Why? Macbeth? Be defined as a tragedy

While studying Macbeth's immortal literary career, the author repeatedly thought of the famous propositions as the soul of Spinoza's philosophy: Quideumamat, Conari Nonpotest, Utdeus Ipsum Contraame 1. In the most fundamental sense, the intention of this paper is to prove Spinoza's philosophical proposition with Shakespeare's tragic career of Macbeth.

To study Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth is to study tyranny, especially tyranny shrouded in obscure haze. God exercised divine tyranny over Macbeth, while Macbeth exercised political tyranny in his sentimental palace. The spirit of tyranny-fear-pervades God's world and the world.

A story told by a fool

Macbeth's opening is classic, because it begins with a rough plot of a non-human or a witch (1. 1). Witches give us an ugly, dirty, abnormal and gloomy feeling. They claim to be the history of God's will. However, we can't prove their sacred identity, maybe they are fake; But perhaps, it was a subtle hint when God's will came to this world; Even, we may say that the appearance of witches is just Shakespeare's "deus ex machina" (mechanical deification), which is used to imply that there is no god in this world. -Macbeth's opening is the roughest opening of all Shakespeare's plays, but we have to admire Shakespeare's meticulous setting. An inhuman or supernatural opening is followed by a natural or human opening: the bugle of the army implies war (1.2). Non-human opening is dominated by lightning, while human opening is dominated by war. The former is the most violent turmoil in the sky, and the latter is the most violent turmoil in the world. The turmoil in the sky and the "holy parliament" composed of three witches were placed before or above the turmoil in this world by the poet Shakespeare. In this way, the inhuman opening can be regarded as a "preface", as a "text" to guide or inspire the human stories that happened in this world. This is equivalent to saying that the story of human beings can't start on their own. Only with the "first push" from another world can the story of mankind begin. -"God created man, blew anger into his nostrils, and he became a living soul. 4 "The human world seems to belong to only a minor field, and it only comes from the result of some primary reason. It only provides material factors, and the "formal reason" or "primary reason" of its existence needs to be found outside it. In the first scene of the first act, the poet Shakespeare seems to imply human defects and subsequent dependence on God by setting up the sacred parliament of witches and the information from the "first cause", no matter how rough. This sort of world and God's order seems to put people in an extremely lofty position, because people come from God's creation, but at the same time, this sort also highlights people's weaknesses, because people are only creatures in God's hands after all. This arrangement between God and the world is perhaps the most in line with the tragic spirit. Therefore, the inhuman opening of this tragedy is not only a dramatic preface to the story of mankind, but also a "theological preface" painstakingly constructed by Shakespeare, which will derive the meaning of the world and make human life and actions in this world understandable; In other words, without this Preface to Theology, the world would fall into a boring nothingness. Witches' initial confusion of "fairness" and "filth" or "beauty" and "ugliness" seems to imply another possibility, a possibility that the world is mixed with meaning and nothingness (1.11). Because, if we want to explore the meaning of the world under the illumination of the first cause and in the material cause field of the second cause, we must first get the meaning of the first cause, but can people created in the field of the second cause find the entrance of the first cause, get its meaning and bring it back to the material world? Isn't the "first cause" closed to the outside world? Isn't the significance of the world to wash away the "first cause" that often confuses "clarity" and "filth" from the world? These problems make both Macbeth and Robinson deeply immersed in the maze, however, the results of their exploration are different.

Then let's look at the second scene-the opening of people. The dialogue between King Duncan and Xin Shi, who returned from the battlefield, occupied a vast space in the second scene, and the theme of the dialogue was the praise of Macbeth. At this point, Macbeth is on the battlefield. This means that Macbeth is only praised as a warrior who killed the enemy for his country. King Duncan sits in the city, and he is undoubtedly the personality representative of the city-state political body. The basic order of the polis consists of friendship, love and peace.

The peaceful and orderly life order of the city-state regime was established by "ordinary people". "Ordinary people" usually maintain ordinary humanity (to philanthropos), that is, they love their neighbors, which leads to the city-state ethics of "Philanthropos" 7. This is a collective passion owned by ordinary people, which nourishes "humanity" different from divinity and animality. It regards the maverick "Cook Lopez" as an ordinary person to maintain the city-state on the plain: the quality of the city-state is destined to be ordinary or medium. Ordinary moderation, this is the essence of "human nature".

War is the premise of samurai. The security order of the polis requires some supernormal members to leave the ordinary or peaceful life of the polis and participate in the war. War can be said to be an extension of the ordinary city-state order to the unconventional direction, and an extension from "inside the city" to "outside the city": wars all occur outside the city. Therefore, the virtue of a warrior must be extraordinary, and it is different from the ordinary character of ordinary people in the polis. As a whole, the polis can't and can't imitate the warrior's virtue, but it will praise and worship it (1.2.24, 44-45, 59, 69; 1.4. 14-2 1, 27-32,47, 54-58)。 However, there is a danger in the praise and worship of the warrior by the polis: it may encourage the warrior's "self-assertion", so that he can't see the fact that he changed from an ordinary citizen to an extraordinary warrior, not because of his own warrior virtue, but because of the natural nature of the polis's political body, which requires him to become a warrior: the polis created a warrior for its own survival and security. Samurai is not born, but cultivated. In other words, during the extraordinary period, the city-state ordered members with extraordinary virtue to leave the city-state and engage in extraordinary actions (wars) outside the city, with the aim of guarding the ordinary order within the city-state. Ignorance of this truth often leads the samurai into the maze of self-assertion, which confuses the natural relationship between the polis and the samurai: the former commands and the latter obeys, thus giving the samurai a strong foundation, one former fan, one yellow race, five people to remove heat and shake the cliff. ⒈┱? 3 money? Weng Yi stepped on it? What's your opinion? What happened to the old members of Kangmu Luanhe River? Mr. Weng, A Target Source, Jian Tiao 3, Qian Ban Lao Dui Yuan? Stupid, difficult, young, timid, what's wrong with you? Are you jealous? Do you sit on the sofa all day? Hey? br/>；

As early as the Iliad, Homer defined soldiers as "heroes" or "real people", and Aner clearly distinguished them from ordinary people in the city-state. The difference between samurai and ordinary people often leads to a political paradox: for their own interests, the city-state created samurai, but it can't really coexist with samurai. Similarly, samurai can't coexist with the city-state. However, if we look closely, we may find a more fundamental harmony behind this contradiction: on the one hand, without the protection of warriors, the polis will no longer be a polis; On the other hand, without the command, expectation, praise and even worship of the polis, the samurai is no longer a warrior. In the first aspect, the comic poet aristophanes once provided us with an interesting evidence in his Frog. He discussed the attitude of the Athenian citizens towards the Athenian general Alcibiades, and said:

They love him and hate him, but they can't live without him. nine

Regarding the second aspect, we can take Xenophon's tyrant Yero as proof. A tyrant is an abnormal liar. But from Yero's confession to the poet Simonides, we can see that "the troubles are deep in the soul of the tyrant", and a group of people live in contradiction-"they are afraid of crowds and loneliness";

The troubles encountered by tyrants have always been hidden in the soul of tyrants; In the tyrant's heart, everyone's happiness and unhappiness are gathered ... The tyrant can't help but love his polis, because without his polis, he can't be safe and enjoy happiness. However, the autocratic political system forced him to find fault with the defects of his motherland. Because he won't be happy when he sees those civilians brave and armed. ..... tyrants are afraid of crowds and loneliness. 10

As the complex relationship between the "city-state" and its "warriors" shows, the fundamental harmony between "extraordinary" and "ordinary" is often concealed by the contradiction between them, which leads to the misfortune of the tyrant Yero. We will see that Macbeth's tragedy also comes from this. The contradiction between the city-state and the samurai is the contradiction between the civic virtue held by ordinary people and the virtue exclusively belonging to the samurai class. Both virtues are partial virtues in themselves. Some virtues are incomplete compared with the whole virtue. These incomplete virtues will inevitably struggle with each other, unless they realize the existence of the whole virtue and the limitations of their own as a part, that is, self-knowledge. On the one hand, some virtues make a person a virtuous person, but on the other hand, its own limitations may also make this virtuous person offend the territory protected by the whole virtue.

The first time we learned about Macbeth 1 1, we learned it indirectly from the report of History of Faith and the praise of King Duncan. The King's Praise implies a special angle to observe Macbeth, that is, the angle of the polis itself. Special observation is already an evaluation, or it may just be an expectation. This means that the image of Macbeth obtained from King Duncan may be the king's own wishful thinking, in other words, it may be completely wrong. This image that may be wrong is a perfect warrior image, and it is also the most needed image of King Duncan's city-state (1.2. 15, 16- 17,19,55). When Ross equated Macbeth with Sivir's "Belona's groom", the praise of Macbeth reached its peak. Verona's groom is Mars. At this moment, Macbeth has reached the realm of God, and he seems to have been promoted to the sequence of God. This is completely in line with the order of gods and men recorded in the Iliad: in it, "Aner" and "theoi" are almost at the same level 12. A warrior can be blessed by God, and God's direct intervention seems to sort him out from the sequence of ordinary people and promote him to a very sacred sequence. This brings us to the scene of Macbeth in the wilderness.

The wilderness is outside the city wall, far away from the city-state and its citizens, and it is said that the most extraordinary thing in the world may often happen in that place, that is, the meeting between God and man. If we look at the essence of land from the theological-political point of view, "wilderness" and "battlefield" are the same place: it is said that both are sacred land, witnessing all kinds of so-called miracles. After destroying King Duncan's enemies, Macbeth left the battlefield, but he did not return to the polis, but went to the wilderness. Returning to the polis means falling from samurai to ordinary citizens, while entering the wilderness, which is almost a sacred place outside the city, means rising. The poet didn't tell us why Macbeth went into the wilderness, but the poet clearly told us that witches decided to meet Macbeth in the wilderness for the first time (1. 1.6-7). In other words, just as God chose Jonah as a prophet, the witch chose Macbeth. As shown in the opening of the third scene, Macbeth appeared after the witch appeared. -As the structural analysis at the beginning of the whole play implies, people did not start by themselves, but started and operated by virtue and strength of non-human or gods (1.3. 1-37).

The theme of the first act and the third scene is prophecy. Prophecy embodies an extraordinary moment, at which God meets man, supernatural meets nature, or infinite meets finite. This is a moment when a completely miraculous force penetrates into nature and human order and disrupts it. This moment is often accompanied by confusion and fear aroused on the side of nature or people. "Fear" is one of the themes of Macbeth. The word "fear" first appeared in the third scene of the first act, and the theme of this scene was prophecy and wilderness: fear was born in the wilderness far from the city-state, and the moderate city-state was at peace. However, with Macbeth leaving the wasteland and returning to the city-state with the divine sign conveyed by the witch, the collision between "normal" and "extraordinary" is inevitable. The "fear" Macbeth felt from the wilderness will change the gentle temperament of the polis, and he may even re-establish the political order of the polis on the basis of "fear". -and fear is the spirit of the tyrant's political system.

The word "fear" first appeared in the play "Prophecy", which was sharply out of harmony with the previous scene praising Macbeth's bravery. In fact, the whole tragedy runs through "disharmony" from beginning to end, which can be called the theme of the whole drama. Just like below, we will see the conflict between people, people and gods, people and nature, beasts and beasts, beasts and people, and even gods and gods. This is a general disharmony between the world and God's world. This is a chaotic generation (time out of touch).

The poet asked Macbeth to ask questions about God's will for witches:

Wait a minute, you evasive prophets, make it clear to me. After Cynar died, I knew I was promoted to Sir Grims; But how can you be Sir Kurt? Sir Scott is still alive, and his strength is very strong; As for saying that I am the future king, it is as unreliable as saying that I am Sir Courtney. Come on, where did you get this strange news? Why did you stop us in this desolate wilderness with such a prophetic name? ( 1.3.76-78)

We can say that this is Macbeth's first inquiry into the "first cause". For his inquiry, the messenger of the "first cause"-that is, the witch-of course remained cold and silent. Their silence disturbed Macbeth. God seems to only give orders to people, but can't be asked. Although God is indifferent to human problems (1.3.130-131), human problems still need to be explored and answered in a human way. The poet asked Macbeth's deputy, Banco, to complete this task:

Did these strange things we talked about really happen here?

Maybe, we ate crazy roots by mistake,

Make us lose our minds? ( 1.3.83-85)

Macbeth's question is, why do people meet God or be met by God? This is a very old human problem. General Banco's answer to this question is that human reason is confined, lacking wisdom or simply stupid. We can see that Banco first denied the existence of supernatural prophecy in a very humane way, and then said that it existed in the minds of those people whose rational parts had failed and thus they were hemiplegic. Banco seems to imply to us that the so-called prophecy is only born in people's imagination 16, and imagination is the land of illusion 17. As we will see later, this illusion eventually evolved into Macbeth's "Hamadiya", which stems from his overestimation of his samurai virtue as a kind of "partial virtue".

Macbeth was a perfect soldier when he left the battlefield. When he entered the wilderness, he was forced by a desire to "rise". In the wilderness, he bred an illusion, which was confirmed by the intervention of "providence" predicted by the witch. In this regard, Banco has insight:

In order to frame us, the devil will often tell us the truth on purpose, gain our trust in small things, and then we will fall into the trap at important moments. ( 1.3. 130- 13 1)

Macbeth returned to the city with the witch's prophecy, and the city was doomed to be disturbed by the lies of "God's will".

King Duncan represents the personality of the city-state political body. Macbeth's regicide is equivalent to declaring war on the polis. City-states are places where human beings breed and cultivate human nature. Declaring war on the polis means challenging all mankind. This means that Macbeth has lost his identity because he declared war on human beings and humanity, and his existence is completely inhuman. This in turn means a rather dangerous consequence: he should only be treated inhumanely. Maybe he will be worshipped like a god, maybe he will be killed like a beast. The confusion of identity made Macbeth aware of the crisis of the situation. He had to ask God for help:

I need God's grace most,

But why can't I say' amen'? (2.2.30-3 1)

Macbeth doesn't seem to know that he has made a theological mistake: the monologue before the Kingslayer shows that he has given up the "afterlife":

If it's over when it's done, it's better to do it quickly; If you rely on assassination, you can get a happy result and eliminate all future troubles; If this knife is cut down, it will complete everything, end everything and solve everything-in this world, only in this world, in the shallows of the sea of time; Then I don't care about the afterlife. ( 1.7.7)

By giving up the afterlife, he gave up everything related to the afterlife, such as the immortality of the soul, the reward of heaven, the retribution of hell, and even the membership of heaven or hell. In other words, he ended any possible connection between man and the sacred world and became an atheist through and through. -this is a key step for him to finally go to nothingness. The origin of this cloth can be traced back to the scene of wilderness prophecy. An "atheist" has no legitimate reason to be cared for by God in any way, that is, he will neither be sent to hell nor redeemed to heaven. This implies a cold ending: he will be killed like a beast on earth. This, Macbeth himself is very clear:

However, in this matter, we often cannot escape the referee of this world; We followed the example of blood and taught others to kill, and as a result, we were killed by others; People who put poison in the cup will eventually drink it themselves, which is a little unpleasant retribution. He came here with double trust: first, I am his relative and his servant, and according to my name, I can never do such a thing; Second, I am his master, and I should protect his personal safety. How can I stab him with a knife Moreover, this Duncan is kind in nature and has never made any mistakes in dealing with state affairs. If he is killed, his living virtue will be as clear as an angel's horn, telling the world my felony of regicide. "Pity" is like a naked baby floating in the wind, and like a baby who is fighting against the air, it will expose this abominable behavior to everyone's eyes and let tears drown out sighs. ( 1.7)

The error of theological reasoning did not stop Macbeth from continuing his theological thinking (2.2.26-45). His theological thinking is not devoted to clarifying his doubts and surprises about the "first cause". Doubt and surprise are habits of meditation, and belong only to philosophers. At this point, Macbeth was completely gripped by fear. In fear, Macbeth seems to deliberately let meaningless theological remarks temporarily serve as a shelter for his weak soul. From this, we can see the great difference between Macbeth and Robinson in daniel defoe's works: they are also shrouded in fear, but Robinson feels that it is useless to read the Bible and meditate on God's will again and again, thus withdrawing from the false protection of God's will again and again and returning to his limited humanity, prudence, strength and humble hope. On the contrary, Macbeth, who is often in despair, may be praying for God's grace ("I need God's grace most"), or hiding behind an empty theological whisper (logoi) for asylum. Contrary to Robinson, who works in the scorching sun of a desert island, Macbeth hides in a dark palace and keeps company with obscure gods. Macbeth lost the ability to return to the natural world;

I'm tired of daytime now. I hope the world collapses soon. (5.5)

Lady Macbeth comforted her husband and tried to stop his theological thinking. She said that rambling would only "drive us crazy" (2.2.33). Macbeth still needs to go a long way and pay a higher price before he can stop his confusing theological thinking, stop being a theologian without God and stop being a theologian without insight into the fact that the divine order has retired from the world order. 18

The theological thoughts of Robinson and Macbeth both originated from "fear". Robinson finally established a safe kingdom and made the protection of God's will redundant, while Macbeth blindly followed the obscure God's will and turned a kingdom into a terrible tyranny of a tyrant. For Robinson, fear is his starting point; For Macbeth, fear is his destination. Robinson conquered fear and won freedom, while Macbeth destroyed freedom and became a slave of fear.

In Shakespeare's tragedy, in the context of the relationship between God's will and the world, besides Macbeth, there is another person worth remembering, that is, Macduff, a Scottish aristocrat who fought against Macbeth, and his wife and children were victims of Macbeth's tyranny. The appearance of Macduff is of great symbolic significance. On the night of Macbeth's kingslaying, his court was shrouded in an extremely gloomy atmosphere, and the gatekeeper of the court compared the court he was guarding to "hell" intentionally or unintentionally. And McDeve is the one who knocks on the door of hell. This is his first official appearance (2.3.2). Before that, he had been a silent servant of King Duncan. By this time, the king's Eucharist had cooled down, and everyone except the guilty murderer was asleep or drunk. This is the darkest moment in the world, and it needs a prophet to start the cause of God's salvation. Macduff was the first person to break the silence of death. He was the first person to discover the murder. He woke up the drunk or sleepy people. In other words, he started a new beginning. Macduff found that the crying after the murder was full of indignation and condemnation (2.2.33), which was close to the "lamentation" of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah.

Just like Jeremiah's prayer for a clean priestly country, moral absolutism is the foundation of Macduff's virtue, and its further root lies in his trust in God's will and justice. Macduff represents an ideal political order. For this political order, human beings can only think and pray, but in this world, it is impossible to get 19. Macduff's family tragedy reminds us that his ideal political order can hardly resist Macbeth's tyranny. By the time Macduff got Robinson's insight, it was too late. All MacDef's actions in this world should be judged according to the "terms" of this world.

The theme of the last scene of this tragedy is "punishment" and "treatment". Therefore, it is not surprising that images of diseases, doctors, natural skills, medicine, etc. (5. 1.7 1, 2.27, 3.39-45, 3.50-56) appear repeatedly in this scene. Lady Macbeth died of depression. Macbeth was forced to retreat to the cold truth: because he was the enemy of the polis, he exiled himself from the polis, canceled his political identity, and finally drifted into a poor creation without shelter in a pure "natural state" Macbeth saw that his life was like "a withered yellow leaf" (5.3.23);

Have lived long enough; My life has withered, like a carved yellow leaf; I have no hope of getting the honor, love, obedience and a large group of friends that old people should enjoy; Instead of all this, there are only deep and profound curses, verbal compliments and some insincere words. (5.3)

Robinson abandoned God's will and gave his desert island a well-organized political order, because politics, not God's will, can provide him with a fundamental shelter against fear, violence and killing in the natural state. Macbeth is just the opposite. He not only relied on the obscure sacred will, but also used bloody tyranny to pull the peaceful and peaceful political body back to the state of war dominated by fear, that is, the state of nature. -Robinson's diligent pursuit is exactly what Macbeth deliberately destroyed. Robinson is absent-minded, but Macbeth pursues diligently.

The final truth, Macbeth finally saw at the last moment:

My determination wavered a little, and I began to doubt the specious and ambiguous lies told by the devil. (5.5)

However, Macbeth has abandoned this obscure meaning, because he has torn open the barrier of political body against natural violence and cancelled his political identity. He can only be exposed on the surface of naked natural state, just like a withered yellow leaf. This image makes Macbeth feel dull about his career and even life itself:

Tomorrow, tomorrow, another tomorrow, crawling forward day after day until the last second; However, all our yesterdays light the way to the land of death for fools. Put it out, put it out, short candlelight! Life is just a walking shadow, a clumsy actor bossing around on the stage. After appearing for a moment, he quietly stepped down. It's a story told by a fool, full of noise and commotion, but it can't find any meaning. 2 1(5.5. 17-28)

Questions about the world and God's world: lessons from Macbeth.

Zeus, what should I say? Are you protecting the world? Or do you mortals hold this wrong view in vain, as if you think there is a god, but in fact it is only chance that leads the whole world?

-euripides (translated by Zhou Zuoren)

As mentioned above, Macbeth's life runs through two kinds of tyranny and the following two kinds of slavery. -God's tyranny and slavery to Macbeth and Macbeth's tyranny and slavery to Scotland. When he was conquered by obscure providence, he accepted the essence of dissidents and lost the purity of nature, which was manifested in the form of being bound by the shackles of people who were stronger than him. This was his fate.

Macbeth is strikingly similar to the Jews in the wilderness. He believes too much in his "chosen" and blindly follows his "own" will, so that he regards the whole world as his opposite. As an enemy of the whole world, he can't find a higher existence except his rival. He has no ability to enter this world and form a friendship with it in all the ways of this world. -Only by regretting the unknown God's will and by being completely different from this world can Macbeth have a relationship with this world, which is the only possible connection between him and this world. This means that the slavery and tyranny imposed on him by God will be passed on to the world after he enters this world. It's like Joshua's Jews killing Canaanites. It is said that they are under the will of God. God turned Jews into slaves, and Jews turned to enslave Canaanites. It is impossible for Jews to get along with Jamaican men in a humane way recognized by the world. Relying on their god wholeheartedly, they have no habit of getting along with the world. Slavery and enslavement are the basic logic of their national life and political existence. This logic, which can only exist between God and man, kept the Jews in a humiliating position of slavery again and again until their temple was permanently destroyed by the Romans. From then on, they regarded the Romans as gods, and the Romans became their destiny. -this is also Macbeth's situation in the fundamental sense.

The only possible relationship between Macbeth and the hostile world is rule, and it is ruled by tyranny, which just shows that he can't realize his own rule, so ruling the world is always just an ideal for him. He is undoubtedly under the control of this ideal, that is to say, there is a certain concept in his mind, and he serves this concept, so he enjoys the "grace" that the ideal actually gives him. Since his god is rooted in his contempt for the whole world, he thinks he is the only darling of his god. Macbeth takes illusion for granted as truth, however, what he doesn't understand is that truth is a free thing, no one can control it, and it won't control anyone. The relationship between truth and man can only have one style: discovery and being discovered. However, the relationship between Macbeth and his divine will is slavery and enslavement, which is fundamentally inconsistent with truth and the freedom of truth discoverers. Macbeth is not "discovered" but "chosen". It's like the existence of God is not truth for Jews, but just an order, and it may be an absurd order, an order that goes against nature, and an order that does not hesitate to bear the cost of being enemies with the whole world. Macbeth, like the Jews, completely depends on his God, and how can the object on which people depend have the form of truth?

Everything that happened in Macbeth's life after he was "chosen" in the wilderness was mean, down and out, and bad, which was nothing more than the result and development of his original fate. This fate was created by himself against his insurmountable power.

Since life is so trampled on in his place, since nothing in his place is not ruled by his tyranny, and since there is nothing sacred in his place, his behavior will fall into the most ungodly anger and the rudest fanaticism. Due to the general hostility to the whole world, Macbeth gained an almost absolute independence, an independence guaranteed by bloodshed and death. However, this is only a complete tyrant-style independence, which cannot last long in this world, because it goes against the essence of this world. The independence recognized by the world is a happy state and a beautiful state of human nature, while Macbeth's independence is a completely passive and ugly state, a poor existence like a dead leaf. He got such a poor and terrible independence, but he lost all the beauty and nobility and destroyed all the beauty and nobility.

Perhaps we can follow the example of young Hegel and explain the tragedy of "Jews" with the image of "Macbeth", and in turn explain the tragedy of "Macbeth" with the image of "Jews". Macbeth's tragedy is not a tragedy of classical Greece. It can't arouse people's "fear" and "pity", because these two emotions only happen when noble and beautiful people fall into inevitable "mistakes" because of fate.