Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare

by Regina Mara Schwartz

Overview

In thinking about Justice, we ignore Love to our peril. Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare asks why love is considered a 'soft' subject, fit for the arts and religion perhaps, but unfit for boardrooms, parliamentary and congressional debates, law schools and courtrooms, all of whom are engaged in the 'serious' discourse of justice, including questions of distribution, questions of contract, and questions of retribution. Love is separate, out of order in the decidedly rational public sphere of justice. But for all of this separation of love and justice, it turns out that in the biblical tradition, no such distinction is even imaginable. The biblical law is summed up as loving the neighbour?this is further elaborated as loving the stranger, loving the widow, the orphan, and the poor?those who lack a protecting community. Analysis of these foundational 'love commands' shows that in them, love means care, that is, apprehending and responding to the needs of others. This is both love and justice. Prevailing political concepts of justice are incomplete for they are premised on a belief in scarcity: limited supply (of goods, opportunities, even forgiveness) suggests they must be meted out in fair measure. To the contrary, with love, the good sought is not in scarce supply. Its distribution is not a problem for the more of it you give, the more it is replenished. So with love, the emphasis is not on how to apportion fairly?how much love do I give each of my children!?but how to understand and respond to need. This understanding of justice as including mutual care has a rich history in religious thought as constituting social glue. The revival of the Bible during the Reformation and the ubiquitous allusions to neighbor love in the Book of Common Prayer made it ever-present in Renaissance discourse, and Shakespeare brought this ethos to audiences in many of his plays. Part of the reason Shakespeare endures is that this ethic resonates for audiences today: we abhor the evil of Iago, the greed of Macbeth, the narcissism of Lear, and to even begin to understand how the sacrifices of Romeo and Juliet could heal ancient social conflict, we must assent to the power of love to create justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192514608
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	11/17/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	333 KB

About the Author

Professor Regina Schwartz teaches literature, religious studies and law at Northwestern University. She has authored Remembering and Repeating: On Milton's Theology and Poetics (Cambridge, winner of the James Holly Hanford's Book Award). She co-edited Desire in the Renaissance, on English and Italian literature (Princeton). Her The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, calls attention to the cultural uses of scripture to endorse violence (Chicago, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize). She also edited Transcendence: Philosophy, Literature and Theology Approach the Beyond (Routledge), The Book and the Text, The Bible and Literary Theory (Blackwell) and co-edited The Postmodern Bible (Yale). Her last book, When God Left the World: Sacramentality at the Dawn of Secularism explores the sacramental vision of justice that infuses the poetry, drama, and the wider culture of the English Reformation.

Table of Contents

I. The Experience of Love
II. The Law of Love
III. The Power of Love
IV. The Economics of Love
V. The Forgiveness of Love

Editorial Reviews

"Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare is an important study whose humane learning and graceful interpretations help it strive for and attain, in the difficult moments in life and literature, a rare wisdom in Shakespeare studies: the wisdom of love." — Scott F. Crider, University of Dallas, Religion and Literature

"The final chapter of the book, which is on 'The Forgiveness of Love', concludes with an insightful analysis of Hamlet as an 'anti-revenge tragedy', where retribution happens circumstantially' if at all (p. 104) and does not in any way equate to justice. It is 'rebuke' that acts as its far more effective substitute, a third way between revenging and forgetting the crime." — Elisabetta Tarantino, The English Association

"Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare ignites an overdue conversation between "Shakespeare and law"-a subfield within early modern studies-and ethics, jurisprudence, and biblical scholarship." — Penelope Geng , Macalester College, Syndicate

"extremely illuminating" — Michael Shapiro, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Syndicate

"Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare is a refreshingly compelling book. By performing the terms of its title, it offers us the opportunity to reflect deeply on urgent matters. Regina Schwartz loves justice and lives Shakespeare, and by expressing this in the form of a brilliant and unconventional monograph she helps us see that there is no justice without love; and that Shakespeare, in living among us in and through his work, is a trustworthy companion with whom to explore vital questions. What is love? What is justice? What is life? What is the relationship between them? In short: what does it mean to be human?" — Vittorio Montemaggi , King's College London, Syndicate

"Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare is a critique of modern liberal ways of thinking about persons and society and a critique of present-day Western society as shaped by those liberal ways of thinking. The critique is incisive and powerful." — Nicholas Wolterstorff , Yale University, Syndicate

"This exceptional book deserves to be read not only by students and scholars of Shakespeare, but by students and scholars of religion, Western philosophy, and legal thought. Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare deserves to be read widely because it offers an acute and timely critical perspective on the economic understanding of human justice in our world today." —David Loewenstein, Renaissance Quarterly

"Overall, this book belongs to the growing criticism on Shakespeare and philosophy. The force of Schwartz's writing lies in disentangling - clearly, simply (but not simplistically), and persuasively - the intricately layered concepts of love, as a discourse and experience, and justice, as a counter-discourse and demand. She uses a critical language that makes this book valuable to specialists and a general readership in search of reliable, expert, and beautiful critical judgment on two important notions between which the lives of characters in Shakespeare's plays unfold." —Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance and Reformation

"Regina Schwartz's elegant study in Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare undertakes to see the world "justly" through Shakespeare's eyes. By "justice" she means much more than simply paying a debt, or fairly distributing goods or opportunities. To live under the regime of love is to inhabit a landscape where humans do not undervalue the worth or rights of others." —David Bevington, Phyllis Fay Horton Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago and editor of The Complete Works of Shakespeare

"In this sensitive and deeply humane study, Regina Schwartz writes lovingly about love, and justly about justice. She uses insights of the biblical tradition and Shakespeare's great plays to shed a much needed new light on the often abstract and sterile nature of contemporary writings about love and justice. Her book opens our eyes to the potential, the power and the richness of love in our personal and social relations. This is the book we have been waiting for." —Ingolf Dalferth, Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University

"New books on Shakespeare which open the mind and the imagination are rarities. Still more are those which ally this to a challenge to contemporary thinking. Loving Justice is one of them. " —Brian Cummings, Anniversary Professor at the University of York

From the Publisher