Content uploaded by Bert Olivier
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Bert Olivier on Apr 17, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
Bert Olivier
Extraordinary Professor of Philosophy
University of the Free State
South Africa.
OlivierG1@ufs.ac.za
bertzaza@yahoo.co.uk
Reason and/or Imagination? Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society.
This paper was first published in the South African Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 20(2), 2001, pp.171-
190. A shorter version appeared in Film and Philosophy, Vol. 5/6, (US Journal of the Society for
the Philosophic Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts) February 2002 – General interest edition;
pp. 14-24.
Introduction:
Among the thought-provoking films directed by Peter Weir, one that engages conspicuously with
philosophical issues that orbit the conceptual pair, reason and imagination, is Dead Poets Society.
Questions concerning freedom and responsibility, creativity and discipline, romanticism and
enlightenment, as well as individuality and tradition, are thematized in the film in such a way that they
never leave the gravitational field of concepts governed by the tension between reason and
imagination. ‘Tension’, because this relationship has not been one of unambiguous mutual exclusivity,
although at times reason and imagination have been treated as if they were mutually exclusive - for
instance in the early modern period, when Descartes and Spinoza stigmatized imagination as being
inimical to the ends of reason (Kearney 1988:161-162). Dead Poets Society may be seen as the
cinematic dramatization of a way to conceive of the relationship between reason and imagination
which does justice to both. This may be demonstrated by way of viewing it with Kant’s as well as
Shakespeare’s recuperation of imagination in mind.
Carpe diem:
In an early scene in Dead Poets Society, the new English teacher, Mr John Keating (Robin Williams),
takes his class of senior boys into a hallway at the prestigious boys’ school, Welton Academy in
Vermont, and invites them to take a look at the photographs of earlier generations of students
displayed there, after he has instructed one of them, Pitts (James Waterston), to read the first few lines
of a poem from their textbook. The Latin for the first line, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”, he tells
them, is “Carpe diem”, the meaning of which is readily supplied by one of the boys, Steven Meeks
(Allelon Ruggiero). “Carpe diem”, Meeks points out, means “Seize the day”. It is at this point that the
teacher asks them to come forward and take a closer look at the photographs of sports teams, social
groups and classes of boys dating back to the founding of Welton a hundred years before, in 1859. As
they gaze at the photographic images, he reminds them that the expressions on those faces reflect the
same feelings of hope, invincibility and youthful enthusiasm that they themselves feel, so many years
later; and he poses the question, whether those boys in the photographs wasted any time in realizing
their own dreams - because, Mr Keating hastens to remind his class, they are by now “...fertilizing
daffodils”. To the disconcertment of some of the group, he emphasizes that each and every one of
them will also one day, like every member of every generation before them, “...stop breathing, turn
cold and die”.
This may sound like an indulgence on the part of a morbidly obsessive teacher, which is far from being
the case, however. Keating, whose first encounter with the boys contrasts sharply with the pedantic,
test- and assignment-orientated meetings they have with the Latin, Mathematics and Chemistry
teachers immediately prior to that, is clearly employing a variation on Brecht’s alienation principle in
2
an effort to impress on them that he does not simply intend to ‘prepare them for the final
examination’, but to impart some wisdom to them through the ‘study’ of English literature. Hence his
opening gesture as a teacher: to frame his teaching - a framing perhaps exemplified by the picture
frames, in the literal sense, from within which the faces of previous generations tellingly stare forth at
the present generation - with a lesson on the transitoriness of human life. This explains why Keating
urges the boys to lean forward and listen to their forebears whispering their “legacy” to them, namely,
“Carpe diem!”, a saying which has its classical locus in Horace: “Seize the present, trust tomorrow
e’en as little as you may” (Evans 1983:200). As suggested by his concluding ‘whisper’ on behalf of the
boys’ predecessors in the hallway, namely, “Make your lives extraordinary!”, and as we see in the
course of the unfolding narrative, Keating is encouraging the boys to set individualizing ideals for
themselves while, simultaneously, realizing them through deeds. This motif provides the narrative
impetus to Weir’s film, in the unfolding of which the confrontation between imagination and reason is
played out.
Reason:
More than one ‘model’ or conception of ‘reason’ operate in Dead Poets Society. The first and
hegemonic model, at Welton, is introduced in the course of the opening scene-sequence, when the
audience witnesses some behind-the-scenes preparations for, and part of the opening ceremony
marking the commencement of the academic year. The preparations are followed by a procession into
the hall, where most of the teachers and the boys, as well as their parents are seated. It includes
someone playing a march on the bagpipes, a teacher carrying a symbolically lit candle - ‘the light of
knowledge’, used to light the candle held by a junior boy, who ‘passes it on’ to others - and four boys,
each carrying a standard or banner bearing a single word above the school colours. These are the four
words which the principal of the school, Mr Nolan (Norman Lloyd), exhorts the boys to proclaim in
traditional fashion with the question: “Gentlemen, what are the four pillars?” Rising, the boys recite in
unison: “Tradition! Honour! Discipline! Excellence!” This encapsulates Welton’s sustaining notion of
reason.
One would be correct to infer from this veritable litany, firstly, that Welton places a high value on the
maintenance of standards set by previous generations of scholars in all the domains of school
activities, from sport and cultural pursuits to academic achievement – as attested by the first and fourth
‘pillars’, namely, ‘tradition’ and ‘excellence’. Moreover, ‘tradition’ cannot be separated from ‘honour’,
which would, presumably, derive its imperative status at least partly from the requirement to uphold
past achievements, lest dishonour befall an erstwhile ‘honourable’ (and honoured) institution. Nor
could ‘discipline’ be read separately from ‘honour’, because it is through discipline, which entails
punishment when deemed necessary, that honour is earned anew and therefore maintained. Clearly
‘education’, at Welton, is pretty much something aimed at ‘normalizing’ the individual, as Foucault
(1984:195) would say, in accordance with the perceived needs and interests of the school community,
past and present. ‘Reason’ would then amount to a mindset or a mode of behaviour which effaces the
distinctive needs and aspirations of the individual in favour of those of the school community, as
determined by the school authorities - the guardians of the school’s ‘honour’ - in conformity with the
rules that regulate pupil conduct at Welton.
From a number of exchanges between some of the boys, their parents and teachers, as well as from the
Principal’s proud exclamation, that Welton has become “... the best preparatory school in the United
States”, one further gathers that ‘Welton reason’ is determined by a context of expectations relating to
entrance requirements at the Ivy League universities and, perhaps more importantly, to a certain set of
professions, such as medicine, law, engineering and accounting. It is this, more than anything else,
which marks the prevailing model of rationality at Welton as representing a certain Enlightenment, or,
to be more specific, positivist type. It requires a certain qualification, though - one that introduces a
moment into the equation which does not sit comfortably with the rest of this model’s components.
3
Moreover, it is precisely with regard to the constituent in question that Mr Keating’s role in the
senior boys’ lives becomes decisive, given the ambivalent position that he occupies in relation to the
model of rationality exemplified by Welton.
But first the notion of ‘Enlightenment reason’ has to be fleshed out. Habermas (1985:8-9) identifies
this - the conception of reason introduced by the historical Enlightenment - with the so-called ‘project
of modernity’, which is characterized by a tripartite structure of autonomous rational spheres, namely
those of science, morality and art. This idea follows the contours first laid by Kant in his three famous
‘Critiques’ (of ‘pure reason’, ‘practical reason’ and of ‘judgement’, respectively) in the 18th century,
each of which represents an autonomous rational sphere. To this one may add a fourth moment, which,
as Heidegger (1977:21-22) demonstrated, cannot be divorced from ‘calculative’ (that is, positivistic)
science, namely the technological, the earliest manifestation of which was the industrial revolution of
the 18th century. Moreover, any characterization of Enlightenment reason which does not inscribe all
these constituents in an encompassing belief in the ‘law’ of historical progress would be incomplete
(Baumer 1977:245; 332). Needless to say, ‘positivism’, in both its 19th-century, Comtean, as well as
its 20th-century ‘logical positivistic’ guise, represents a narrowing of the Enlightenment model of
reason; one which, in our time, manifests itself in the social-scientific tendency to subject everything
to measurement (Baumer 1977:305-308; Mouton 1993:24). Although I hope to show, by way of
addressing the relationship between reason and imagination in Weir’s film, that ultimately these
spheres of rationality cannot be separated, distinguishing them enables one to see more clearly where
Welton’s allegiance lies. Evidently, judging by the didactic emphasis on measuring students’
performance, a positivistic reduction of Enlightenment rationality to a state of affairs where the
cognitive-instrumental predominates, fulfils a crucial governing function at Welton.
I suggested earlier that the description of Welton’s sustaining conception of reason requires some
qualification which introduces a destabilizing element into its ostensibly harmonious structure. This
qualification pertains to the first of the ‘four pillars’, namely ‘tradition’, for a reason that should be
obvious to anyone familiar with the differences between the historical Enlightenment and the rebellion
against it, known as Romanticism. To put it in a nutshell: tradition involves history, towards which the
Enlightenment adopted a cautiously skeptical attitude, unlike the Romantic movement, whose
champions valorized history (Baumer 1977:260-265). In so far as Welton is affiliated to an
Enlightenment conception of rationality, therefore, by embracing tradition as one of its ‘core’ values, it
(anomalously) introduces a romantic motif into this model.
Moreover, Romanticism, again in marked opposition to the Enlightenment, emphasized differences
rather than similarities at all levels: among nations, epochs as well as individuals, without necessarily
denouncing reason (Baumer 1977:283-297). For obvious reasons a positivistic approach to society and
education would not be compatible with one that emphasizes irreducible differences, which cannot,
after all, be measured. In view of what was said earlier about Welton’s ethos of suppressing individual
differences which are not consonant with the dominant ‘Welton profile’, anyone - especially a teacher
- who promoted a sense of individual destiny and the exploration of distinctive talents among the boys,
would risk facing the full force of Welton’s disciplinary apparatus. It should already be apparent that
Mr Keating, by encouraging the boys to “make [their] lives extraordinary”, identifies himself as being
a romantic and as such furthers the development of ‘tradition’ - not in the ‘normal’ (Weltonian) sense
of affirming the dominant type, but in the Romantic sense of the historically unique appropriation of
and creative contribution to traditional culture (the “powerful play” to which they may “contribute a
verse”). In doing this as their English teacher, ‘imagination’ plays a major role in Mr Keating’s
teaching practice.
Imagination:
If one considers that the human faculty of imagination was, for a long time in western history,
4
repressed (Kearney 1988), Welton must surely emerge as typical of this tendency. This is not without
its anomalies either, if Welton is taken as representing an Enlightenment-type of institution, because it
was the Enlightenment philosopher par excellence who also happened to be the historical liberator of
the imagination, namely Kant (Kearney 1988:167-177). And it is precisely his model of the
imagination that underpins Keating’s teaching in Dead Poets Society.
It is instructive to return, at this point, to two scene-sequences in the film narrative. The first concerns
a poetry lesson where Mr Keating asks Neil to read aloud from the Introduction to their collection of
poetry, written by J. Evans Pritchard, PhD., and entitled ‘Understanding poetry’. In the Introduction
Pritchard deals with rhyme, metre and figures of speech in order to set out a schema for determining
the “greatness” of a poem. He suggests using two axes, the horizontal of which represents the
“perfection” of a poem, while the vertical serves to register its “importance”. In this way, he informs
his readers, a poem by Byron might score high on the vertical but average on the horizontal, while a
sonnet by Shakespeare might score high on both, thus rendering the area covered by connecting the
points on the axes to their point of intersection larger in the case of the Shakespeare than that of the
Byron poem. In this way, Pritchard argues, one can easily learn to determine the relative “greatness” of
a poem and increase one’s enjoyment of poetry ( ! ).
It is not difficult to recognise in Pritchard’s approach the literary-critical equivalent of a calculative,
positivistic scientific approach, intent on judging everything in terms of measurable properties. This is
confirmed when Mr Keating, after painstakingly drawing the schema described by Evans Pritchard on
the board, together with the areas covered by the hypothetical poems - an activity clearly regarded by
the boys as a display of his agreement, judging by the zeal with which they all copy it in down - utters
one word, to their disconcertment: “Excrement!” “Armies of academics”, he continues with heavy
sarcasm, “going forward, measuring poetry!” “We’re not laying pipes”, he tells the dumbstruck boys,
“we’re talking about poetry”. And then, to their utter astonishment, he instructs them to “rip out that
page”. Even to a group of boys who have obviously been taught how to follow examples and
instructions, this order goes against the grain of their Welton education. And to add insult to injury,
Keating proceeds by telling them to tear out the entire Introduction from their books. When they start
doing so, first hesitantly but then with increasing enthusiasm, after the ice was broken by the daring
Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen), he informs them that it is “a battle, a war”, and that “the casualties”
could be their hearts and souls. “In my class”, he assures them, “you will learn to think for yourself
again. You will learn to savour words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and
ideas can change the world!”
This is heady romantic stuff - the kind which motivated the likes of Lord Byron to challenge fate in the
heyday of the Romantic movement. But it is not acceptable in the positivist surroundings of Welton, as
demonstrated by the consternation on the part of Mr McAllister (Leon Pownall), the Latin master,
when - alarmed by the shouting and laughing (accompanying the tearing-out of pages) emanating from
Keating’s classroom - he storms in, demanding an explanation; only to find Keating there, calmly
presiding over the vigorous iconoclasm. This episode has a sequel when, at dinner that evening, Mr
McAllister remarks to Keating that it was “an interesting class” he taught that day, “misguided though
it was”. When Keating retorts that he hadn’t taken McAllister as a cynic, the latter, momentarily taken
aback, replies: “No, not a cynic; a realist”. From this and the rest of their conversation it is apparent
that he had also, perhaps, had his own “foolish dreams”, but decided that the way to happiness lay in
disabusing himself of them, while Keating, in romantic fashion, regards such ‘dreams’ as the true
space of freedom and the source of giving a meaningful shape to one’s life. In particular, McAllister
criticizes Keating’s attempt to make “freethinkers” of the boys “at seventeen”. It is significant that
McAllister thinks of himself as a realist, if one considers that realism is the aesthetic most consonant
with the positivistic manifestation of Enlightenment thought - indeed, this could clearly be seen in the
place occupied by Courbet’s painting in relation to the so-called ‘New Enlightenment’ of the 19th
century (Baumer 1977:308-310). By contrast - and this resurrects the question of the imagination, but
5
also of reason in his teaching - Keating valorizes the enrichment of ‘reality’ by means of an
imaginative attunement to the transformative resources of literary, thought-provoking language. This
does not label him a romantic who is hopelessly out of touch with the everyday world, however. As we
shall see, he is only too keenly aware of what can and cannot be changed in this world. But on an
understanding of this crucial distinction hinges the difference between life and death, personal
fulfilment and tragedy.
In the scene-sequence where the boys are told to tear out part of their books, Keating concludes by
telling them that he has “a little secret” for them. “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute”,
he insists; “We read and write poetry because we’re members of the human race. And the human race
is filled with passion!” “Medicine, law, business and engineering”, he continues, “These are noble
pursuits and necessary to sustain life; but poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive
for....” After quoting from Whitman to emphasize his point, he ends on a powerful note, appealing to
their capacity for making imagination the source of direction and purpose in their lives. He stresses the
decisive importance of the fact that they are there and “...life exists; and identity”. Further, that “the
powerful play goes on”, and they may “contribute a verse”. Looking around at the boys’ rapt faces, he
directs a final question at them: “What will your verse be?” Judging by the expression on some of their
faces, including Todd Anderson’s (Ethan Hawke) and especially Neil’s - where growing excitement is
evident - the seeds that Keating has sown, have fallen on fertile soil.
It should be noted that Mr Keating does not advocate, in this scene, the abandonment of those
practices that exemplify pragmatic, calculative, or technical reason; on the contrary, he affirms their
necessity for sustaining human life. What he regards these professions as being incapable of, however,
is of imparting meaning or purpose to life, without which purpose they, too, would be meaningless.
For that, we must turn to and acknowledge the domain of the imagination, which (surprisingly)
includes knowing in the most fundamental sense (and even the awareness of being a self), the practice
of art as well as freedom. Art, yes; we may retort. But knowing, and freedom? How does imagination
operate here? It is illuminating to turn to Kant on this score.
Imagination presupposed by reason:
Immanuel Kant effected his ‘Copernican Revolution’ not simply by demonstrating that the world
‘conforms’ to the rational subject (instead of the reverse), but - more radically - that the so-called
‘productive imagination’ is the hidden source of our very awareness of being in a world (Kant
1978:142-143). The ‘productive’ imagination functions, for Kant, independently of perception, while
the ‘reproductive’ imagination functions where perception (experience) is concerned. In this sense the
(productive) imagination is the condition of the possibility of knowledge, including science. Moreover,
the productive imagination is responsible for establishing a bond between one’s perceptions and one’s
consciousness of oneself as the source of their unity (Kearney 1988:170). One could therefore say that
Kant has provided an argument to the effect that one’s very sense of self depends crucially on the
imagination.
For Kant, experience was possible on the basis of the combined operation of two distinct faculties of
reason, namely sensibility and understanding. Together, sensibility and understanding render
intelligible objects in space and time. The upshot of Kant’s revolutionary claims on behalf of the
imagination was that these functions of reason presupposed an even more fundamental, synthetic
activity - that of the ‘productive’ imagination. In this epistemological sense, imagination is therefore
entitled to claim priority over the pragmatic and calculative operations of reason manifested in
disciplines such as medicine, engineering and accounting. Moreover, the insight, that imagination is
the indispensable condition of all knowledge, means that it should no longer be seen, in accordance
with the tradition, as being antithetical to reason, but as being integral to it.
6
While these epistemological insights of Kant concerning imagination are not explicitly thematized in
Weir’s film, but mostly function in an implicit manner in relation to Mr Keating’s teaching, the
experience of beauty and of the sublime in relation to the imagination constitutes one of its major
themes, as it does in Kant’s aesthetics. This is especially important because of the bond between
imagination and freedom, for Keating, and the related connection posited by Kant between “ideas of
freedom” and “the works of creative imagination” (Kearney 1988:171). Kant’s specific name for these
is ‘aesthetic ideas’, which he defines as follows (1952:175-176):
...By an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which induces much
thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e. concept, being
adequate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms with
or render completely intelligible.
Kant adds (p.177) that it is in poetry “that the faculty of aesthetic ideas can show itself to full
advantage”. What does he mean? If we keep in mind that, for Kant, poetry (which “holds the first rank
among all the arts”) “expands the mind by giving freedom to the imagination”, then it is hardly
surprising to find him arguing for poetry’s capacity of “rising aesthetically to ideas” (p.191) by
providing us, through imaginative ‘play’, with a wealth of subject matter for thought - which, however,
defies any attempt at clear or adequate expression. Thus, paradoxically, poetry cannot be said to give
us knowledge of the world in the same sense as science does, and yet it provides “food for the
understanding” (p.185) by opening up unheard-of spaces of the imagination which understanding
“may turn to good account and employ for its own purpose” (p.192). ‘Beauty’ is associated by Kant
(1952:183) with the expression of such aesthetic ideas, which, in transcending nature and society,
bathe them in the light of new possibilities - possibilities that manifest the freedom of the imagination
to create its own order in contrast to that of the extant world.
One should now be in a better position to understand the claim that Mr Keating is not simply a
champion of imagination at the expense of reason, but takes care to place imagination within the
compass of reason: he affirms the necessity of the pragmatic and calculative professions, on the one
hand, but also counsels the boys that words and ideas can ‘change the world’, and argues, against Mr
McAllister, that it is only in one’s ‘dreams’ (that is, imagination) that one is ‘truly free’. By
consistently promoting the interests of poetry and imagination in their lives, he attempts to let them see
things differently, in this way helping them to find their own, distinctive voices in the face of what
could be the stifling effect of convention.
There are a number of scenes which attest to this in the film; for instance, where he gets on top of the
desk in his classroom, and invites them to do the same, in order to remind themselves that the world
can appear different from up there. The most striking of these, however, is probably the one where,
after a number of boys have had their turn to read the ‘poems’ they had been instructed to write for the
English class - some clumsy but sincere, others deliberately, defiantly, un-poetic - he tells the anxious,
self-doubting Todd to come forward so that he may be put “out of his misery”. When Todd retorts that
he did not write a poem, Keating, refusing to give up, writes on the board the sentence: “I sound my
barbaric YAWP from the rooftops of the world; W.W.” - indicating that it comes from “Uncle Walt
[Whitman] again”. Then he tells the startled Todd that he would like him (Todd) to “give us a
demonstration of a barbaric YAWP”. Leading the reluctant Todd to the podium, Mr Keating
encourages him to utter a YAWP, with Todd responding unenthusiastically in an ordinary tone of
voice at first, and then more loudly in response to Mr Keating’s relentless exhortations of “Louder!”
“Louder!” until, exasperated, he utters a stentorian “YAWP!” Conspicuously pleased, the teacher
mutters that he (Todd) has “a barbarian in (him) after all”, but, refusing to let him go, directs Todd’s
attention to a framed picture of Walt Whitman on the wall: “Look at Uncle Walt up there - what does
he remind you of?” With a mixture of coaxing and harassing, prodding and gently urging -
encouraging Todd to use his imagination - he elicits, first, “A madman”; then “A crazy madman”; and
7
finally, “A sweaty-toothed madman”, from the boy. Exclaiming that there “is a poet” in him, but still
unsatisfied, Mr Keating urges the boy to close his eyes and to describe what he sees. Haltingly, Mr
Keating’s hand covering his eyes and the teacher slowly, hypnotically, turning him round and round,
with intermittent interjections, Todd utters the words:
I close my eyes...and this image floats beside me...the sweaty-toothed madman with a stare
that pounds my brain... (“Now give him action - make him do something!”) His hands
reach out and choke me...and all the time he’s mumbling, mumbling...(“What’s he
mumbling?”) Truth...like...like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold. ([The rest of
the boys laugh.] “Forget them, forget them! The blanket - tell me about that blanket!”)
Push it, stretch it, it’ll never be enough...You kick at it, beat it, it’ll never cover any of
us...From the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying it’ll just cover your
face...as you wail and cry...and scream.
When Todd finally opens his eyes, after uttering the last few intense words, Mr Keating and the other
boys are silent, awe-struck, before him. Then they applaud spontaneously. What Todd and his teacher
achieve together, here, is nothing less than an instantiation, firstly, of Kant’s contention that
imagination is essential for a sense of self; and secondly, a demonstration of the ‘creation’ and
development (albeit brief) of an aesthetic idea in the Kantian sense. In this case, it is the idea of what
may be called the tragic human condition, exemplified by the image of a blanket that never quite
succeeds in fulfilling its purpose of imparting a feeling of warmth and comfort. Without this
imaginative effort on Todd’s (or anyone’s) part - not necessarily in such a poetic sense, but minimally
in the form of having an ‘imaginative’ grasp of one’s position in the world - one could not even begin
to exercise reason in the narrower pragmatic and calculative sense. Reason presupposes imagination,
or perhaps rather: imagination is inextricably part of reason.
In Radical Hermeneutics (1987), John Caputo makes a similar point. He wishes to locate a moment of
play, a playful moment, within reason itself (p.226):
...For it is my view that reason itself…cannot be understood for what it is apart from the
play. When the chips are down, reason finds itself without the help of established rules, on
its own, in free play, in motion, in kinesis. When the guard rails which science devises for
its comfort and guidance fail it, when it is thrown on its own, when it has nothing to fall
back on but its own ingenuity, then reason is fully at work, which means fully in play.
When Caputo speaks here of the “ingenuity” or the “play of reason”, I believe that he is on the same
terrain as Kant was with his notion of the “productive” imagination in the first Critique, and the
capacity of the imagination to produce “aesthetic ideas” in the third. In Dead Poets Society, Mr
Keating represents a position consonant with this – with Caputo’s unwillingness to relinquish reason
to those who would tie it uncompromisingly to a supposedly failsafe algorithmic formula. And the
point is: if one yields to the pressure of the representatives of positivistic reason, and agree to locate
‘play’, ‘ingenuity’ or imagination outside of reason, one has in effect surrendered to the charge that
imagination and its fruits are irrational and deserve to be regarded with suspicion; while ‘stiff-necked
reason’ assumes the self-righteous airs of lawmaker and judge at the same time. Shakespeare - to
whom I now turn - apparently knew this, too.
Reason, imagination and moral action:
What is the significance of a Shakespeare play in the film-narrative? More specifically: What does
Shakespeare’s comedy have to do with the tragedy of Neil’s suicide - after being summarily berated
and told by his intractable, authoritarian father (Kurtwood Smith) that, because of his disobedience -
playing the part of Puck in the play, despite unambiguous instructions to stay out of acting - he was
8
being taken out of Welton and enrolled in a military academy, from where he would go to university
to study medicine? What the dramatic action in A Midsummer Night’s Dream signifies, not only
confirms the inseparability of reason and imagination; it further affirms the decisive connection
between such an amplified conception of reason, on the one hand, and moral action, on the other. This
is true of the dramatic action in Shakespeare’s play, but also, in a sense negatively, in the narrative of
the film as far as Neil’s moral choices and actions are concerned. This enables one to understand that
reason only ‘works’ or operates fully when the three ‘components’ distinguished by Habermas
(discussed earlier) work together, as it were, instead of being subjected to the impoverishing effects of,
for instance, a positivistic reduction.
Shakespeare’s play enacts the transition from the ‘irrationality’ of love through the cathartic confusion
and excess of fantasy to the amplified rational ability to act in a morally mature and accountable
manner. The young lovers (Hermia and Lysander) embark on a passage from Athens, which represents
the laws of reason, through the forest, the emblem of nature as well as imagination, illusion and
excess, and emerge on the other side strangely enriched by their disturbing experiences. Some people
may scoff at this, and indeed, Theseus does (Shakespeare 1978:107), where he declares that the
“lunatic, the lover, and the poet” are all similarly possessed by an imagination that “bodies
forth...forms of things unknown” - “[m]ore than cool reason ever comprehends.” Hippolyta is wiser,
however (1978:107):
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever, strange and admirable.
Reason, in other words, has been amplified by imagination, with salutary results. Or, to put it in terms
of Kant’s insight: reason has become what it truly is, namely a faculty which includes imagination.
“They” (the lovers), says Stanley Wells (1978:34), “bring back into the ordinary world something that
they learned in the world of imagination. The illusory has its part in the total experience of reality.”
The significance of Neil’s participation as Puck in a production of Shakespeare’s comedy is therefore
considerable. By the time of the performance in the film-narrative, the audience already knows that
Neil has disobeyed his father’s explicit instructions, to concentrate on his schoolwork and not to get
involved with anything ‘extraneous’, like acting. We also know that, despite Mr Keating’s (and
Todd’s) very ‘rational’ advice - certainly not what one would expect from a wild-eyed anarchist - to
play open cards with his father, to let him understand who he (Neil) ‘really’ is, Neil has not told his
father about going ahead with acting the role of Puck. Considering the fact that Neil takes the role of a
representative of the imagination and nature’s power - in his final speech Puck exhorts the play
audience to lend credence to the play’s action through their imaginative participation - it is ironic that
he (Neil) does not go beyond playing the role of Puck to actualize an alternative to the life that his
father has chosen for him. While arguably making the imaginative leap to consider other possibilities
of action open to him, beyond his brilliant, but brief performance as Puck he does not actively engage
in the realization of those possibilities, instead of the horror (an instance of a ‘bad’ or terrible sublime;
cf. Olivier 1997:10) of suicide in the face of his father’s intransigence and lack of imagination.
Because a similar fate threatens Hermia, she and Lysander consider (imagine) alternative possibilities
that would take them outside of the reach of the ‘rational’, but harsh, Athenian law, and set out to
realize them. It is only after their ordeal with the creative, illusionistic power of the imagination - as
represented by Puck, Titania, Oberon and the forest - however, that their rationality comes into its own
for the first time, in this way enabling them to effect a reintegration with society. Neil’s suicide, in the
face of his father’s blind authority - which contrasts sharply with Theseus’ understanding authority -
precludes such social reintegration.
9
Neil’s death is all the more ironic if we keep in mind that he is one of the boys most moved and
influenced by Keating’s teaching. It is because of this teaching - or rather, his misunderstanding of it -
that he resolves to audition for the play, and to take part in it without his father’s consent, when he gets
the role of Puck. Why misunderstanding? Because, like Charlie Dalton - who takes Keating’s teaching
as giving him carte blanche for performing hare-brained practical jokes intended to demonstrate his
disdain for the school authorities, like the occasion when he stages a phone call ‘from God’ for the
Principal at assembly - he does not understand and act in accordance with the oneness of imagination
and reason. Considered in isolation from each other, reason and imagination are limited, and in
practice these limitations can have grave consequences. While Charlie eventually gets himself
expelled for his share in what the school authorities characteristically construe as the ‘cause’ of Neil’s
death, namely an alien element at Welton in the person and influence of Mr Keating, the consequences
of Neil’s misunderstanding of what Mr Keating is trying to teach them culminate in his death.
It is important to understand, here, that in addition to teaching the boys the value of beauty, of poetry,
Keating’s teaching has the further consequence of stressing the unavoidable, contingent moment of
individual appropriation of meaning; not only in the sense of ideas, but as the concrete instantiation of
decision and action. For Keating, therefore, as for Kant and Shakespeare, there is a connection
between the products of imagination, and moral action worthy of the epithet ‘rational’ in an amplified
sense.
Why then do things go seriously wrong, despite Neil’s exposure to Mr Keating’s teaching and
Shakespeare’s wisdom? Apart from Neil’s failure to act according to an imagined alternative to
deceiving his father, it happens crucially because the latter is utterly impervious to Puck’s - Neil’s -
parting words at the end of the play-performance, exhorting the audience to sustain their imaginative
relation with the dreamworld of the play to be able to lend it a certain reality in their lives. Having
clearly identified himself earlier as someone with positivist values, determined to imprison Neil in
their straitjacket, too, he has absolutely no receptivity to the suggestion that a play - and a comedy into
the bargain - has the power, like Oberon’s forest, to enlarge one’s faculties and capacity for moral
action in a manner which evinces a willingness to let others be themselves. Puck’s - Neil’s - closing
words therefore become a desperate plea to let him - Neil - be himself. But to no avail. After a half-
hearted attempt, later, to persuade his father to allow him his own way, and unsupported by a weak,
dominated mother, he retires to his bedroom at his parents’ home. It is here that the tragic scene starts
unfolding when they are asleep: opening the bedroom window to let the icy air in, bare-chested, Neil
places Puck’s headdress of twigs and leaves on his head like Christ’s thorny crown, descends the stairs
to his father’s study, takes the revolver from the drawer and ends his young life.
It is no accident that several thinkers have remarked on the fact that comedy has as its theme the
‘integration of society’ (Megill 1985:267). The function of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Weir’s
film is therefore to provide a foil, an illuminating and ironic contrast to the events in the characters’
lives, especially Neil’s. It enables one to see more clearly, as Kant might put it, the blindness and
potential destructiveness of an imagination, cut off from reason; and conversely, the emptiness and
lifelessness of reason operating without imagination. Moreover, it shows us how easily such a
separation may prove fatal, tragic, in the lives of individuals.
Conclusion:
That Mr Keating’s teaching was not in vain, despite the terrible cost of Neil’s life, is evident from the
final scene-sequence in the film. Here Keating - the main scapegoat in the aftermath of Neil’s death, is
busy gathering his things before departing from Welton. Todd takes the lead, in the face of Mr Nolan’s
apoplectic outrage, in courageously staging a symbolic expression of gratitude to Mr Keating. After an
initial outburst, he gets on top of his desk, utters the words, “O Captain my Captain”, and, followed by
10
Knox, Pitts and the majority of the class, faces Mr Keating, who acknowledges their salute.
If it is true that, as Mr Keating teaches, it is only in our dreams that we are truly free, it is equally true,
as we learn from Kant and Shakespeare, that these dreams may prepare us for the difficult decisions
we have to make in this life of human finitude. To this end, a film like Dead Poets Society could be an
admirable guide.
References.
Baumer, F.L. 1977. Modern European Thought. New York: Macmillan.
Caputo, J.D. 1987. Radical Hermeneutics. Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Evans, I.H. (Ed.) 1983. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. London: Cassell.
Foucault, M. 1984. The Foucault Reader. Ed. Rabinow, P. New York: Pantheon Books.
Habermas, J. 1985. Modernity - An Incomplete Project. In: Foster, H. (Ed.) The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays
on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend: Bay Press, p. 3-15.
Heidegger, M. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Tr. Lovitt, W. New
York: Harper Torchbooks.
Kearney, R. 1988. The Wake of Imagination. London: Hutchinson.
Kant, I. 1952. Critique of Judgement. Tr. Meredith, J.C. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kant, I. 1978. Critique of Pure Reason. Tr. Smith, N.K. London: Macmillan.
Megill, A. 1985. Prophets of Extremity. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Mouton, J. 1993. Positivism. In: Snyman, J. Conceptions of Social Inquiry. Pretoria: Human Sciences
Research Council.
Olivier, B. 1997. The Sublime, Unpresentability and Postmodern Cultural Complexity. South African
Journal of Philosophy, 16(1), p.7-13.
Shakespeare, W. 1978. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. Wells, S. Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Wells, S. Introduction. In: Shakespeare, W. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. Wells, S. Middlesex:
Penguin Books.
Filmography
Weir, P. (Director.) 1989. Dead Poets Society. Screenwriter: Tom Schulman. Touchstone Pictures.