consider the case of Hamlet. His famous soliloquy from Act III Scene 1, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” takes on the fundamental issue of whether he should choose to live or choose to die. The very idea that he understands this as a choice open to him indicates that his culture no longer takes it for granted that God determines these fundamental facts of our existence. This is not to say, of course, that nobody ever contemplated suicide before Hamlet. But the cultural interpretation of what one is up to when one is contemplating such a thought is radically different for Hamlet than
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