This matter can be clarified by Hamlet's question, "what is a man" (4.4.33). In classical definition, man is a rational animal. That is, a human individual is a human individual only through the faculty of rationality that, in turn, constitutes the specific difference - the unique quality - distinguishing the human species - man - from all other species in the genus, animal. But as defining attribute, rationality entails moral task. For in this dispensation, the highest responsibility of the human individual is to manifest proper operation of the faculty by which he or she is an individual. As a play, Hamlet investigates the problem of human identity by invoking and challenging concepts central to the Christian-humanist and other interpretations of rationality. The result is a new formulation of the meaning of being human, but one still founded on the notion that human individuality must be construed in relation to the faculty of reason.
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Over the course of the book's eleven succinct chapters, Levy revisits key moments in Hamlet - the `To be or not to be' soliloquy, Hamlet's closet encounters with Gertrude and Ophelia, the stabbing of Polonius, the performance of The Murder of Gonzago, the Ghost's appearances - in order to illuminate them from multiple perspectives. Levy characterizes his approach as a version of `tomography, which examines cross sections of tissue at varying depths, along distinct axes, and from different points of view.' While the decision to re-examine specific passages and dramatic moments over the course of a study risks repetition and redundancy, Levy succeeds in developing a `three-dimensional representation' of the conceptual processes informing the play that becomes richer and - like Polonius's cloud shifting from camel to weasel to whale - reveals new facets with each successive reading. Uniting these case studies is a focus on the conflicts and collisions that inform the conceptualization of identity and action in Hamlet, whether between practical and speculative reason (chapters 3 and 4), passivity and opportunism (chapter 5), knowledge and ignorance (chapter 6), reason and emotion (chapter 7), reiterative and teleological time (chapter 8), subjunctive and indicative moods (chapter 9), or inward and outward manifestations of personhood (chapter 11). As the book progresses, Levy also draws attention to the broader tensions that contribute to Hamlet's epistemological trajectory; dreams, madness, death, and the `divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will' continually threaten the sovereignty and self-control of the thinking individual. By examining how the play problematizes the `appropriate exercise of reason' from these divergent perspectives, Levy brings Hamlet's `urgent search for knowledge' into sharper focus and helps to unpack the cruxes of Hamlet's ambivalence and delays....(Katherine R. Larson) --University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 79, Number 1, Winter 2010
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