Reasoning the Need: Reasons, Ethics, and Character in Shakespeare’s <i>Measure for Measure</i>

Abstract This essay explores moral experience in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The play challenges the place Western philosophers have assigned reason in moral theory especially since Kant’s identification of the “categorical imperative” on which he believed morality rests within the faculty of reason as such. The reading of Shakespeare’s play is framed by analysis of the debate between Derek Parfit and Bernard Williams on the relative importance of “internal” and “external” reasons for moral action and choice. Parfit argues that moral decisions are ultimately dictated by rational deliberation on decisively “reason-giving” facts and values discovered in the world, suggesting that, pace Hume, we can and do derive the “ought” of moral obligation from the “is” of moral experience. By contrast, Williams argues that theories of obligation like Kant’s and Parfit’s overlook the fact that moral choices and actions only arise because someone must do something at some time and in some place: the choices we make and actions we perform take shape within the contingent system of “thick” moral concepts we encounter in broadly ethical as opposed to narrowly moral engagement in an irreducibly historical world. Shakespeare’s play accordingly puts richer literary meat on the bare bone of philosophical theory.