Shakespeare's character exemplifies the consequences of unbridled ambition.

Among the most powerful images of Macbeth, Shakespeare's immortal tragedy, is that of the protagonist's bloody hands after murdering King Duncan. As he becomes aware of the crime he has committed, the murderer asks himself in anguish, "Can the blood wash away all Neptune's great ocean?" And he answers himself: "No, never, before my hand would dye red all the infinite seas, covering the green with scarlet". His wife, Lady Macbeth, will also be tormented by this indelible stain: "Away, accursed stain!" she cries in her delirium. However, she rebels against the accusing voice of her conscience: "No one can ask the power we hold to give an account". Macbeth and his wife, kings of Scotland, possess a supreme authority that would exempt them from any trial. It would seem that power places whoever holds it above good and evil. Such is the moral blindness to which the unlimited exercise of authority can lead.

Shakespeare's play confirms the famous warning that, centuries later, Lord Acton would formulate: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". In our current context, it is not unusual to see capable and educated people end up involved in scandals of corruption, influence peddling and manipulation of the truth. In a society of increasing transparency and institutional control mechanisms, misdeeds end up coming to light. Therefore, it is worth asking: What kind subject fascination does power provoke in order to make intelligent people -even people of integrity- slide down the path of corruption that will end up destroying their honor, their degree program and even their staff life?

Shakespeare, as with the classics of literature, captures with brief and precise strokes the depths of the human soul. In Macbeth we witness the moral collapse of an initially honest man. His sad story is triggered by the meeting with some witches, who sow in him the seed of ambition: "Hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king", they prophesy to him. At first, he hesitates, he does not know how such an advertisement could be fulfilled. But his wife stirs up his innermost desires and reproaches him for what he lacks: "You would like to be great, you do not lack ambition, but you lack the hatred that must accompany it". In order not to appear weak before her -or before himself-, he accepts the plan that will lead him to the crown through crime. Thus begins a spiral of evil that will only end with his death.

With each new act, Macbeth's conscience is blinding. "I am already satiated by atrocities. The horror, so familiar to my criminal thoughts no longer startles me," confesses the new king. But the most serious thing is not the bloodshed, but the denial that there is good and evil, justice and injustice. It is the deepest corruption, the one that affects one's own vision of reality.

Towards the end of the play, when the atrocities committed are manifest and he must face the consequences of his actions, he cries out: "I would like to see the order of this world destroyed". Instead of accepting the moral order, he takes the delirium of power to its ultimate consequences: daring to deny that life has meaning and value. In his famous final lament he proclaims: "Life is only a shadow, passing by; a poor actor who, proud, consumes his turn on the stage, never to be heard again. It is a story told by a fool, full of noise and fury, which means nothing". These words, which anticipate Nietzschean echoes, reveal the desolation he had reached. By clinging to this nihilistic proclamation, he is exempted from accountability: what does it all matter, if life is a shadow, a game, a joke?

A few years ago, a candidate who would later be elected president of a European country confessed in an interview how relieved he was to know that he would not have absolute power, since he would have to account for his decisions. He was aware of the danger that power represents for those who wield it. For this reason, he recognized that there is an ethical order superior to him: a moral framework that he had not created and could not modify at will. This subjection would protect him against the drift of corruption.

Power blinds because it atrophies the moral compass. That seems to be the dark motto of the play, condensed in the disturbing sentence of the witches at the beginning: "The beautiful is ugly and the ugly is beautiful". The biblical "Ye shall be as gods!" resounds here, or the ancient Greek hybris : the arrogance of the human being who refuses to accept limits. Macbeth is the tragedy of one who wanted to be his own law and ended up losing himself.