Modern Age - Spring 2016 - 49

VIRTUE IS NOT BORING

rizes the early modern situation, and his "prophetic soul" divines
what has become the principal moral dilemma of our own time.
Speaking forcefully (virtuously) to his mother about her marriage
to his corrupt stepfather, he is moved to say:
Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy time
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
1
2

3
4
5
6

7
8

9

(3.4.159-62)

Ethica Nicomachea, trans. W. D. Ross (London: Oxford University Press, 1915), 2.6, 1107a.
Explorata, or Discoveries, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, eds. David
Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012), 7.567.
Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1978), 24.332.
Cambridge Edition, 7.311.
Columbia Edition of the Works of Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patterson (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1931-38), 11.221.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, 8th ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882), 479. On
the status of etymology in contemporary linguistics and philosophy, see David del
Bello's interesting discussion in Forgotten Paths: Etymology and the Allegorical Mindset
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007).
All reference to the plays are from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 5th ed., ed.
David Bevington (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004).
The intricate union of the two sexes is of continual interest to Shakespeare, and his
sophisticated discussions of the matter might give hope to a world that finds the
subject largely puzzling and problematic. The ancient idea of the hermaphrodite,
described by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, that man and woman were originally both part of a primeval egg later separated but now seeking to be reunited, is
relevant here. Even more relevant are the complementary accounts of the creation
of man and woman in Genesis. In the first account the two sexes are equal and intimately associated with each another and with the divine: "God created man in his own
image . . . male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27); in the second, the sociability between man and woman is emphasized in Eve's being taken from the rib of Adam.
The first account declares the equality of the sexes in their created nature and in their
closeness to God; the second declares their closeness to each other.
Alasdair MacIntyre, "Prologue to the Third Edition: After Virtue after a Quarter of a Century," After Virtue (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), x.

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Modern Age - Spring 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Spring 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover1
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover2
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Contents
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