1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824841103321

Autore

Cutrofello Andrew <1961->

Titolo

All for nothing : Hamlet's negativity / / Andrew Cutrofello

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Massachusetts : , : The MIT Press, , [2014]

ISBN

0-262-32605-1

0-262-32604-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (241 p.)

Collana

Short circuits

Disciplina

822.3/3

Soggetti

Literature - Philosophy

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di contenuto

Prologue: how to philosophize with a Hamlet -- Hamlet's melancholy -- Hamlet's negative faith -- Hamlet's nihilism -- Hamlet's tarrying -- Hamlet's nonexistence -- Epilogue: determinate negation and its objective correlative.

Sommario/riassunto

A specter is haunting philosophy-- the specter of Hamlet. Why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?<br /><br />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 and other philosophers. Whirling



across a kingdom of infinite space, the philosopher's Hamlet is nothing if not thought-provoking.