"The Fool’s answer to that question is that Lear is (is now) Lear’s shadow, but also that Lear’s shadow can tell him who he is. And who has just done that? The Fool. So the Fool is Lear’s shadow as well, letting him see who Lear is and letting him see who the Fool is." -- RA
The Shadow knows!
Yesterday I was reading Schopenhauer on metempsychosis, as one does, and saw this, related to the question of who is whose shadow and how and why a shadow is made:
"The will here fails to recognize itself; seeking enhanced well-being in one of its phenomena, it produces great suffering in another. Thus in the fierceness and intensity of its desire it buries its teeth in its own flesh, not knowing that it always injures only itself, revealing in this form through the medium of individuation the conflict with itself which it bears in its inner nature. Tormentor and tormented are one. The former is mistaken in thinking he does not share the torment, the latter in thinking he does not share the guilt. If the eyes of both were opened, the inflicter of the suffering would recognize that he lives in everything that suffers pain in the whole wide world, and, if endowed with the faculty of reason, ponders in vain over why it was called into existence for such great suffering, whose cause and guilt it does not perceive. On the other hand, the tormented person would see that all the wickedness that is or ever was perpetrated in the world proceeds from that will which constitutes also his own inner being, and appears also in him."
I think also of another King & Fool -- the Lord & Mephistopheles, in Faust's "Prologue in Heaven."
Three versions.
1.
Thou'rt free, according to thy merits
The like of thee have never moved My hate.
Of all the bold, denying Spirits,
The waggish knave least trouble doth create.
2.
You are free to give a trial;
I have never hated the likes of you.
Of all the spirits of denial
The joker is the last that I eschew.
3.
Appear quite free on that day, too;
I never hated those who were like you:
Of all the spirits that negate
The knavish jester gives me least to do.
#
And then there is the contemporary version.
Batman. Why do you want to kill me?
Joker. I don't want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to rippin' off mob dealers? No, no. No. No, you -- you complete me.
Batman. You're garbage.
"The Fool’s answer to that question is that Lear is (is now) Lear’s shadow, but also that Lear’s shadow can tell him who he is. And who has just done that? The Fool. So the Fool is Lear’s shadow as well, letting him see who Lear is and letting him see who the Fool is." -- RA
The Shadow knows!
Yesterday I was reading Schopenhauer on metempsychosis, as one does, and saw this, related to the question of who is whose shadow and how and why a shadow is made:
"The will here fails to recognize itself; seeking enhanced well-being in one of its phenomena, it produces great suffering in another. Thus in the fierceness and intensity of its desire it buries its teeth in its own flesh, not knowing that it always injures only itself, revealing in this form through the medium of individuation the conflict with itself which it bears in its inner nature. Tormentor and tormented are one. The former is mistaken in thinking he does not share the torment, the latter in thinking he does not share the guilt. If the eyes of both were opened, the inflicter of the suffering would recognize that he lives in everything that suffers pain in the whole wide world, and, if endowed with the faculty of reason, ponders in vain over why it was called into existence for such great suffering, whose cause and guilt it does not perceive. On the other hand, the tormented person would see that all the wickedness that is or ever was perpetrated in the world proceeds from that will which constitutes also his own inner being, and appears also in him."
I love this. A great account of altruistic punishment (aka spite) too.