Mark Vonnegut
"According to the vast majority of contemporary critics, King Lear simply cannot be in any strong sense a "Christian" play, for charity neither redeems the world nor does it even save its only clear embodiment, Cordelia. But the play is most Christian in just exactly this respect. Its unflinching attention to the way the world really works does not permit us to imagine either that charity redeems the world or that it can be in any sense a fit basis for political rule. On this side of eternity, there are at best fleeting though magnificent moments of glad grace, such as the one we witness between Lear and Cordelia. Although such moments are vastly more redemptive than anything else in the world of Lear, they are finally unworldly, in the world but not of it. The best the world can give us is a justice that is blind and that abides only so long as it remains blind. The best that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Jesus gives us is a love that sees and that nevertheless abides forever. This charity is truly redemptive, but it is more than human flesh can bear for long. [...]
"Telling stories and seeing plays (presuming, of course, that these are the right stories and the right plays at the right time) are far better ways toward understanding and even managing these matters of love and justice than any number of other strategies often thought to be superior for such purposes (therapy, life experiences, support groups, etc.). It is finally Edgar's telling of his and Gloucester's pilgrimage together that moves his father to that point of joy and grief (a combination of feelings very different from despair) that is fitting for one who has come at last to see the world feelingly. ... Finally, our seeing Edgar's story and the others in King Lear moves us to understand the visions, wordless discernings, disguises, longings, refusals, blood-lusts, fears, rivalries, hopes, blessings, mistakes, sorrows, apprehensions, and "touching" moments of grace that are all a part of the lived experience of filial and parental love. Ethics may be finally a matter of perception, of seeing the human world aright, and perception in matters of love and justice just is a matter of seeing the world feelingly." more... Mark R. Schwehn King Lear Beyond Reason: Love and Justice in the Family
D. Anthony Storm on Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
Dorota Glowacka Sacrificing the Text: The Philosopher / Poet at Mount Moriah
