to be higher and better than a normal king.
Shakespeare’s information about Caesar comes from Plutarch, so we can see what he changes from the historical account. Thus, we need figure out why he changes what he does. In fact, Caesar in Shakespeare turns out to be very different from Caesar in Plutarch – he is much more aware of what is going on around him.
In the next post we turn to the text of the play. To conclude, however, we simply want to highlight that what a person gets out of an intellectual workout, like its physical counterpart, mostly depends on what a person puts into it. A physical trainer is only there to guide the work, it is up to the person working out to do the work. Part of doing the work is asking questions to clarify and confirm, but also seeking advice on what supplementary exercises one can undertake (i.e., primary or secondary texts one can read). In the case of The Gymnasium the appropriate place for such inquires is the comments. When those come up, we will provide our best answers and advice in a weekly subscriber only post.