1G0xxeB

1 2 0 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2tradition which teaches humility and chastity. Romantic and sexual love canact as a strong catalyst for deep friendships, but in the end The Good Lifeis characterized by a moderate, continuous joy which outweighs any pains,although painful sacrifices are an inevitable and even ultimately a positivepart of any trusting and loyal relationship. The spiritedness of the lover isshown not only in his absolute willingness to risk his life for his friend, butalso in the courageous and completely self-assertive way in which he willfight to secure that friend in the first place.Shakespeare thus rejects both positions in the battle between the ancientsand the moderns, because he disagrees with the low value which both sidesplace on ordinary, intimate attachments. For the modern such attachmentscan never be noble because under the influence of science everything is seenin terms of our animal drives for sex and self-advancement. Ironically, AllanBloom—a political philosopher in the Platonic tradition and therefore inone sense a celebrator of Eros—is not far from the modern position when hespeaks of “the bourgeois myth of reciprocity,” adding that the “Socratic teachingmeans from the outset, in spite of the passion, pleasure, and excitementof Eros, it is something of a hopeless business.” Only in philosophy, Bloommaintains, following Plato, can “selfishness and selflessness become for amoment the same.” 14 Thus love between individuals in the Platonic traditionmay acquire nobility, but only insofar as it points towards something beyonditself. Shakespeare’s account of what I have called the alchemy of love, on theother hand, aims to defend ordinary, loyal attachments both from Bloom’sbleak high ground and from the reductionism of the moderns by showinghow such attachments ultimately require those who are able to live in a waythat is thoroughly in accord with their nature to turn away completely fromthe baser or more tyrannical aspects of that nature. To paraphrase Strauss’sremark in his Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Shakespeare does notlose sight of the high, but shows it to partake of the low, in the sense thathe takes his bearings by individual attachments in all their transience andimperfection rather than by the immutable realm of ideas. 15Perhaps Shakespeare’s use of a setting which has such strong personalsignificance represents an acknowledgement that a philosopher must base hisreasoning about The Good Life upon a prior, intuitive grasp of its excellence14Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 410, 500.15Leo Strauss, Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1965).