Kosmos i natura ludzka w antropologii Williama Shakespeare’a

Jacek Bartyzel, Cosmos and Human Nature in William Shakespeare’sAnthropology. The article is concerned with the ambiguity of the term ‘nature’ inShakespeare’s dramas. The term is closely connected with the conceptof ‘order’ meaning the hierarchical system of beings in the cosmosand – analogically – in the human cosmion. However, the naturalnessof this order is subject to various interferences caused by the disruptionof ‘degrees’. This polarity of order and disorder, naturalness and unnaturalness is translated in the human world into two concepts ofnatural law. The first contains the quality of the objective ordo whichis inscribed in human nature and which is recognized by one’s conscienceas moral dictates of the righteous reason; it corresponds to classicalconcepts of natural law – the ones of Aristotle, Cicero and SaintThomas Aquinas – a law that is eternal, unchanging and of the divineorigin. The second identifies natural law with the laws of nature wherenature is interpreted as phýsis (from Greek), the laws that were alsoin existence in the pre-social natural state. This concept treats moraldictates as social conventions, contracts and customs, the use of whichdepends on usefulness. This kind of view corresponds to the traditionof sophists as well as to Machiavelli and Hobbes. Based on the analysisof the anthropological vision presented in King Lear and in Troilus andCressida, the author concludes that, while giving voice, in accordancewith the principles of dramatic art, to representatives of both concepts,Shakespeare tends to prefer the first one.