Hamlet’s Potentiality

Abstract

Let me begin by thanking Jennifer Bates and Andrew Benjamin for time they've put into this session and for their generous, stimulating comments about my book.1 They have both written brilliantly about Shakespeare-Bates most prominently in Hegel and Shakespeare on Moral Imagination, Benjamin in several recent books.2 In my reply I'll refer to these publications to help contextualize questions they've raised today.Bates raises three challenges. The first has to do with sense in which and Hegel fail and/or succeed, second with Hamlet's existence or nonexistence, and third with Romantic or non-Romantic character of Kant's metaphysics. I'll respond to these challenges in order.First, success and failure. In his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel represents as beautiful soul who fails to act. beautiful and noble heart, but he lacks a powerful feeling of life. is ready for revenge, but he waits (wartet ab) and comes to firm decision.3 Instead of giving his empty intentions an outer shape, he lets himself led by external circumstances.4Hegel also says that has no inclination for rash act [raschen Tat].5 This is true of at end of Act 2, when he expresses concern that spirit he has seen may devil, but it is longer true of him in Act 5, when he not only characterizes himself as having acted rashly on ship taking him to England (rasch in Schlegel-Tieck translation) but interrupts his narration to praise rashness for its role in bringing about ends that deliberate actions fail to achieve: Rashly-/ And prais'd rashness for it-let us know / Our indiscretion sometime serves us well / When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us / There's divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will.6 These lines anticipate his later reference to special providence (5.2.219-20). They could also taken to anticipate Hegel's doctrine ofthe cunning of reason (die List der Vernunft), process by which actions based on individual passions serve ends of universal reason. But instead of picking up on Hamlet's speculative remark, Hegel sticks to his representation of as beautiful soul, referring to his alleged passivity-his allowing himself to be led by external circumstances-as state of unreality or non-actuality (Unwirklichkeit).7Bates rejects this interpretation in favor of an alternative Hegelian interpretation of Hamlet's character. In her marvelous book Hegel and Shakespeare on Moral Imagination, she argues that is not beautiful soul but an unhappy consciousness of sort that Hegel depicts in Phenomenology of Spirit. At beginning of play, skeptically rejects sullied world of changeable appearances in favor of pure world of unchangeable being. He is unhappy-or melancholy-because his scepticism is turned toward himself as well.8 Nevertheless, he stoically endures his own continued existence. When Ghost appears, it seems to offer him lifeline to world of unchangeable being despite fact that its nocturnal wanderings and diurnal confinement suggest that it too is an unhappy consciousness, unable to in peace.According to Bates, Ghost is symptom of Hamlet's unhappy consciousness. Ghosts in general are past inwardizations-intuitions, representations, memories-that have taken on an apparent life of their own.9 They cannot in peace-that is, cannot sublated-until they receive justice for past wrong(s) they personify. An additional problem with Ghost that haunts is that it asks for justice in form of revenge. According to Bates, this is spiritual shortcoming of world in which exists, symptom of what's rotten in state of Denmark.10 When kills Claudius the ghost is put to rest and Hamlet dies at peace.11 Yet does not enjoy release from drama of revenge. …