Hamlet and the Philosophical Interpretation of Literature

Abstract

The huge tradition of philosophical readings of Hamlet is focused here on the theme of unknowing as crucial to Shakespeare’s epistemology. In contrast with the rising paradigm of experimental science, which Hamlet and fellow student Horatio bring into the play and which informs even the method employed for proving the guilt of the king, Hamlet dramatizes the advent of a new model of unknowing knowing by faith in “providence.” This constitutes a transformation of an older paradigm of prophetic knowledge by revelation, which comes to Hamlet in the form of the ghost of his father, a figure arousing doubt rather than certainty, and hesitation rather than action. With Hamlet’s blind trust in what he calls “providence,” the metaphysical order is no longer an object of knowledge, and yet it can ground belief and can still guide a kind of action that proves finally to be efficacious, even if tragic. Philosophical readings by Cutrofello, Critchley, Pascucci, Lukacher, and others are shown to line up with this non-objective kind of knowing, or more exactly unknowing, which nevertheless renews a kind of prophetic dimension of revelation in poetic language.

Keywords

• prophecy
• apophasis
• modern thought
• negative poetics