On Lincoln and Shakespeare

The Polaris lecture the evening of Feb 25 (See the Polaris web page for details) left me with the interesting question of how the development of human rights were tied to the evolution of the self (thinking here of Charles Taylor's two books "The Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age") and following Harold Bloom's book "Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human". As Lincoln was influenced by Shakespeare and this is evident through an analysis of his use of Shakespeare in his speeches, is Lincoln a great source of this evolution of the self especially as it played out in America through his political power. Prof Briggs focused on the nature of tyranny in his lecture and viewed Lincoln's understanding of it as Shakespearean - Falstaff, Macbeth, and others. The tyranny is internal and a property of the modern individual that wants to be free even from the tyrannical parts of himself - the demons we most have to fear.