The Tragedy of Macbeth and the Philosophy of Death
After murdering King Duncan, Macbeth is tormented by guilt. Yet he tries to rationalize his regicide. In Act 3, Scene 2, Lady Macbeth advises him to stop stressing, saying that he can’t change the past and thus should accept it. “What’s done is done” she states with unbothered assertiveness. (Though she later becomes quite bothered, going mad and eventually committing suicide in what looks like a case of self-imposed retribution.)
Macbeth responds that, for a human being in this life, it’s better to be dead. Duncan is at peace, forever escaping “life’s fitful fever.” Nothing more can harm him. It’s as if Macbeth believes he has done Duncan the favor of euthanasia, enabling him to escape the torment of the human situation — as if the utilitarian end of post-mortem peace justifies the means of treacherous slaughter.
“better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.”Macbeth assumes there is no afterlife during which suffering might “touch him further.” I’ll set this questionable point aside. Shakespeare himself addresses this question with the “There’s the rub – What dreams may come?” speech in The Tragedy of Hamlet.
Instead, I want to note that Macbeth seems to believe that life is mostly or all suffering. He calls it a “fitful fever.” Macbeth’s thought is similar to the Buddhist assertion in the First Noble Truth: life is dukkha (suffering).
If this proposition is true, then death might be a welcome solution to the fever. As Twain put it, death would be a boon. However, there is good reason to reject this claim. Arguably, human life is a mix of goods and bads, containing many intrinsic values: goods of consciousness, such as knowledge, wisdom, understanding, reasonable belief, creative activity, the direct experience of beauty; goods of friendship and family; goods of the moral life; goods of the religious life; the intrinsic value of the person; and more besides. See Frankena’s list for more examples.
Hence, plausibly, if death ends a fitful fever, that ending comes at a price: death is also a substantial deprivation. It dispossesses the dying person of intrinsically valuable human life, and of opportunities to acquire future goods one would possess were one to continue living.
I also want to raise questions about the consistency of Macbeth’s reasoning. Macbeth says that it is better to “be with the dead.” Can a dead person be among the dead? Is there a community of the dead? I address this question in detail here.
Macbeth also claims that, in death, nothing can further touch the dead person: “nor steel, nor poison, malice …” If nothing can touch the dead, then neither can peace. And yet Macbeth claims that, by killing Duncan, he has sent him to peace. How so, if peace cannot touch the dead?