A beautiful evening at Macbeth?

 

You cannot describe an evening at Macbeth as entertaining, as lovely; rather I must say I have never found the play so absorbing an evening as at the National Theatre last night, with Rory Kinnear in the nightmarish title role.

 

In this world of unrelieved horror, what can be the appeal? We know it is about vaulting ambition, Macbeth's and his wife's, about the destruction it wreaks, the cruelty and murder it can drive human beings to, the dire consequences of underestimating our imagination and conscience. Why sit through that darkness when you could simply stay away?

 

It is because the dark too, I decided as I listened, takes on an incandescent beauty: not some sick beauty of horror and death: not, for once, because of Shakespeare's profound insights into character and motivation: but from the matchless use of words, the sublime language that elevates and absolves all action.

Whether for Oberon scheming about a bank where the wild thyme blows, for the exiled Duke serenely accepting the uses of adversity in As You Like It, for the monstrous Macbeth shrieking at his terrors, Shakespeare makes empyrean music.

He gives the lie to the tale told signifying nothing, heard even in Hell the harmony of the spheres.

 

 

 

"It is raining, but I don't believe it"

 

Moore's Paradox, in the headline, is an effort to remind us how 'the truth' is not simple.

 

Pontius Pilate long ago asked, What is truth? and washed his hands of the whole thing. Professor G E Moore, early last century, proposed his Paradox to get people thinking.

 

First, the Paradox shows there are facts [It is raining ..] and there are opinions [but I don't believe it ..].

 

It shows that facts and opinions exist together. And, crucially, that they can contradict each other. A very important reminder for us, considering how often we find them doing so these days.

 

But it gets more complicated. The sentence, 'It is raining, but I don't believe it', is not nonsense or madness. Not like saying, 'It is raining, but I don't believe it because there is no big tap in the sky.' That would be only silly or insane.

 

Nor is it illogical or untrue. Opinions are routinely in disagreement, not only with other opinions but also with what we call 'the facts'. The Flat Earth Society argues their case on 'the facts', I understand.

 

Because the sentence is not illogical, you cannot falsify it with our normal logic. That is an even more important discovery. There is a contradiction in the sentence, but it is not illogical and not untrue. How to explain that?

 

We can point out the person would know it is raining because s/he would sense it: see it, hear it or get wet. But the question then is, are our senses the only way we know things? What about when our reason shows us they aren't? Like we know there's no oasis in the desert, no puddles up ahead on the road in front of the car on a boiling hot day?

 

What if the person learned it was raining by report? If s/he was told it is raining and said s/he did not believe it, does that alter everything?

 

Also, if s/he was told it was raining yesterday, but did not believe it, is that a different case again? A bit like History: 'There was a Second World War, but I don't believe it.'

 

Look at all these problems with the truth. And a professional philosopher would tell me I have hardly started on the subject.

Why on earth should we teach History?

Except for asking how wide the universe is and what we are doing here, there is no more difficult question than why and how to teach History. Presumably there is a purpose to it. What could that be? You can see why you teach language, or adding up, or geography. But why History?

Well, first 1] to educate the individual in it, just like any other subject, which may be seen as an end in itself. But is it 2] also to build a sense of citizenship, of belonging to a particular nation?

2] is the hard part because it affects what you do whether you decide the purpose is to build citizens or definitely not to build citizens - if citizens are people who will collectively accept the status quo, that the way things are done is 'right'.

Inevitably a politician will see 2] as essential, if not the priority. It is the nature of the job. Isn't the idea of a Minister of Education itself suspect? Won't the Minister just have History taught the way s/he sees the world and wants it to be seen? But then you can't teach revolution. That's indoctrination too. Not to say unwise.

A good way round the question is to consult Historians, ask them why they write History. The explanation I tend to prefer is the one that simply says it is to understand why people did what they did in the past. But can you keep it even that honest without bias seeping in? Was King Shaka or Henry VIII or Herod the Great not so much great as a bit of a rotter actually?

Problems, problems. It's make your mind up time again, I'm afraid.