Hamlet Struggles with Nothing

Hamlet Struggles with Nothing

Shakespeare’s Hamlet continues to generate volumes of commentary, and deservedly so. The play offers many layers and levels of meaning, stimulating much thought and debate four-hundred-plus years later. While most of the conversation about Shakespeare’s Hamlet revolves around the question of Hamlet’s sanity and the dynamics of revenge, I would like to examine the play with a different lens to try to expose any philosophical conclusions Shakespeare may have been trying to establish.

One of the central philosophies explored in Hamlet is Existentialism. Existentialism, according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is “a philosophical movement… centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will.” In other words, Existentialism is mainly concerned with the questions of the individual, death and human existence, genuineness, perception and nothingness, and indeterminism. Existentialists believe we live in a meaningless and random world. They believe humans do not answer to a god and are completely free in their own actions.

According to Existentialists, existence precedes essence. In other words, everything comes in as a blank slate and develops an identity through experience, actions, and consequences of our actions. There are no concrete social or moral laws for Existentialists. Humans are inherently free, but, fearing that freedom, they often choose to deny it. The complete freedom of choice and opportunity brings responsibility, and therefore, anguish. The character Hamlet is Shakespeare’s vehicle for exploring these existential issues, although Existentialism was not a formalized philosophy when he wrote the play. The “existential” issues and questions, however, have been around for hundreds of years. Shakespeare was one of the first to express them artistically.

This makes the play all the more...