"Knowing One's Own Mind and that of Others." a Lecture by Richard Strier

This lecture will try to connect two of the great puzzles in subjective epistemology insofar as they are dealt with in Shakespeare's plays: the problem of an individual knowing his or her own mind, and the problem of persons knowing the minds of other persons. The first half of the lecture will deal with the question of whether Shakespeare thought self-knowledge was possible. Here the answer is complex and paradoxical. Characters like Shylock and Hamlet think that they know themselves, but it turns out that they have theories about themselves and that their direct knowledge, such as it is, is only about what they are feeling at a particular moment. On the other hand, some characters seem to know others quite well. This knowledge can be either benign, as in the case of Edgar's knowledge of his father in King Lear, or malign or at least cold, in the cases of Iago and Othello and Hal and Falstaff. The paradoxical conclusion is that in Shakespeare it looks as if one can know others better than one can know oneself.

Richard Strier, the Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor emeritus in English at the University of Chicago, was educated at CCNY and Harvard University. He taught in English and General Humanities at the University of Chicago from 1973-2019; he co-taught courses in History, Philosophy, and Divinity. His books are: Shakespearean Issues: Agency, Skepticism, and Other Puzzles (2023); The Unrepentant Renaissance from Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton (2011); Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (1995); and Love Known: Theology and Experience in George Herbert's Poetry (1983). He has published over 40 articles on a wide range of topics, and co-edited 5 interdisciplinary collections. He was sole editor of the journal, Modern Philology, from 2004-2016.

English Department & Writing Program | Website | View More Events

Contact the organizers