“Ocular Proof” and the Dangers of the Perceptual Faith

Abstract

Merleau-Ponty begins The Visible and the Invisible, naturally enough, by interrogating the notion that “we see the things themselves, the world is what we see.” Of such commonsense statements, Merleau-Ponty asserts that “if we ask ourselves what is this we, what seeing is, and what thing or world is, we enter into a labyrinth of difficulties and contradictions.”¹ Rather than confront these difficult questions, the natural temptation is to retreat into the safety of what Merleau-Ponty termed “the perceptual faith,’ a belief in the existence of the material world ostensibly confirmed through the senses.² In Othello, Shakespeare dramatizes how something like Merleau-Ponty’s “labyrinth of difficulties and contradictions” complicates the relationship of ethics and vision. The play specifically foregrounds the early modern struggle over the contradictory nature of vision as both the most direct conduit to the world as it is and the sense most susceptible to illusion and misinterpretation. In the following pages, I examine how Othello’s ethical failure stems in large part from his inability to understand the problematic relationship between vision and truth, and ultimately vision and ethics. If, as I argued in the last chapter, Measure for Measure represents one of Shakespeare’s most significant meditations on the conflict between codified morality and individual ethical decision making, in Othello the playwright turns his attention to the question of what constitutes an acceptable ground for moral judgment.

Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ.

Shakespeare, Othello, 3.3.322-24