“Take physic, pomp”; Terry Eagleton on materialism and solidarity with the poor

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
                                          King Lear. Act 3, scene 4

If power had a body, it would be forced to abdicate. It is because it is fleshless that it fails to feel the misery it inflicts. What blunts its senses is a surplus of material prosperity. If it has no body of its own, it nevertheless has a kind of surrogate flesh, a thick, fat-like swaddling of material possessions, which insulate it against compassion…

Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man

That slaves your ordinance, that does not see

Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly;

So distribution should undo excess,

And each man have enough.           (Act 4, scene 1)

If our sympathy for others were not so sensuously depleted, we would be moved by their deprivation to share with them the very goods which prevent us from feeling their wretchedness. The problem could thus become the solution. The renewal of the body and the radical redistribution of wealth are closely linked. To perceive accurately, we must feel; and to feel we need to free the body from the anaesthesia which too much property imposes on it.

Terry Eagleton. After Theory. New York: Basic Books, 2003. 183-84