The Hamlet Doctrine

Resumen del libro

What Shakespeare's greatest play tells us about the modern world
Arguably, no literary work is more familiar to us than Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. Everyone can quote at least six words from the play; often people know many more.

In this riveting and thought-provoking re-examination, philosopher Simon Critchley and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster explore Hamlet's continued relevance for a modern world no less troubled by existential anxieties than Elizabethan London.

Reading the drama alongside writers, philosophers and psychoanalysts Schmitt, Benjamin, Freud, Lacan, Nietzsche, Melville, and Joyce the authors delve into the politics of the era, the play's relationship to religion, the exigencies of desire and the incapacity to love. It is an intellectual investigation that leads to a startling conclusion: Hamlet is a play about nothing in which Ophelia emerges as the true hero.

From the illusion of theatre and the spectacle of statecraft to the psychological theatre of inhibition and emotion, what Hamlet makes manifest is the modern paradox of our lives: where we know, we cannot act.

The Hamlet Doctrine is a passionate encounter with a great work of literature that continues to speak to us across centuries.

Biografía del autor

Titular de la cátedra de Filosofía Hans Jonas en la New School for Social Research de Nueva York, enseña filosofía en la Universidad de Tilburg (Países Bajos) y es colaborador habitual de The New York Times. Tras sus primeros trabajos dedicados al horizonte ético-político de la deconstrucción, ha explorado las diversas caras de la muerte y el humor, para finalmente preguntarse por la actualidad de la tragedia en el mundo moderno. Prueba de esto último es Tragedia y Modernidad (2014), publicado en esta misma Editorial. Entre sus libros traducidos al castellano cabe mencionar también Muy poco casi nada (2007), El libro de los filósofos muertos (2008), La demanda infinita (2010), Sobre el humor (2010) y Apuntes sobre el suicidio (2016).