The Apologetics of Evil: The Case of Iago (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy): 26 - Hardcover

Raatzsch, Richard; Lob, Ladislaus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691137331 ISBN 13: 9780691137339

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2009

Synopsis

This book is a concise philosophical meditation on Iago and the nature of evil, through the exploration of the enduring puzzle found in Shakespeare's Othello. What drives Iago to orchestrate Othello's downfall? Instead of treating Iago's lack of motive as the play's greatest weakness, The Apologetics of Evil shows how this absence of motive is the play's greatest strength. Richard Raatzsch determines that Iago does not seek a particular end or revenge for a discrete wrong; instead, Iago is governed by a passion for intriguing in itself. Raatzsch explains that this passion is a pathological version of ordinary human behavior and that Iago lacks the ability to acknowledge others; what matters most to him is the difference between himself and the rest of the world. The book opens with a portrait of Iago, and considers the nature and moral significance of the evil that he represents. Raatzsch addresses the boundaries dividing normality and pathology, conceptualizing evil as a pathological form of the good or ordinary. Seen this way, evil is conceptually dependent on the ordinary, and Iago, as a form of moral monster, is a kind of nonbeing. Therefore, his actions might be understood and defended, even if they cannot be justified. In a brief epilogue, Raatzsch argues that literature's presentation of what is monstrous or virtuous can constitute an understanding of these concepts, not merely illustrate them.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Raatzsch holds the chair for practical philosophy at the European Business School in Wiesbaden, Germany.

From the Back Cover

"What is evil? What are its forms? How is it motivated? These are questions of the greatest human significance and Raatzsch's treatment of them is sensitive, imaginative, and broadly based. This book brings together different lines of argument from epistemology, moral philosophy, and philosophy of mind in a highly compact and supercharged, yet fully comprehensible form. The result packs an enormous intellectual punch."--Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge

"This original, deeply felt, clearly written, and well-argued book combines Shakespearean analysis, moral philosophy, psychology, and philosophy of literature--all in a succinct, unified, and impressive way."--Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College

From the Inside Flap

"What is evil? What are its forms? How is it motivated? These are questions of the greatest human significance and Raatzsch's treatment of them is sensitive, imaginative, and broadly based. This book brings together different lines of argument from epistemology, moral philosophy, and philosophy of mind in a highly compact and supercharged, yet fully comprehensible form. The result packs an enormous intellectual punch."--Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge

"This original, deeply felt, clearly written, and well-argued book combines Shakespearean analysis, moral philosophy, psychology, and philosophy of literature--all in a succinct, unified, and impressive way."--Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE APOLOGETICS OF EVIL

THE CASE OF IAGOBy Richard Raatzsch

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2009 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-13733-9

Contents

Introduction..............................................................1Chapter One The Concept of Iago...........................................111.1 The Origin of the Concept.............................................111.2 Acting without a Motive?..............................................141.3 Iago's Mode of Being and the Idea of a Panopticon.....................30Chapter Two Apologia for Iago.............................................772.1 Defense, Justification, and Understanding.............................772.2 Defending Iago........................................................912.3 Why Iago Perishes, and What His Downfall Means........................103Acknowledgments...........................................................109Index.....................................................................111

Chapter One

The Concept of Iago

1.1. The Origin of the Concept

5. At the beginning, it was suggested that the reason why Iago is called "Iago" could be the resemblance between this name and the word "ego." An egoist is said to be a person whose first—or only—thought is always of himself. Thus egoism is, above all, the attitude and the concomitant behavior of a person who believes that he always comes first or that he is the only thing that matters. Others therefore only come second or are irrelevant (even though they have a fundamental importance for the egoist, as will be explained later). Accordingly, Iago might lend his name to an attitude like that of the egoist, but deviating from it in some important points. There is a sense in which Iago is an egoist raised to an absolute level and therefore no longer just an egoist. Exactly what that means is the topic of this study.

6. A few reminders of Othello may bring the picture of Iago—and therefore the concept of Iago—before our eyes in somewhat more vivid outlines.

Iago is the ensign of Othello, a general in the service of the Venetian Republic. Situated in the hierarchy between Iago and his general is the lieutenant Cassio. Othello and Iago are married to Desdemona and Emilia, respectively. Cassio is single but probably has a mistress. Apart from these, only one other character has a sizable role: Roderigo, a Venetian nobleman, who is in love with Desdemona.

In a nutshell, the plot of the play is as follows: Iago hatches a plan, tangentially involving Roderigo, to make Othello jealous of Cassio. The plan succeeds to the extent that Othello orders Iago to murder Cassio. However, when the order is carried out, it is Roderigo who is killed, and Cassio is merely wounded. Othello strangles Desdemona and—once Emilia reveals the truth about Iago's plot—he kills himself. Thereupon, Iago stabs Emilia and is arrested, while Cassio is appointed general in Othello's place.

7. Why, then, is the play called Othello and not Iago (or at least Othello and Iago)? To anticipate my conclusion: Calling the play Iago would contradict what I believe to be its meaning. My own interpretation contends that Iago is a character whose actions cannot be justified but can be defended. The risk involved in this formulation is the ease with which it can be misunderstood—Aside, sotto voce: Iago is a character whose actions cannot be justified; but aloud, to the audience: they can nevertheless be defended. That Iago, or his actions, cannot be justified would seem to go without saying. But can he be defended, all the same? This could easily give the impression that the unexpected part of my analysis, the defense, is the main thing, and the obvious part, the impossibility of justification, is a minor matter. From this impression it is not far to the thesis that the play is really a glorification of Iago, a paean to ruthlessness, a song of praise for inconsiderateness raised to an absolute level. In order really to be considerate, rather than just feigning this virtue, we must be aware that others also have a claim to be considered, and we must acknowledge this claim. This is precisely what is not true of Iago. One might then think that the play is merely a celebration of the active principle in the human species, realized in a single individual who knows no limitations apart from those of natural necessity and destiny. However, since the play is called Othello, this does not appear to be a very promising line of interpretation. Nevertheless, the play makes it rather visible that the connections between Iago and Othello, the two main protagonists, are internal ones—as the relation between the two sides of one and the same coin is an internal relation. The fact that Iago is the dominating figure in a play which is called Othello, or the tension between content and title, if you like, should focus the spectator's, or reader's, attention on the complexity of the moral situation. Therefore, to ask whether the play simply praises or simply condemns ruthlessness is too simple a question. The real moral situation is more complex than these questions allow it to be. That is, there is indeed an element of a praise of ruthlessness in the play; it is, however, not a form of praise that is simply the opposite of a condemnation of ruthlessness. One can see that the questions asked above are too simple by reflecting that the only appropriate answer to them would be that the play is a form of condemning praise, or a praising condemnation, of ruthlessness.

1.2. Acting without a Motive?

8. In section 6 I gave a brief summary of the action of Othello, providing a pattern for an ostensive definition of the concept of Iago. Is anything essential missing in that pattern? Yes and no. Naturally, one thing that is missing is what Othello asks Cassio about, when the complete panorama of Iago's actions is revealed to him:

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil Why he hath thus ensnar'd my soul and body? (5.2.302–3)

What is missing is Iago's motive, the force that drives all his actions, unites them into a whole, and supplies them with a content. The absence of a visible, strong enough motive might easily appear to be an essential or fatal defect, because, as Samuel Johnson says, "nothing is essential to the fable but unity of action." However, why must unity of action presuppose a single, unifying motive? Are not more complex and unusual forms of unity of action dramatically possible?

The unity of action of which Johnson speaks is the unity in the multiplicity of those deeds that constitute the play. The sequence of scenes that make up a play, at least in its old-fashioned forms, is essentially different from the sequence of scenes we see, for example, if we zap from one television program to the next, even if all the channels happen to be showing soap operas, which are all more or less alike. This, too, could create a certain unity and could even be intended to do so, but, as a kind of parody of traditional drama, it shows that the original unity of scenes envisaged by Johnson is of a different kind. This unity of a complex but unified action, mutatis mutandis, also applies internally to the actors involved. Each of them, or at any rate each of the main characters, must have a visibly unified motivational structure.

The complex action that constitutes a play is the result of the combination, opposition, and jumble of characters. In this process the characters themselves reveal a certain unity. In fact, dramatic characters are more than just figures who pop up, looking more or less unchanged and bearing the same name, in several scenes. Rather, it is a certain unity expressed by what these figures do that allows us to call them characters to start with. In establishing this unity for a character such as Iago, the question of motive is of central importance. Even if we can name a motive for each of the many actions of Iago, there still remains the question why he undertakes this set of actions as a whole.

There is a sense in which only a response to this question will allow us to answer our original questions. If a person opens a window in order to lower the temperature in the room, we know why he opens the window; therefore we understand what he is doing. But what if he is trying to lower the temperature in the room because in the cot there is a naked baby who preempts his claim to an inheritance? Would we still want to say with the same straightforward simplicity that we know why he is doing what he is doing as he opens the window, because we know that he wants the room to be as cold as possible? And that he has sent the nanny away in order to prevent her closing the window? And so on.

However, the question what motive really drives Iago is not easy to answer. This is a remarkable fact. Indeed it is even more remarkable than is normally the case when the motives of the actors are unclear, either in a play or in real life. In recognition of the importance of this fact, it is both helpful and necessary to say something more about the play.

9. In Othello itself, we are offered several possible motives for Iago, but we must make a distinction between those that deserve to be taken seriously and those that do not.

We obviously need not take those motives seriously that are attributed to Iago by others in the course of the action before his plans and actions become manifest. These attributions are a result of Iago's dissimulation, which takes two forms: first, he behaves in such a way that the natural trust which others have in him is confirmed or at least is not undermined; second, Iago generates in others a state of trust that is no longer completely natural, but for the production of which he exploits certain other natural attitudes that people commonly have.

This leaves those motives that need to be taken seriously. Three such motives (or two, depending on the manner of counting) are mentioned in the play, all by Iago himself: (1) he hates Othello for passing him over in promoting Cassio; (2) he hates Othello for supposedly cuckolding him; (3) he is greedy for money. But none of these three motives really explains—or unifies—his action(s) as a whole.

It is true that Iago, with his relentless harangue, practically forces Roderigo to "put money in [his] purse," as he tells him to do eleven times in one dialogue. It is also true that he then proceeds to fleece Roderigo, who does not realize what is happening to him until shortly before the end of the play, at which point Iago finds his death so useful that he brings it about himself. (It is astonishing how psychologically easy it is to give this kind of detached analysis of what happens in a play—easy, that is, compared to the difficulties and resistances we experience in analyzing real-life situations.) But this is the only place in the play where possessions and wealth are mentioned, and even here they are not really important to Iago. Therefore greed, or one of its relations, is not the passion that dominates Iago, secretly binding his multifarious actions into one whole and merely revealing itself particularly clearly in some passages. If this strand of the action were to be extracted from Othello and anonymized, no one but an expert would be able to tell which Shakespeare play it came from. If it is nevertheless significant for the unity of the play, it must be so in a different sense.

The idea that Emilia has deceived Iago with Othello is unlikely to be Iago's prime motive, because he is rather indifferent to her in this respect until she threatens to reveal his hidden activities. The fact that Iago finally stabs Emilia has nothing to do with jealousy—but if not jealousy, what stronger motive could he have for this deed? Or if it is a case of hatred because of marital infidelity, why only in relation to Othello, and not also in relation to Emilia? After all, unity of action does not mean only the unity of everything that really happens, but also that a certain kind of thing does happen, unless prevented. If the agent has a unitary set of motives of a certain kind, one would expect these motives to express themselves actively in certain kinds of actions in appropriate circumstances, provided the actions in question were not impeded by clear external obstacles. A self-declared admirer of Goya will cast doubt on his admiration if he does not visit a Goya exhibition that he could easily visit. That part of his life whose unity could aptly be characterized by the title "admirer of Goya" will lose that unity. This could happen not only because something occurs that does not "fit into the picture" but also because something does not occur that "belongs in the picture," if there is no explanation for its absence. As far as any drama is concerned, there is really nothing to prevent something happening that "ought to happen" in the sense in which an admirer of Goya "ought," other things being equal, to go to a Goya exhibition. After all, whatever happens is in the hands of the dramatist. (Since it is in his hands, the dramatist may also make mistakes. The insight into this possibility represents a strong temptation for the interpreter, which it may be as useless to resist as is a firm belief in the sanctity of the text.)

If Iago's hatred is due to the preferment of another, why would this make it necessary for Desdemona, also, to perish? Why Cassio as well? If Iago is able to persuade Roderigo to make an attempt on Cassio's life, why not on that of Othello? After all, Roderigo's supreme goal is to possess Desdemona, who is connected to Othello and not to Cassio. Why do all the others have to be dragged into the affair? And if they have to—for instance because Othello suffers most when Desdemona dies through his own fault—why does Iago show no sign of regret for Desdemona? (In this respect compare Iago and Richard III.) If Iago really believes that he has been passed over unfairly, why does he not even begin to defend his actions by saying so, rather than making his exit without any comment? Even if we granted that Iago hates Othello for passing him over, his hatred would clearly go far beyond what we usually mean by that word; and that would undermine its explanatory power.

Above, I isolated some motives attributed to Iago by other characters before they saw through his actions. Bradley suggests that we should not trust one syllable uttered by Iago either, including what he says about himself and in particular about his motives, for example when he tries to convince Roderigo of his hatred for Othello. But we do not need Bradley's warning to see that even when it comes to motives that might be taken seriously, none that Iago, and Iago alone, puts forward can really carry the play. On the contrary, what we can observe lends substance to Bradley's warning, even though it naturally comes too late to help any of the characters in the play. In sum: it seems that we can only speculate about Iago's motives.

10. Those who feel obliged to speculate, because they miss a consistent, clearly recognizable single motive or a tight bundle of motives in Iago, even though they grant that the play has a kind of unity, are bound to regard the lack of an explicit motive as a weakness. And the assertion that Othello—incidentally the most popular of Shakespeare's plays at all times and particularly in the recent past—is the most unphilosophical of them all could be justified by this. For if the motives are so threadbare, where is the philosophical problem? What is there to think about in ethical terms? What exactly is the morally relevant unity here? (Note that a conflict such as that of Oedipus owes half its existence to the fact that Oedipus has no evil motive. That, too, lends his actions the unity that matters in the play.) How can we say that Iago is a villain if we learn nothing really believable about his motives? Because of the effects of his actions on others? But was the storm that sank the Turkish fleet a villain? And yet we have no doubt whatsoever that Iago is a villain. On the contrary, to this day he has constantly been regarded as an incarnation of evil. But how can that be?

Even if the usual judgments about Othello are plausible, they obviously cannot be the whole truth. Maybe, being half-truths, they even hide the whole truth.

11. Perhaps we should simply say that Iago does what he does, and leave it at that; he wants to do it because he wants to do it; he is simply perverse. The play is as instructive a study as examinations of perversions generally tend to be. They are fascinating, but they do not plunge us into the depth of ethical problems, because the moral weights are too clearly and too artificially distributed. We are simply shown what other things there are in the world besides those that exercise us ethically.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691137331
• ISBN 13: 9780691137339
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128