Shakespeare, Philosopher?

Nonsense, argues Simon Critchley in an interview about his recent book, The Hamlet Doctrine:

Q: To what extent was Shakespeare a philosopher?

Critchley: He wasn’t, I think in just about every important sense. If a philosopher is someone who is trying, through the use of reason, to find a kind of intelligibility which grounds our experience of that which there is, that very general sense of philosophy as a project that is trying to uncover the true nature of reality, a metaphysical project, then Shakespeare isn’t a philosopher. Shakespeare is someone who leaves us in the dark as to what that reality might be. What we get instead is an experience of ambiguity and opacity. We look at these plays and we are left – not confused – but having been presented with a conflict between different positions where we are not told what to think.

Whereas with philosophy, we’re generally told what to think. Any commentators too, they tell you what to think, the dead philosophers as well. Drama or theatre – in many ways this is the virtue of theatre – doesn’t do that. It presents us with a situation, which is complex. Reason is on display, arguments are happening back and forth, but it’s not clear what you should think at the end of the play – I think at the end of any of Shakespeare’s plays. And that’s what audiences find intolerable about Shakespeare, about theatre in general, that’s why they won’t comment on it. They want to be told what it means.

(Hat tip: Robin Varghese. Photo of statue of Shakespeare at the center of Leicester Square Gardens, London, by Elliott Brown)