The Plague of Custom: Morality in King Lear

Morality continues to be at question every day in our present society. Every day, it seems there is a new cultural Litmus test where we have to weigh one value against another. There seem to be two distinct moral paths developing in this country as the American political spectrum polarizes: one fueled by the pursuit of liberty, and the other fueled by the pursuit of equality. To me, this says that morality is defined predominantly by culture, as the cultures of two political ideologies continue to self-separate and self-segregate in a runaway case of confirmation bias. To substantiate this claim, I have to dive further into the world of historical literature, to collect more data points about this alleged cultural morality.

Again, I must ask the question: What does King Lear teach me about the cultural context of morality? Shakespearean England was a society predicated by honor, power, and heredity. It is no surprise, then, that these factors should build much of the moral and social code of the time. King Lear explores some of the more heinous immoral acts conceived at the time.

Bastardy is a strong subject in the Bard's tragedy. It represents a loss of honor, and creates conflict in power and heredity. A child born without wed parents comes across as a social stigma in Lear, so much so that the bastard himself, Edmund, receives the cultural downpour for his father's transgression. Edmund becomes tortured by the way society treats him: he is a second-class human being to them. He bemoans "the plague of custom," under the "curiosity of nations to deprive" him of basic rights. Early in the play, he was to receive no inheritance or respect from his father, who ultimately was responsible for Edmund's standing.

Today, such a stigma is nowhere near what it was to Edmund. The curse "base" has fallen out of usage with no similar modern substitute. It stands to reason that the words we use as pejoratives show which groups are socially disfavored (hence the modern shift to no longer use "gay" as an insult as the gay community raises to mass approval). However, I would venture to say that the stigma that was on bastardy still exists to some extent, as marriage is still the accepted norm for creating families. Such a taboo today would exist on teen mothers and mothers-to-be, because those groups, according to our culture, can not be sustainable, and are therefore immoral.

Would it be fair to say that morality is shaped by culture, and culture is shaped by changing sustainability? Could morals change as our capacity to survive as a society increases? Perhaps bastardy in Elizabethan England was immoral because society could not have survived if everyone had extra-marital relations. Perhaps the historical taboo of being homosexual has similar roots in survival: if everyone were homosexual, the species would not continue. But then, why is not having children in a marriage not considered immoral, by that logic? Why do some survival-related stigmas exist, but not others?

It would seem I need more literature to finally figure this out once and for all. I like to think that our culture is ultimately philosophically understandable. Hopefully there is an answer to the morality question after all.