What is ambition?
Ambition is dreaming of becoming more than what one
now is. Macbeth dreams of becoming king, though he is
now Thane of Glamis, and later Thane of Cawdor. Why
does he dream of becoming it then? : Because he feels
his role, which he is now playing (his actuality), is more
than that of a subject in terms of its meaning.
Macbeth compares the meaning of his title with its
actuality: though he is a subject, actually he plays the
role of king. The meaning comes from his sensation of
the role in the relationship with others including
Duncan. If his role is bigger than it was before, his
meaning of his self needs to adjust itself accordingly.
Macbeth is now the only man who can protect the
kingdom and save it from a foreign invasion, which is
the role King Duncan should have taken but couldn’t.
Without him, Duncan would no longer be king.
Compared with the present role of King Duncan, his
role now exceeds that of subject; it is as much as the
role of a king. So he feels that there’s a kind of
discrepancy between his role and its actuality; so his
title should be other than what it is now to fit in the
reality of it.
In this case, by his comparison he becomes a sign. For
him, his role as subject is a sign which has actually the
meaning of other sign, king. Though he is actually king
in terms of his role he is now playing, he is still thane, a
subject. Unlike his title, his role refers to the meaning of
king, so that his title should be changed into king, and
yet he is now not a king. This discrepancy tempts him
to be a man fit for the actual. A sign to function as a
sign, however, should negate its property, its
physicality, that is, Macbeth himself. For Macbeth to
become king, he should first deny (negate) that he is
now a subject of Duncan, because a subject cannot be
itself and king at the same time by its concept. The
concept of subject is the opposite of that of king. This
means that he should destroy the base upon which he
relies to become other than what he is. What he is is
the consequence of his relationship with Duncan and
other lords. So only by negating himself can he become
king; in other words, he should forget, to become king,
that he is a subject of Duncan.
The discrepancy between the meaning of a title and its
reality, however, doesn’t stop here. Macbeth feels he is
not safe as a king; he fears someone might know his
dirty deed of killing Duncan and try to kill him. A king
who feels he is not safe as a king is not a king, because
the fear comes from the fact that he has not yet fully
achieved becoming king, though he has got the title.
Even as king, Macbeth thinks his title as king and its
actuality don’t agree. His kingship is still imperfect; He
is actually on the way to becoming king. Macbeth’s
sense of his imperfection is expressed in the fear for his
future in particular: Banquo’s descendants shall be
kings, instead of his, as the Weird Sisters foretold. He
thinks he killed Duncan for Banquo’s descendants; for
him he is actually not a king but a man who is helping
Banquo’s descendants become kings. Conscious of his
reality, he becomes a sign again; he thinks whether his
title as king is equivalent to the reality of it or not. He is
a sign which should always refer to the meaning of
king. As a king, he is the man who should feel he is king
in every way; he should be king whose meaning
conforms to his reality, but he is not. Thus come
inhuman atrocities committed by him; He is not a man
but a devil because he has negated himself, stopped
being a human being, which means he becomes a
being out of the human society which gives him
meaning as a man.
As far as Macbeth is conscious of the imperfection, he
cannot be himself, because a sign to function as a sign
must negate itself. Macbeth always negates himself; by
the negation, he is now an alienated being, alienated
from his wife and his people. Macbeth thinks nothing of
them; he only thinks of becoming a perfect king, but
perfection in reality is impossible as there is no 100%
pure gold in the real world. Alienated from the milieu,
his kingdom, by which he is what he himself is,
whatever it is, he is
nothing but a sign -- a sign this time which has no
meaning because it goes out of the context which gives
it a meaning. He is now an empty signifier. By killing
everyone who might be the cause of his fear, he is
actually a man who is sawing the branch on which he is
sitting; he is king and rebel at the same time. He
signifies nothing.
And what is king? Is he a man who has the title of king
no matter what he is? No. The reason why a man is
called king is that people in the kingdom accept him as
such. Of course, there are some who don’t agree. But it
doesn’t matter; even rebels themselves are proofs that
the man is king. It’s because he is king that they can
rebel against him. In other words, he is a relative being.
Whether a man is king or not is a matter of acceptance,
agreement, and consensus. When most of the people
accept him as king, he is king. Then the king is as much
as they are not king. He is king and not king at the
same time because the king and his people share the
same power, neither of them possessing it entirely.
There’s no absolute being in the universe as there is no
absolutely 100% pure gold in the world. Subjects,
though they are not called king, are kings as much as
the king is not (subject). By the same token, a king is
king and not king at the same time. A beggar may
share only a small portion of the power but he is king
as much as the king is not a beggar. The king is king
because there are those who are not kings. This is what
‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’ means. A is non A. This is
Shakespeare’s way of showing what a thing really is.
The whole play is based on this principle of
contradiction, which Aristotle said we should avoid in
our discourse. In this way, however, Shakespeare tries
to show what a man really is. It seems to be
contradictory and paradoxical, but it’s a way of showing
the reality of a thing not conceptually but in its
actuality.
Excerpts from Chuang Tze’s ‘Making All Things Equal’
To use a finger to show that a finger is not a finger is
not as good as using a non-finger to show that a finger
is not a finger. To use a horse to show that a horse is
not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show
that a horse is not a horse,7 Heaven and earth are one
finger; the ten thousand things are one horse.
