The end of Hughes' essay was fascinating to me. He is describing the debate about Nothing that takes place in The Tempest. "What is justice, if the soul is artificial?" This is just one of the questions that he raises, but it makes you think. If we really are just tottering on the edge of the world and the void, what should we do? Who should we be? Should we follow the rules of our systems? If everything we know is founded on nothing, to me then everything is rendered completely and utterly meaningless. It reminds me of the famous sonnet that examines mortality and time. None of us can escape the ticking of the clock and the knowledge that our lives are temporal. So what are we going to do about it?
Sonnet 12
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
Hughes' ends his essay with the somewhat obvious yet important observation that these thought and this confusing debate about Nothing has led to countless discoveries in algebra, astronomy, and optics and it has given us limitless poetry and drama. Pretty cool, I guess :)
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