ABSTRACT

Romeo and Juliet, Florizel and Perdita, Cordelia, Desdemona, Hamlet, all defy law or custom in order to be true to their desire. This chapter brings into play the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre, who has done much to revive this illiberal tradition in the past few decades, partly by wedding it to the Marxist critique of capitalism. It focuses on two ways in which MacIntyre, by returning to Aristotelianism and Thomism, contests modern liberalism: first, by a re-engagement with teleological thinking; and second, by emphasizing the vulnerable, dependent character of human beings. It explores Shakespeare's preoccupation with dependency. Shakespeare's emphasis on dependency and failure amounts to an implicit or buried philosophical anthropology not dissimilar to MacIntyre's. Coriolanus explores the tension between the desire to stand alone and the willingness to acknowledge one's dependence on others in the most direct and even schematic way possible.