Delivered at the SWPSA Annual Conference, ©March 17, 2007

A human likeness can be communicated with a few brushstrokes that capture the defining features of a particular face. So too, Shakespeare captures the likeness of Socrates in the character of Falstaff, thereby creating a parallel between the archetypal political philosopher and the fictional educator of King Henry V. The comparison is intriguing, because it suggests that an examination of Falstaff can afford us some insight into what Shakespeare thinks of the philosopher and the philosophic life. What emerges from this comparison is a highlighting of a perhaps unexpected element in the nature of the philosopher.

The first point of likeness between Falstaff and Socrates is Falstaff’s unusual intelligence and his ability to apply it critically to the accepted norms of his society. These traits are not decisive in making the parallel between Falstaff and Socrates. In fact, Falstaff’s account of honour in particular, though accurate to some degree, is too crude to conjure on its own the picture of Socrates. Nevertheless, the capacity to scrutinize gentlemanly opinions and to note some of the contradictions or difficulties that underlie these opinions is a crucial point of contact between the two men and a necessary point of departure for further comparisons.

The comparison truly begins to gain momentum when we learn of some of the charges made against Falstaff. In a game of role-playing in which Falstaff plays Hal and Hal plays his father, the King, Hal accuses Falstaff of being a “villainous abominable misleader of youth” (Henry IV, Part 1, II. iv. 456 – 457). Later, in the midst of an altercation between Hostess Quickly and Falstaff, the Chief Justice accuses Falstaff of making the weaker argument the stronger: “Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way” (Henry IV, Part 2, II. i. 107 – 109).

To this evidence, we may add the Epilogue at the end of Henry IV, Part 2. The speaker of the Epilogue promises that Shakespeare will “continue the story, with Sir John in it.” He suggests Falstaff might die in the next story and then qualifies this thought, indicating this could only happen if the audience or the many do not kill him first. This qualification is chilling, as it recalls the fate of Socrates at the hands of the many. Indeed, the Epilogue is rife with suggestions that the many are rightly to be feared. Because the speaker knows this he worries that he has displeased the crowd, curtsies to them and begs their pardon.

Finally, in Henry V, Hostess Quickly reports that she felt Falstaff’s feet become as cold as stone in the final stages of his life. She adds that the coldness spread from his feet up his legs. The spreading of coldness from the feet upward is reminiscent of Socrates’ final moments as described in Plato’s Phaedo (117e – 118b).

The parallels Shakespeare makes between Falstaff and Socrates direct us to equate the two characters, but this proves troubling. Has Shakespeare actually sketched the defining features of a philosopher and the philosophic way of life? Falstaff’s life is filled with food, wine, wit and sex. Such things are of course pleasant and, in and of themselves, they are not objectionable from a philosophic standpoint. However, could such a life be described as philosophic if it were characterized solely by such things? Surely wonder and sustained philosophic inquiry would have to assume a fundamental place in such a life if it were to be an accurate depiction. These things are strikingly absent from Shakespeare’s portrayal of Falstaff’s life.

If Shakespeare intends Falstaff to serve as his account of the philosopher, then why does he omit from his portrayal the very things that define a philosopher and the philosophic way of life? Is their omission an implicit condemnation of the philosopher? Does Shakespeare mean to suggest that, however much one waxes poetic about wonder and inquiry, at bottom the philosophic life is no different from Falstaff’s life?

There is a second interpretation that leads to more interesting conclusions. Perhaps Shakespeare constructs Falstaff so that Falstaff resembles the archetypal philosopher in many ways while nevertheless falling short of the philosopher in some decisive way. So understood, Falstaff’s shortcoming would be emphasized and, consequently, some necessary attribute of the philosopher would simultaneously be highlighted. To choose to criticize the philosopher by omitting from the portrayal the very things that make the philosopher recognizable as a philosopher would be both strange and confusing. It is therefore more likely that Shakespeare would include some portrayal of wonder and philosophic inquiry in any characterization of a philosopher even if this portrayal were intended as a criticism. For example, he could offer a comic portrayal of wonder and philosophic investigation, or he could offer a portrayal that illuminated the shortcomings of philosophic investigations that were too narrow. Socrates himself does this in the Theatetus when he speaks of Thales as a natural philosopher who is insufficiently aware of what a human being is and therefore, by implication, is insufficiently aware of what he himself is (173b – 174c).

Pursuing the second interpretation further, we must ask, “What does Falstaff lack that is so significant that, were he to have it, he could be transformed into a true philosopher?” Shakespeare seems to answer, “Courage.”

Though Falstaff rails against cowardice and cowards (e.g. Henry IV, Part 1, II. ii. 63; II. iv. 114 – 115), he seems ultimately to agree that he is deficient in courage. He admits that this is why he drinks so much sack. Drunkenness enables him to act courageously when he otherwise would be unable to do so:

A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood, which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts’ extremes. It illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart; who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work, and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in to act and use. . . . If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack. (Henry IV, Part 2, IV. iii. 94 – 123)

As Falstaff describes it, the warming effect of alcohol moves from the face downward toward the heart. This motion reverses the order of cooling that is associated with death. When Falstaff was dying coldness moved upward from his feet toward his heart. The reversal of the motion of warming and cooling links Falstaff’s use of sack to death, and it suggests that he regards sack as a kind of counter-agent to death.

His account also points to an awareness of the uselessness or helplessness of knowledge in the absence of courage. He thereby directs us to the problem of incontinence: one can know how to use weapons, but this knowledge is not sufficient to make one act in accordance with what one knows. Knowledge alone cannot rule us. It can only become effectual when courage is added to the mix. It seems partly for this reason that Falstaff defines courage, or sack, which is a stand-in for courage, as the “first human principle.” We might wonder whether it is also accurately described as the first human principle because the very acquisition of knowledge depends upon the prior presence of courage.

The most obvious reason why Falstaff thinks he and indeed all men need courage is suggested by the context in which he makes his comment, namely war. He and the other soldiers must face the possibility that their deaths are immanent. The possibility of immanent death is especially striking in wartime; however, since any of us could die at any time, the fear of death cannot reasonably be limited to dangerous circumstances. This means that so long as we remain aware of our mortality, we need courage or some replacement for it that would produce the same effect in us, assuming there could be such a replacement.

Falstaff’s way of life and his attachment to sack in particular might reasonably be characterized as an attempt to avoid having to face his own mortality. It is a life filled with pleasures. However, by turning to sack as a necessary means to courage, Falstaff admits implicitly, though perhaps unconsciously, that the pursuit of pleasure is an insufficient response to the problem of mortality. To begin, the awareness of mortality permeates his pleasures and corrupts them. If this were not the case, he would not need to add sack to the pleasures he pursues. The pleasures themselves would suffice to make his life agreeable. Instead, the need for sack reveals the hedonistic life to be something other than it claims to be. The pursuit of pleasure devolves into an avoidance of pain. Even if one were to believe that a life propelled by an avoidance of pain could be choice-worthy, one must wonder whether any human being could knowingly choose a life that had at its core the oblivion or partial oblivion that attends drunkenness and that is necessary in order to prevent oneself from being overcome by the fear of death. The insufficiency of Falstaff’s efforts to compensate for his lack of courage is illustrated most starkly in the reports of his eventual death. When he begins to lose motor control of his fingers, he allegedly laughs like a child. Far from seeming like joyous laughter, his laughter seems to express bewilderment at the fact that he is now in the final moments of his life. Hostess Quickly reports that he cries out to God “three or four times.” This deathbed conversion also proves insufficient, for, when pressed, Quickly admits that Falstaff also cries out for more sack (Henry V, II. iii. 26 – 27).

If the absence of courage in Falstaff is meant to show us the necessity of it in the philosopher, and if Falstaff’s cowardice pertains particularly to his fear of death, then it is reasonable to infer that Shakespeare thinks an awareness of mortality plays a crucial role in transforming a potential philosopher into an actual philosopher. We must wonder why this might be true.

When we confront the fact of our mortality, we also confront the fact that we do not have time to pursue all of our desires. Rather, we must prioritize them according to some standard that we determine to be authoritative. The search for such a standard is arguably the starting point of political philosophy. Perhaps we need not insist that a confrontation with our mortality is the only way such a search begins, but it seems fair to say that only this confrontation lends a necessary urgency to this search. Without this urgency, there is nothing to prevent us from postponing the search indefinitely. In fact, the investigation of all serious questions could be postponed indefinitely, which is to say the philosophic life could be postponed indefinitely if we remained insufficiently aware of our mortality.

Returning to a consideration of Falstaff, we may now be in a position to suggest that he does not move beyond a life of food, wit, wine and women because he has never adequately confronted the inevitability of his death. As a result, he has never discovered a standard that would indicate to him that such pursuits do not constitute a good life. Having said this, we must add that the need for courage is not limited to the role it plays in allowing us to face death. It is also enables us to push us through hardships, difficult questions, and the drudgery that might be involved in arriving at a satisfactory answer to a question. What is here called courage, therefore, is not the virtue that allows us to face those things that we know to be terrible. Rather, it is a toughness of soul that can precede knowledge.

Shakespeare’s emphasis on the importance of courage in the philosophic soul seems to be offered as a correction to the idea that eros alone is the defining passion of the philosophic life. Falstaff is erotic, but he is not a philosopher. Why is eros unable to make us take up and work through painful and difficult questions? Is it not possible that a very great eros or love of truth could drive us through such questions? By means of his portrayal of Falstaff, Shakespeare may indicate he thinks this is not possible. Rather, he seems to think there is something about eros itself that is inadequate to this task. Unaccompanied by courage, eros seems to lead to Falstaff’s way of life. Why?

Eros seems to be tied inextricably to love of oneself. It inclines us to want the good, but we want the good for ourselves and we want to have it always. However, if we are careful to isolate the effects of eros from the toughness of soul Shakespeare highlights, then it seems quite likely that self-love will actually lead us away from the philosophic life. We may still want the good, but since we lack courage, we might be unable to push ourselves through the difficulties and pain that attend the search for truth and, more specifically, the truth about the good. Eros seems to have some tendency and vulnerability to accept substitutes for the truth in an effort to avoid seeing certain things.

Perhaps we can describe the relationship between eros, courage and philosophy in the following way. In combination with the necessary intelligence, eros and courage lead a human being to knowledge. Once knowledge has been acquired, courage unites with it to produce philosophic continence, the ability to do what one knows to be good.