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4. The Problem of Genius in King Lear: Hegel on the Feeling Soul and the Tragedy of Wonder
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Chapter 4 The Problem of Genius in King Lear Hegel on the Feeling Soul and the Tragedy of Wonder1 [G]enius . . . is my destiny;for it is the oracle on whose pronouncement depends every resolve of the individual. —Hegel, Philosophy of Mind2 All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men. —the Fool, King Lear3 Does any here know me? This is not Lear. Does Lear walk thus, speak thus? Where are his eyes? —Lear, King Lear4 I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw. —blind Gloucester, King Lear5 Prudence is the eye of the soul. —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics6 Introduction In this chapter, I discuss the problems of genius in Shakespeare’s King Lear in relation to Hegel’s account of the feeling soul, its genius, and its development into consciousness in the Encyclopedia Philosophy of Mind. This is not Hegel’s 85 86 Hegel and Shakespeare on Moral Imagination reading of the play.7 But through Hegel’s work on the feeling soul, we are able to define Lear’s and Cordelia’s geniuses as kinds of destiny. We can thereby also explain the shift that occurs in their relationship to their geniuses. Hegel’s work helps us to explain the tragic nature of the play.8 I also discuss wonder. The shift in Lear and Cordelia is a gradual result of an experience of wonder that these two have at the start of the play. Wonder dislocates the merging character of genius and its habits. Aristotle famously asserted that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. I argue that, in the Philosophy of Mind, wonder is the beginning of self-knowledge. Lear’s and Cordelia’s initial experience of wonder is traumatic: Each is forced to wonder at the other. The logic of wonder then works its way through the play, leading them to complete themselves through each other. By the end, they both exhibit self-certainty and articulate empathy. But the collisions at the start of the play also follow the fateful logic of geniuses. The collisions unleash a political dream whose logic Lear and Cordelia do not escape. The play is therefore tragic: Lear and Cordelia begin to have philosophically self-understanding just as their genius’ destinies close in. This supervening of Fate over the achievements of Wonder makes Lear a tragedy of wonder. I defend Hegel against Schmitz’s critique, in The Recovery of Wonder, that Hegel’s philosophy is not adequate to the kind of wonder philosophy needs to recover. My analysis of the place of wonder in the Philosophy of Mind and in Lear shows why we need Hegel in this recovery. We need to understand what Hegel means by making subject and substance equal in dialectical importance. Without reducing Hegel’s view to a metaphysics of things, I show that it is consistent with Schmitz’ call for a metaphysics of things. The tragedy of Lear, like much modern philosophy, reveals that the birth of consciousness (and therefore the beginning of philosophy) often does violence to bodies. Bodies are our organs of discovery. To prevent violence, we must respect their pure potentiality and indifference to utility. Part I. Hegel on the Feeling Soul and Its Genius Hegel’s discussion of the “Feeling Soul” (Die fühlende Seele9 ) is found in his Anthropology (the first subsection of “Mind Subjective” in Hegel’s Encyclopedia Philosophy of Mind10 ). Let me begin, as Hegel does, with a few words about the nature of the soul in general, and then discuss the feeling soul in particular. The Soul in General Hegel is Aristotelian with regard to the soul: “The soul is no separate immaterial entity.”11 The soul is rather the “ideal life” of the natural: [3.238.162.113] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:41 GMT) 87 The Problem of Genius in King Lear Soul is the substance or “absolute” basis of all the particularizing and individualizing of mind: it is in the soul that mind finds the material on which its character is wrought, and the soul remains the pervading, identical ideality of it all. But as it is still conceived thus abstractly, the soul is only the sleep of mind—the passive of Aristotle, which is potentially all things.12 Despite its simplicity, the soul “is not yet mind.”13 The reason for this will become clear as we proceed. Hegel discusses the soul in three sections: the “Physical Soul,” the “Feeling Soul,” and the...