Academic Joy

I'm reading what has so far proved to be a great book, Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear. The author, Leon Harold Craig, is of a decidedly different generation. He eschews contemporary critical approaches (historicist, postmodern) in favour of a good old reading of the text. His thesis is that Shakespeare was an emminently intelligent philosopher, and that much of his wisdom is contained in his plays. I should note that when Craig uses the word "philosophy" (or "philosophical") he is much less concerned with a particular set of ideas than he is with a particular approach to life, and to the way we think about life. The philosopher for him is someone who likes to think about things, always hoping to understand them better, and who delights in inspiring this sort of approach in others. The other inspiration for this post was that I've realized I have a great deal of work to do a some point, some point after Reed. There is a lot of post-modern thought (I intentionally do not employ the term postmodernism) with which I agree, at least in part. There is also a lot of stuff anathema to post-modern thinking with which I also agree. It is perhaps possible that I've selectively agreed with things in such a way that I am not myself in contradiction. But I have my doubts. At some point, I am going to have to sort this all out. It is an endeavour that excites me greatly, but it make take a while. I have an inkling that there is something of an answer in the buddhist distinction between absolute and relative reality. "Relative" here does not have all the same implications that it would in a post-modernist text. (Again, I employ 'post-modernist' intentionally, this time as a sort of little intellectual jab.) Simply because relative reality is not absolute does not mean it is not to be respected. Indeed, you ignore its constraints at your peril (physically, socially, emotionally,...).

Anyways, back to Lear.