Coleridge's Iago: “Motiveless Malignancy,” or “All Will in Intellect”

Abstract

This essay looks at Iago's evil as described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as motiveless malignancy, or all will in intellect from perspective of his concept of evil. According to Coleridge, evil is closely related to will. For him will is a spiritual faculty which renders a human being an individual being. Will is individuality and the ground of selfhood and freedom. But, will is also origin of evil. Once our will accords to, and is in harmony with God's will, it is good. However, as soon as our will opposes or recoils from God's will, it becomes evil. Our will, for Coleridge, inevitably wills itself to be individual in order to be an individual being. In doing so will is not in harmony with God's will and thus fallen into Original Sin. He considers it universal condition of human beings. Coleridge argues that man is in middle state between actual good and potential evil. However, more he wills himself to forsake the Moral Law greater potential of evil in him is actualized. Iago, for Coleridge, is embodiment of his concept of evil. He is a character trying to implement his will over others without any sense of morality. Being proud of his intellect, he despises others and intends to overpower them. Coleridge characterizes this aspect of Iago as all will in intellect. Iago's ego wills himself to be a center of all. As a person having an egotistical will and a sense of intellectual superiority, he has impulse of ruining others, especially his superiors. From this will, he tries to find motives justifying his evil behavior. Coleridge himself explains difference between will and motive, arriving at a conclusion that what determines people's behavior is not motive but will. For Coleridge, Iago goes through with his evil actions not because he has found some motives for them, such as Cassio's unjustifiable promotion or Othello's or Cassio's suspectible love affair with his wife but because he is a person who has a will to dominate and control others. In this respect, what he calls Iago's motiveless does not literally mean malignancy without motives but malignancy originated from will.