Judgment is both a concept and a practice. It is fundamental to law as
well as religion, and it is a key term in the development of aesthetics
and the discourse of sociality. As such, judgment has a remarkably
vibrant intellectual history. The basic premise of this seminar is that
the theater of Shakespeare and his contemporaries occupies an important
position within that intellectual history, that early modern plays and
the institution of theater have compelling things to tell us about
judgment, and that, conversely, judgment offers an illuminating
framework for thinking about a variety of early modern plays. The
audience for this seminar is broad since judgment stands at the
intersection of several different strands of early modern intellectual
culture, including law, religion, ethics, literary criticism, and
rhetoric. It will also appeal to philosophically and theoretically
inclined scholars, especially those interested in Hannah Arendt. Arendt
explored the topic of judgment in various ways throughout her career and
lectured on Kant’s
Critique of Judgment at the University of
Chicago and the New School for Social Research. The aim of the seminar
will be to map out the relationship between early modern theater and the
intellectual history of judgment through a variety of case studies.
Papers are invited on a range of topics. These might include: courtroom
scenes; judges and judge-figures; justices of peace and juries; judgment
and theatrical spectatorship; theater and the development of literary
criticism; judgment and the prehistory of taste; the legal history of
judgment; divine judgment; skepticism and other intellectual contexts;
judgment and evidence; theological considerations; judgment and
sociality; modern philosophical perspectives; medieval inheritances; the
rhetoric of judgment.
