All for Nothing

All for Nothing
Author: Andrew Cutrofello
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2014-08-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0262526344

Hamlet as performed by philosophers, with supporting roles played by Kant, Nietzsche, and others. A specter is haunting philosophy—the specter of Hamlet. Why is this? Wherefore? What should we do? Entering from stage left: the philosopher's Hamlet. The philosopher's Hamlet is a conceptual character, played by philosophers rather than actors. He performs not in the theater but within the space of philosophical positions. In All for Nothing, Andrew Cutrofello critically examines the performance history of this unique role. The philosopher's Hamlet personifies negativity. In Shakespeare's play, Hamlet's speech and action are characteristically negative; he is the melancholy Dane. Most would agree that he has nothing to be cheerful about. Philosophers have taken Hamlet to embody specific forms of negativity that first came into view in modernity. What the figure of the Sophist represented for Plato, Hamlet has represented for modern philosophers. Cutrofello analyzes five aspects of Hamlet's negativity: his melancholy, negative faith, nihilism, tarrying (which Cutrofello distinguishes from “delaying”), and nonexistence. Along the way, we meet Hamlet in the texts of Kant, Coleridge, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Russell, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin, Arendt, Schmitt, Lacan, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Badiou, Žižek, and other philosophers. Whirling across a kingdom of infinite space, the philosopher's Hamlet is nothing if not thought-provoking.

Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet

Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet
Author: Leon Harold Craig
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2014-07-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1628920475

Shakespeare's famous play, Hamlet, has been the subject of more scholarly analysis and criticism than any other work of literature in human history. For all of its generally acknowledged virtues, however, it has also been treated as problematic in a raft of ways. In Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet, Leon Craig explains that the most oft-cited problems and criticisms are actually solvable puzzles. Through a close reading of the philosophical problems presented in Hamlet, Craig attempts to provide solutions to these puzzles. The posing of puzzles, some more conspicuous, others less so, is fundamental to Shakespeare's philosophical method and purpose. That is, he has crafted his plays, and Hamlet in particular, so as to stimulate philosophical activity in the "judicious" (as distinct from the "unskillful") readers. By virtue of showing what so many critics treat as faults or flaws are actually intended to be interpretive challenges, Craig aims to raise appreciation for the overall coherence of Hamlet: that there is more logical rigor to its plot and psychological plausibility to its characterizations than is generally granted, even by its professed admirers. Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet endeavors to make clear why Hamlet, as a work of reason, is far better than is generally recognized, and proves its author to be, not simply the premier poet and playwright he is already universally acknowledged to be, but a philosopher in his own right.

Shakespeare's Hamlet

Shakespeare's Hamlet
Author: Tzachi Zamir
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2018
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0190698519

Does philosophy gain or lose when it is embedded within literature or embodied by drama? Does literary criticism gain or lose when it turns to literary works as occasions for abstract reflection? Leading literary scholars and philosophers interrogate philosophical dimensions of Shakespeare's Hamlet with these urgent questions in view. Scholars probe Hamlet's own insights, assess the significance of philosophy's literary-dramatic framing by this play, and trace the philosophically-relevant underpinnings revealed by historical transformations in Hamlet's reception. They focus on the play's thematizations of subjectivity, knowledge, sex, grief, self-theatricalization. Examining Shakespeare's play from a philosophical standpoint sharpens the questions the play itself so famously poses: What counts as a proper response to injustice upon realizing that whatever one does, there can be no undoing of the initial wrong? What do our commitments to the dead amount to? How to persist in infusing significance into action while grasping the degradation of death and our own replaceability? Scholars at the forefront of their fields tackle these and other questions from a wide range of viewpoints, illuminating the central concerns of one of Shakespeare's masterpieces.

Doors in the Walls of the World

Doors in the Walls of the World
Author: Peter Kreeft
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2018-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1681498014

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."— Hamlet After William Shakespeare's Horatio sees the ghost of Hamlet's father, and scarcely believes his own eyes, Hamlet tells him that there is more to reality than he can know or imagine, including ghosts. Hamlet's statement suggests that the walls of the material world, which we perceive with our senses and analyze with our intellects, have doors that open into the More beyond them. Philosopher Peter Kreeft explains in this book that the More includes "The Absolute Good, Platonic Forms, God, gods, angels, spirits, ghosts, souls, Brahman, Rta (the Hindu ontological basis for cosmological karma), Nirvana, Tao, 'the will of Heaven', The Meaning of It All, Something that deserves a capital letter." With razor-sharp reasoning and irrepressible joy, Kreeft helps us to find the doors in the walls of the world. Drawing on history, physical science, psychology, religion, philosophy, literature, and art, he invites us to welcome what lies on the other side so that we can begin living the life of Heaven in the here and now.

Shakespeare's Philosophy

Shakespeare's Philosophy
Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2006-11-28
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0060856157

Shakespeare's plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here, into six of Shakespeare's greatest plays—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest. In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare's philosophy of life and illustrates how he was influenced, for example, by the essays of Montaigne that were translated into English while Shakespeare was writing. In addition to chapters on the great plays, there are also essays on Shakespeare and gender and his plays from the aspects of psychology, ethics, and tragedy. As McGinn says about Shakespeare, "There is not a sentimental bone in his body. He has the curiosity of a scientist, the judgement of a philosopher, and the soul of a poet." McGinn relates the ideas in the plays to the later philosophers such as David Hume and the modern commentaries of critics such as Harold Bloom. The book is an exhilarating reading experience, especially at a time when a new audience has opened up for the greatest writer in English.

Hamlet's BlackBerry

Hamlet's BlackBerry
Author: William Powers
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2011-08-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0061687170

Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose a burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave. How to solve this problem? Hamlet’s BlackBerry argues that we just need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. William Powers sets out to solve what he calls the conundrum of connectedness. Reaching into the past—using his own life as laboratory and object lesson—he draws on some of history’s most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, to demonstrate that digital connectedness serves us best when it’s balanced by its opposite, disconnectedness. Lively, original, and entertaining, Hamlet’s BlackBerry will challenge you to rethink your digital life.

Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness

Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness
Author: Rhodri Lewis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0691204519

'Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness' is a radical new interpretation of the most famous play in the English language. By exploring Shakespeare's engagements with the humanist traditions of early modern England and Europe, Rhodri Lewis reveals a 'Hamlet' unseen for centuries: an innovative, coherent, and exhilaratingly bleak tragedy in which the governing ideologies of Shakespeare's age are scrupulously upended.

Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov

Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov
Author: James White
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 507
Release: 2018-11-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 900426891X

In this first full-length biography of Alexander Bogdanov, James D. White traces the intellectual development of this key socialist thinker, situating his ideas in the context of the Russian revolutionary movement. He examines the part Bogdanov played in the origins of Bolshevism, his role in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and his conflict with Lenin, which lasted into Soviet times. The book examines in some detail Bogdanov’s intellectual legacy, which, though deliberately obscured and distorted by his adversaries, was considerable and is of lasting significance. Bogdanov was an original and influential interpreter of Marx. He had a mastery of many spheres of knowledge, this expertise being employed in writing his chief theoretical work Tectology, which anticipates modern systems theory. See inside the book.