Roger Peters Copyright © 2002
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The four volume set William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy is now available. With the publication, some of the material that has been on the website for the last 3 or so years has been removed.
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Inquiry into the Quaternary Evolution in Shakespearean Thought
Contents
1: Editorial
2: Freud & Jung and the Sonnet philosophy
Editorial
INQUEST 2009, The Inquiry into the Quaternary Evolution in Shakespearian Thought, has been established to promote the philosophy of William Shakespeare as a Quaternary level of achievement and understanding.
Hand in hand with the role of INQUEST 2009 in promoting the philosophy of Shakespeare will be an investigation into the conditions that have led to the inability of scholars and commentators to appreciate the philosophy of Shakespeare in the 400 years since he wrote his Sonnets and plays. INQUEST 2009 will consider both the prevailing paradigm that has foiled such a possibility, and the desperate attempts to alter Shakespeare's works to make them conform to the inadequate paradigm.
INQUEST 2009 establishes a forum for information and investigation about issues arising from the prosecution of its interests and concerns. It will be open to contributions that genuinely enhance Quaternary expectations. It is not intended as a vehicle for Tertiary speculation or apologetics.
INQUEST 2009 recognises and appreciates that Shakespeare's philosophy, articulated precisely in his Sonnets and the basis of all his plays, is a unique achievement. INQUEST 2009 bases its investigation principally on the integrity of the original 1609 edition of Shake-speares Sonnets. As there was only one edition of the Sonnet text published in Shakespeare's lifetime, and as no controversy over its provenance was recorded at the time, short of substantive evidence to the contrary, the Sonnets are presumed to be authorial.
INQUEST 2009 will demonstrate that the Sonnets have been subject to both religious prejudice in their interpretation, and editorial interference by way of emendations to words and punctuation. Unjustifiable claims have been made in Shakespeare's name in the guise of religious beliefs (particularly Neo-Platonism and Christianity) and in the wholesale interference in the integrity of his published texts. The literary crimes addressed involve more than assumptions made in good faith where variant texts have confronted scholarship. They are deliberate actions based in religious conceit and literary pretension perpetrated in Shakespeare's name by editors and academics over the last 400 years.
INQUEST 2009 acknowledges and promotes the right of any person to do whatever they will with the works of Shakespeare if, when they adapt or alter them, they do so in their own name. Shakespeare used the works of others at will and did so persistently throughout his career to forge his own meaning under his own name. He did not, though, modify another's work and claim to be recovering its author's original or intended meaning.
INQUEST 2009 will compare the results of a consistent reading of the 1609 text with the readings proffered in the Sonnet literature. It will show that all interference in the text is motivated by religious or philosophical positions at odds with the inherent philosophy of the Sonnets. As a corollary it will show that the application of the appropriate philosophic understanding makes greater sense of the 1609 ordering and arrangement of the Sonnets than 400 years of failed attempts under an inappropriate paradigm.
The evidence of 400 years of misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Shakespeare's works suggests the current tertiary institutions of learning are constitutionally incapable of appreciating his comprehensive and consistent philosophy. Their role in the education system makes it difficult for them to teach at a level consistent with Shakespeare's philosophy. A Quaternary level of learning will provide information for a post-doctoral, post-professorial, or generally post-Tertiary, level. Tertiary level instruction and achievement will have a relation to the Quaternary that the Secondary level currently has toward the Tertiary. It is envisaged that instruction will involve a period of 3 or so years. Achievement will be recognised on the basis of a complete understanding of Shakespeare's philosophy and the work of thinkers of a proto-Quaternary sensibility.
The Quaternary Institute has given itself until the quattro-centenary celebrations of the publication of the Sonnets in 2009 to establish a basis from which to accomplish its aims. Even this schedule might be unrealistic because of the universal difficulty Shakespeare's works have provided for his readers. The scepticism toward the possibility that he had a systematic philosophy and the belief that his plays could not be based on an understanding more consistent and comprehensive than traditional models is deeply inured in our Tertiary based culture.
The Institute has published a four-volume work, William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy by Roger Peters that will contribute significantly to the aims of INQUEST 2009.
The Institute for the Quaternary Evolution in Shakespearian Thought, is currently based in the countryside near Stratford-on-Patea, Taranaki, New Zealand.
The Inquiry into the Quaternary Evolution in Shakespearean Thought
Number 1 © Jan-Mar 2003
Because no philosopher, scientist, or psychologist, has previously been able to determine the philosophy in Shakespeare's Sonnets, the essays in INQUEST will feature a thinker or compare two or more thinkers who are awry in their attempts to understand Shakespeare and his works. The essays will show that the inability of thinkers to comprehend the natural logic of Shakespeare's philosophy, and their inability to resolve their interpersonal conflicts, were consequences of a dogged adherence to remnants of the traditional biblical/xtian paradigm.
As the primary purpose of INQUEST is to show how Shakespeare's philosophy resolves the misunderstandings of thinkers who were ignorant of the natural logic of the Sonnets, the essays will outline their individual philosophic positions, and then show why they were unable to comprehend Shakespeare's philosophy. While each thinker made major contributions within their specialities, and a vast literature extends their ideas into many other areas, INQUEST considers only their attempts to understand the mythic level at which Shakespeare operates.
Over the next months and years, INQUEST will investigate pairings such as Freud and Jung, Einstein and Bohr, Nietzsche and Hegel, Hume and Kant, who were aware of, or even commented on, the works of Shakespeare, and others such as Descartes and Spinoza, Plato and Aristotle, whose philosophic positions can be related and then compared to Shakespeare's.
Modern psychology
In the late nineteenth century, in response to the psychiatric demand
following the decline of the Judeo/Christian paradigm as a credible worldview,
Freud and then Jung (among others) developed their therapeutic
practices. At a time when faith in the efficacy of traditional religious insights
into psychological predicaments was failing, secular psychology was seeking
recognition as a scientific discipline.
Traditionally, biblical mythology had provided a series of dogmatically prescribed givens in which a male God created the world, where Adam the first male was created prior to the female, where procreation and death were created as the punishment for �sin�, and where the absolute, as the unknowable
�Word�, assumed priority over the dynamic of true and false in language. But,
unfortunately for the unknowable Word, the critique of biblical theology by
Hume and others in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showed the
transcendental �He�or God was no more than a psychological preoccupation
of prophets and evangelists temperamentally at odds with the natural world.
Freud and Jung sought redress for the psychological consequences of the inconsistencies in biblical mythology by turning to archetypal expressions of psychological relations in other mythologies. For instance, Freud used the myth of Oedipus to account for the psychological consequences of
sexual dysfunction, and Jung analysed the world�s mythologies to locate
archetypal symbols that might ease the post-biblical experience of psychological
alienation.
The logic of myth
To discover why Freud and Jung fell out over their division of the mythological
pie, and why neither of them could appreciate the mythic depth of
Shakespeare�s Sonnet philosophy, a different attitude to mythology is required.
It is not sufficient to see the mythic either as a pharmacy for psychological
problems or as a source of cathartic symbols. The mythic level of expression
has the philosophic function of articulating the logic of expression while
expressing the logical relation between humankind and Nature.
Despite the confusion of imaginative and empirical ideas in biblical mythology, biblical prophets and evangelists appreciated, at least intuitively, the logical role of a mythology. Their illogical configuration of the relationship
between Nature at large and human nature unintentionally expresses
the logical limitations of the spoken or written word. Biblical writing
intuitively acknowledges that the mythic logic of human expression is erotic,
or an expression of conscious desires. It correctly represents �God the Word�
as logically erotic and so distinct from the biological or sexual.
Even philosophers as critical of biblical theology as Hume and Kant were not prepared to explore the biological illogicality that arises when biblical myth invents a male God who in turn creates the female from the male. They
remained beholden to the prevailing Judeo/Christian worldview, which
proscribed the possibility of investigating the erotic logic of its mythology
by enshrining the status of the heavenly pantheon in self-validating
commandments and dogmatic infallibility. Biblical mythology maintained
its function as a psychological refuge in a hostile world by forbidding investigation
of its empirical inconsistencies. The long-term effect was to create
even deeper psychopathic problems that required a different approach to the
psychological when the irrationality of belief became untenable.
Freud and Jung, the differences
So Freud and Jung were faced with a double problem. Their patients
manifested the usual psychological pathologies due to inheritance or to
ingrained experience. But they also suffered from the psychological consequences
of the vacuum or abyss following the loss of faith in Judeo/Christian
mythology. Part of the confusion in the writings of Freud and Jung comes
from not appreciating the difference between naturally occurring defects of
mind and the estrangement from a discredited mythology.
Instead, Freud and Jung were responsive to different components of the Judeo/Christian mythology. Freud�s disposition led him to focus primarily on sexual dysfunction and to suggest that neuroses and psychoses were
consequent on sexual issues. Jung�s inclination, while initially beholden to
Freud�s focus, was to see the post-biblical psychological malaise as a failure
to appreciate the archetypal significance of the signs and symbols in mythological
expression. Typically, for instance, when Freud and Jung focused on
dreams, Freud looked for symptoms of sexual significance, and Jung looked
to interpret dream imagery in terms of archetypal symbols.
The failure, then, of biblical theology to survive the philosophical investigations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had its counterpart in the fragmentation of twentieth-century psychology into competing
factions that lacked the relative unity of the more coherent and comprehensive
biblical mythology.
Freud and Jung�s attempts to derive a comprehensive theoretical understanding from their analyses of specific psychological disorders prevented them from developing a consistent philosophy at the level of myth that
would correct the logical deficiencies in the Judeo/Christian paradigm. So,
predictably, they were unable to articulate a coherent mythological level of
understanding and expression to provide their twentieth-century clients with
a consistent philosophic connection at the level of the mythical to the logical
conditions of their lived experience.
Because Freud and Jung�s individual inclinations led them to focus on a limited portion of the full mythical relationship between Nature, sexual beings, and the dynamic of the mind, they were not able to develop an
overview of the logic of the mythic level of understanding. Without a
systematic understanding of the logic of myth within which to locate their
individual interests, they became antagonistic toward each other�s intense
focus on different parts of the old mythologies. Ironically, the sectarian
conflict that typifies Judeo/Christian belief, because of its illogical inversion
of Nature and myth, became a conflict across mythologies for Freud and
Jung because of their inability to determine the logic of myth.
Nothing in the above statements should be less than obvious to anyone who is aware of the collapse of traditional mythologies and the divergence of the interests of Freud and Jung. Freud�s work has been continued and
critiqued by others, with sexual issues remaining central to their practice.
Similarly, Jung and his disciples have collected and investigated the various
mythologies with their associated signs and symbols, in the hope of attaining
a unified theory of mythical expression. But there are no logical insights in
the work of Freud and Jung or their followers that offer a resolution to
biblical inconsistencies, or to their personal differences.
The works of Shakespeare
To unravel the logic behind Freud and Jung�s contributions and disagreements,
a systematic overview at the level of mythic expression is required.
Only when a consistent methodology is applied can their preferences for
the sexual or the symbolic be explained and their similarities and differences
reconciled.
The limitations of Freud and Jung are revealed when their analyses of Shakespeare�s works are compared with the comprehensive mythic philosophy available in his Sonnets. Shakespeare is the only thinker to purposely articulate the logical conditions for any mythology and so is the only thinker
able to provide the required level of mythic logic for a systematic overview.
Freud and Jung�s ignorance of the philosophy of the Sonnets meant they were
unable to comprehend the logic at the heart of Shakespeare�s work and so
were prevented from finding a resolution to their own differences.
It is only necessary to examine Freud and Jung�s attempts to understand the works of Shakespeare to appreciate the inadequacy of approaching the plays and poems with psychological rather than philosophic expectations.
Their psychological analyses of the motivations or disorders of key characters
lack credibility both because they are not able to contextualise the characters
in the logical framework provided by the Sonnet philosophy and because in
the absence of Shakespeare�s overarching logic they commit the fallacy of
attributing to Shakespeare some of the symptoms observed in his characters.
In The Interpretation of Dreams, in the chapter �Material and sources of dreams�,1 Freud applies his theories derived from the myth of Oedipus and other sources to the relationship between Hamlet, his mother, and Ophelia. The irony is that Shakespeare creates such characters to examine the illogical
consequence of believing that mythologies represent the world rather than
an acceptance that the role of myth is to reflect the world by articulating
the logical conditions for understanding. Because Freud�s understanding is
limited by his continued adherence to aspects of the illogical mythical expectations,
he does not appreciate Shakespeare�s philosophic argument for which
the dramatic characters are argument places.
In �The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother�, from The Psychology of the Unconscious,2 Jung looks to Shakespeare�s Julius Caesar to support his theoretical position. His illogical expectations are already signaled, though, in the chapter heading. His premise of male flight from the �Mother� is
contrary to the Sonnet logic where the Master Mistress learns to reconcile
himself to the biological priorities of the Mistress so he can express his
relation to the world logically. While Jung gives attention to the role of the
female in his psychological analyses, he remains a defender of the inconsistencies
of the traditional paradigm by not challenging the priority given to
the male. He expresses his prejudice when he says he prefers the �brightness
of the ideal� to the �dark nature of the biological�.3
...continued in Volume 4, William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy
Roger Peters Copyright © 2002
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