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Not Wanting What is Good For Me (All’s Well That Ends Well)

Not Wanting What is Good For Me (All’s Well That Ends Well)

Last updated on: May 30, 2016 at 1:39 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Not Wanting What is Good For Me (All’s Well That Ends Well) 2016-05-30T01:39:03-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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There have been times in my life when what was best for me, obvious to everyone else, was not what I wanted: not at all. What about this?

Artuš_Scheiner_-_All's_Well_That_Ends_Well_opt Plato argued that people always want to be happy, but that we do not always know what will make us happy. Being good will make us happy, but we mistake what happiness is and what will make us happy. Aristotle built on this insight by pointing out that some people cannot do what would make them happy because they have “weak wills.” This may not even be the person’s “fault.” Bad education as a child can contribute to an inability to make good choices, even when you know the choice is good.

This is important because an odd belief one meets all the time is that if a person cannot “help” an impulse, the best thing to do is to “normalize” the impulse if at all possible. My impulses or feelings that I cannot control are best handled by everyone else adjusting to them if possible.

This depends on a very dubious notion of happiness: my feeling good about myself. As much as possible (assuming it “hurts” nobody else), I should follow my heart.

A difficulty is that while this might increase positive feelings in a person, such a notion of happiness begs an important question. Is happiness just about me or is it about conforming (as much as possible) to an external standard of the good human life? If I am human, then I have some capacity to reason. If I choose not to use my reason or even to be irrational, I can imagine this giving me good “feels,” but I am not happy because of intentionally aggravating the gap between my life and the “good life.”

Arguably, humans have ears to hear and not hearing within a normal human range is a disability. If we cannot change that disability, then both society (out of charity) and the person must adjust. There is (on this view) little sense in claiming as some people do now that “hearing” should not be privileged.

My guess is that most Americans still agree with this idea when it comes to physical things unrelated to sex.

What of moral laws? If there are moral laws, then failure to live up to them might benefit me, but will be, on the whole, bad for society. Marriage is good for society, but might not always be the first choice of a person. Given a bad view of romance, the potential mate might decide that he will make the person who is most emotionally satisfying and not the person best for the totality of his life and the life of the community in the light of eternity.

If we forget eternity, the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, then we will forget that living in an unjust society well is to do badly. Eternity will judge our actions and eternity is not going to base that judgment on the latest opinion polls. The moral law will be applied by Almighty God to all. When it comes to marriage and happiness, this moral fact matters.

Marriage and having children is, after all, the most public act most people do. We are determining the future of our community by our choice of a marriage partner. Is a happy marriage one that helps a man or woman flourish as a human being and makes the community better by upholding the external moral law? Or is it merely the relationship that will be most satisfying to the persons involved?

William Shakespeare’s play All’s Well that Ends Well is a “problem” play to contemporary Americans because he is assuming the older and bigger view of happiness. We should want what is right and when we do not, then all will be well only if the right prevails. A man who prefers carousing and seduction to marriage with a brilliant and virtuous woman is wrong. He may not be able to help his feelings, but his actions based on those feelings should (voluntarily) come as close to being good, normal, and happy as possible.

Of course nobody is perfectly normal. All of us don’t want what is best all the time. The nature of civilization is prodding people in the direction of the normal and away from the decadent or base. We will all fail and Shakespeare is brutal on the idea that there are “good people” and “bad people.” Everyone is a mix of both, but some aspire to be better, others aspire to be worse, and many just muddle along following their hearts. In a society that is morally healthy in a particular area, that can work fairly well, but in the places where the society is messed up things will go poorly.

In Shakespeare’s time too many men ignored God’s law when it come to sex. Women were expected to obey, but men were cut slack or held to societal and not eternal standards. As a result, some men did not even know what was best for them. They imagined that the societal “good life” (which might allow a mistress or three) was best, while women were expected to do what God said.

This huge and tragic error led to unhappiness.

The “hero” of All’s Well that Ends Well does not know what is best. He believes what is best for himself, based on his feelings, will make him happy. He has to be tricked, using those base desires, to do what everyone in the audience knows will make him happiest. If Helen of Troy is the face that launched a thousand ships, then Helen of this play has the virtue that launches a Christian civilization. She is as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove. The man she loves ought to be thrilled. If he is not at first, well God help him. If he gets his act together, then all’s well that ends well.

Shakespeare is right: we should do as we should and not as we would to be happy. No wonder he comes with trigger warnings in our medicated, depressed, oppressed liberal arts colleges.

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*Recall: no human society is morally healthy in every area. Each has blind spots.

William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero. Richard II shows us not to presume on the grace of God or rebel against authority too easily. Coriolanus reminds us that our leaders need integrity and humility. Our life can be joyful if we realize that it is, at best, A Comedy of Errors. Hamlet needs to know himself better and talks to himself less. He is stuck with himself so he had better make his peace with God quickly and should stay far away from Ophelia. Shakespeare gets something wrong in Merchant of Venice . . . though not as badly as some in the English Labour Party or in my Twitter feed. Love if blind, but intellectualism is blind and impotent in Love’s Labours Lost. Brutus kills Caesar, but is overshadowed by him in Julius Caesar. We should learn not to make Much Ado about Nothing. We might all be Antony, but if we would avoid his fate then we must avoid flattery and the superficial love of Troilus and Cressida. We are fools, but our goal should be to accept it and not to degenerate into Biblical fools during our Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard III is a symptom of a bad leadership community, but be careful that use Measure for Measure to guide your reaction to the mess. The modern university is Iago in Othello playing on our sins to destroy the nation. You can’t accumulate your way to a great leader and personal piety in Henry VI (Part I) is not enough to make a great king. God will save the King, not our stupid partisan squabbles seen in Henry VI (Part 2) and not kingmakers as existed in Henry VI (Part 3). Fortunately, in God’s world All’s Well That Ends Well.

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