Hamlet as Philosopher

This chapter assesses Hamlet's reason and his accomplishments as a philosopher. It outlines the rudiments of philosophy as the early moderns understood it, before establishing a dialogue between these models of philosophy and the text of Hamlet. In and through the figure of Hamlet, William Shakespeare exposes not only the limitations of humanist philosophy but the inadequacy of most attempts to supplant it at the cusp of the seventeenth century. The chapter then examines Hamlet's efforts to understand the nature of the universe to which he belongs, the status of humankind within it, and the nature of being. After probing Hamlet's deliberations on vengeance, it follows his turn towards questions of religion and of theology, and especially towards those of providence. One of the many remarkable features of Hamlet's attachment to providence is that he takes it not to be the harmonious but largely inscrutable force through which the universe was created and now operates, but as something to be invoked and appropriated in service of his moral deliberations.