Bolduc, Paula

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The Cruelty of Mercy: Oxymoronic Paradoxes

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Salve Regina UniversityDigital Commons @ Salve ReginaMercy Illuminates Faculty and Staff1-1-2008The Cruelty of Mercy: Oxymoronic ParadoxesPaula BolducSalve Regina University, bolducp@salve.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.salve.edu/mercyPart of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty and Staff at Digital Commons @ Salve Regina. It has been accepted for inclusionin Mercy Illuminates by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Salve Regina. For more information, please contactdigitalcommons@salve.edu.Recommended CitationBolduc, Paula, "The Cruelty of Mercy: Oxymoronic Paradoxes" (2008). Mercy Illuminates . Paper 10.http://digitalcommons.salve.edu/mercy/10The Cruelt y of Mercy :Oxymoron ic Par adoxesPaula BolducThere is a tradition in the Middle East of telling teaching stories inwhich Nasrudin is the key character. The stories are humorous and derivedfrom the wisdom of the Sufis, as well as from Persian, Arabic, and Turkishcultures. The stories are as timeless and universal, as the lessons they teach. Thefollowing brief Nasrudin story best expresses the fundamental idea in this essay.One day Nasrudin’s boat overturned. Nasrudin did not know how toswim and nearly drowned when, just in time, a local fisherman saved him. Fromthat day on the fisherman pestered Nasrudin for this and that, constantlyreminding him of the fact that he had saved Nasrudin’s life. Finally, after yearsof this, the beleaguered Nasrudin wailed, “I wish I had drowned! That would’vebeen less cruel.”1Mercy is not what it seems. I argue that mercy is accompanied bycruelty, though not always, and to do that I turn to the wisdom of Seneca,Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Shakespeare. My primary examples, however,focus on what Portia in The Merchant of Venice says and how she says it.The mercy that Shakespeare and Machiavelli identify is not capriciousor blind. Mercy is not always good for the people, writes Machiavelli in ThePrince.2 Machiavelli reasons that there is a necessity for “cruel mercy.” What hewrote is something like a practical “How to Rule Wisely” manual for first-yearprinces. Chapter 15 of The Prince addresses the proper conduct and thejudicious use of cruelty and mercy in order to be kind:But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful tohim who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the realtruth of a matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republicsand principalities which in fact have never been known or seen.3Machiavelli’s ultimate concern here is the good of the state. Real mercyis both merciful and cruel, and to be used only if the situation warrants it. ForMachiavelli, the ruler who lives by virtue alone “soon meets with what destroysM ERC Y I LLUM I NAT ES35him among so much that is evil;” and a dead prince is a failed state. As there isno day without night, there is no mercy without cruelty. Although therelationship between mercy and cruelty is enough to boggle the mind, onething is for sure: mercy without cruelty does not work.At the end of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, a wiser Portia returnsto Belmont and deploys what here is referred to as “cruel mercy.” Machiavelliand Shakespeare knew well that the truly “noble,” and, of course, the “well-read”(the creative reader), would find judicious application of cruelty not onlypractical, but also kind. In what they write there are echoes of the ancientwisdom of sages like the first-century stoic, Seneca. In his essay “On Clemency”Seneca writes: “A ruler’s clemency in itself makes men ashamed of wrongdoing,and punishment seems more grievous if it is inflicted by a kindly man.”4 The“clemency” that befalls this ruler’s subject, though it may fall “as the gentle rain,”5is not exactly benign. Similarly, Montaigne believed that virtue is “somethingnobler than the propensity for good.”6 In his essay, “On Cruelty,” Montaigneexplains that the good that is done to others out of unreflective “naturalmildness and good nature” is naïve and untested. With this idea in mind, itwould seem that Shakespeare, who read Montaigne, fashioned Portia in themold of Montaigne in The Merchant of Venice.It is not out of some benign “happy disposition” that Portia arguesmost effectively in Venice’s court of justice. On the contrary, she is thoroughly“provoked and stung to anger.” Who would not be annoyed with suchreactionary seekers of revenge as Shylock, Gratiano and company? But, Portiatakes in hand her indignation and uses what “weapons of reason” she has. Theinteresting thing here is that not only is she outraged at Shylock, but also at themeddlesome Antonio and the impetuous Bassanio. In the end, Portia managesto save the lives of both the Christian Antonio and the Jew Shylock, but notShylock’s freedom of conscience, or his reputation and, most likely, hislivelihood. Moreover, we should not forget that Portia is, from now on,Bassanio’s guarantor of financial well being.If all we hear in Portia’s legal argument is the sweet melody ofChristian mercy, then we are selectively deaf to the plainness and brutishordinariness of her language. Moreover, we might ignore, as well, what Lorenzocalls in the play’s final act, her “bad voice.” This “bad voice” refers to the cry ofa cuckoo, the bird that was associated in the Elizabethan period with adulteryand betrayal. This reference to the cuckold underscores the vulnerability ofhuman relationships as well as the need to examine our assumptions aboutS A LV E R EGI NA U N I V ER S I T Y36national, sexual, ethnic, and religious differences by listening more closely tothose who think, act, and believe differently.In this essay, Portia’s “bad voice” is that of the “moral outsider.” Like thecuckoo that lays it eggs in the nests of other birds, a sort of fowl-usurper (Pardonthe pun.), Portia makes illicit use of Venice’s judicial system; she is a fraud whodeliberately appropriates mercy to her own ends. The suspicion is that Shylock,as an outsider, is already corrupt, liable to take advantage, and concernedultimately only with the welfare of his fellow Jews. Their voices, nonetheless, arealso the voices of valiant rebels who riot against readily-received ideas andparalyzing traditions. According to Richard Weisberg, in his article titled“Antonio’s Legalistic Cruelty: Interdisciplinarity and ‘The Merchant ofVenice’:”Portia is, perhaps fascinated by Shylock’s excessive yet somehowsolid insistence on his bond, committed to undoing the moneylender’sextreme application of what might otherwise be a righteous andethical reliance on written law. But she is equally repulsed by the overlyflexible oathbreaking of the Christian characters.7Portia finds, between the extremes of the strict application of the lawand unconditional mercy, the advantages of “cruel mercy.” She knows that bothShylock’s distempered voluntary causation of suffering”8 and the equallynoxious abuse “of the right to punish”9 hang together. The Duke fails toneutralize Shylock’s intransigence by giving the Jew back his life and insteadfines him, confiscates half his property and gives it to Antonio. According to the“Alien Statute” in Venice at the time, the state had the right to take Shylock’s lifeand to claim his property. Nothing in the law, however, stipulated a forcedconversion to Christianity, one of three conditions demanded by Antonio. Ourtendency to focus exclusively on mercy ignores the blatant cruelty in havingsuch a statute in the first place. Moreover, Portia, and surprisingly Shylockhimself, seem oblivious or inured to this diktat. Their silence is deafening.Nevertheless, Weisberg’s Portia grows weary of “Christian distortionof the law – where ostensible ‘mercy’ quickly is debased to forms of legalizedcruelty unimaginable” to a Jew. Christian casual flouting of the law in Venice,along with Antonio’s subtle overstepping of the Alien Statute, adds a distinctivepoignancy to the often-cited “Hath not a Jew eyes?” passage in Act 3:Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hand, organs, dimensions,senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with thesame weapons… If you prick us, do we not bleed? .... And if you wrongM ERC Y I LLUM I NAT ES37us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resembleyou in that…. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall gohard but I will better the instruction.”Antonio and his friends, who have in the past abused Shylock and,likely, his kin, may remind us of what Pope Benedict XVI recently said of thevictims who were sexually abused by Roman Catholic clergy. The New YorkTimes quotes the Pope: “Indeed the victims of hardship and despair, whosehuman dignity is violated with impunity, become easy prey to the call toviolence, and they can then become violators of peace.”10 Although the contextsare admittedly very different, the emphasis of this essay is on the similaritybetween Shylock as a socially abused Jew and the persons sexually abused asvictims likely to become, in turn, social or sexual predators.Responding to Shylock’s refusal to be merciful, Portia becomes hermost eloquent in her memorable speech:The quality of mercy is not strained.It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath. It is twice blest:It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomesThe throned monarch better than his crown.His scepter shows the force of temporal power,The attribute to God himself;And earthly poser doeth then show likest God’sWhen mercy seasons justice.Having effectively argued her case, Portia leaves Venice to return toBelmont. Once the dissimulating lover-lawyer, she now is the rich heiress of theenchanted, idyllic Belmont.In her dealings with both the Christians and the Jew in court, andlater in Belmont at the play’s end, Portia is obviously disgruntled with tritedefinitions of love, mercy, and justice. Hoping to have left behind one legalritualistic sacrifice, she must now face another rite: the hyperbolic oath-swearingbetween Antonio and Bassanio. The first thing Bassanio says to Portia when hesees her is: “Give welcome to my friend, / This is the Man, this is Antonio/ Towhom I am so infinitely bound” . Portia knows well who he is, having rescuedhim from his bond with Shylock. Still, she must now deal with this mostinterfering and tiresome of men. Antonio, the ubiquitous meddler, ever tooS A LV E R EGI NA U N I V ER S I T Y38quick to provide “surety” for Bassanio’s hasty promises of love and fidelity, ishardly a corrective for an irresolute Bassanio. Portia confronts him with theplain and honest fact of his inconstancy: “If you had known the virtue of thering, / Of half her worthiness that gave the ring, / Or your own honor tocontain the ring, / You would not then have parted with the ring.” Bassanio’sears must be ringing – each line ends with a “ring”! He is not the only onereminded of the preciousness of “bonding.” Gratiano, the blowhard, must alsoheed her stern reminder: “You were to blame – I must be plain with you – / Topart so slightly with your wife’s first gift, / A thing stuck on with oaths uponyour finger, / And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.” A thing “so riveted” inflesh is bound to hurt if kept and hurt if broken: a thing of cruel mercy – anunkind kindness – an oxymoronic paradox.An older, more magnanimous Justice John Paul Stevens, in his recentopinion regarding the use of lethal injection, argues that though experience hastaught him otherwise, “the imposition of the death penalty represents ‘thepointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions toany discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returnsto the State [is] patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violativeof the Eight Amendment.” Although he once sided with the majority in votingon the death penalty in 1976 as a new Supreme Court Justice, he now findsreason to reverse his opinion. More than 30 years later, Justice Stevens findsthat he is “bound” to agree with the majority, but also “bound” to the “voices”that call for an end to the death penalty. Like Justice Stevens, a more experiencedPortia in Belmont understands that even in Belmont “cruel mercy” is kind. Shebecomes the voice of human solidarity at the instant she challenges thetraditions of exclusivity subtly ritualized in Venice’s court of justice. Shakespeare,Machiavelli, Seneca, and Montaigne recognize that the complex messiness offorging human relationships that are based on an intended merciful fairnessthat in the end is liable to conceal cruelty. These writers teach us about the darkside of mercy.I would like to conclude with another Nasrudin story. This one iscalled “The Reason.” Nasrudin was looking to borrow some money from a richman. When the man asked why, Nasrudin answered, “To buy an elephant.” Therich man said: “if you need a loan, then you can’t afford an elephant.” To whichNasrudin replied: “I came to get money, not advice.”11M ERC Y I LLUM I NAT ES39notes1 A Nasrudin story (originator Idries Shah) as told to me by Dr. James Hersh, Philosophy Dept.Salve Regina University, on 4/18/08).2 Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince. Everyman Library, ed. Ernest Rhys with introduction by W.K.Marriott (London: Temple Press, 1938), ch. 17, p. 65.3 Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, p. 72.4 Lucius Seneca, “On Clemency,” in The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, trans. Moses Hada (NY:Doubleday, 1958), p. 163.5 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. A Longman Cultural Edition, ed. LawrenceDanson (NY: Pearson/Longman, 2005).6 Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Book II, “On Cruelty”. (NY: Penguin, 1958), p. 174.7 Weisberg, Richard H. “Antonio’s Legalistic Cruelty: Interdisciplinarity and ‘The Merchant ofVenice’”, College Literature, Winter 1998, Vol. 25, Issue 1, n.p. Academic Search Premier.EBSCHO. 31 March 2008 http://library.salve.edu/ .8 Barrozo, Paulo D., “Punishing Cruelly: Punishment, Cruelty, and Mercy.” (original paperHarvard Law School Paper No. 08-04) Criminal Law and Philosophy in Business and ScienceMedia B.V. Social Science Research Network eLibray: 2007:http://ssrn.com/asbstract=1005550, n.p. 31 March 2008.9 Ibid. n.p.10 Fisher, Ian and Warren Hoge, “ In U.N. Address, Pope Stresses Importance of DefendingHuman Rights”, The New York Times, Saturday, eastern ed., April 19, 2008, p. A17.11 Shah, Indries, The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, (NY: Penguin, 1968), p. 13.S A LV E R EGI NA U N I V ER S I T Y40

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The Cruelty of Mercy: Oxymoronic Paradoxes

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