Arguably, no literary work is more familiar to us than Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. Everyone can quote at least six words from the play; often people know many more. In this riveting and thought-provoking re-examination, philosopher Simon Critchley and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster explore Hamlet’s continued relevance for a modern world no less troubled by existential anxieties than Elizabethan London. Reading the drama alongside writers, philosophers and psychoanalysts—Schmitt, Benjamin, Freud, Lacan, Nietzsche, Melville, and Joyce—the authors delve into the politics of the era, the play’s relationship to religion, the exigencies of desire and the incapacity to love. It is an intellectual investigation that leads to a startling conclusion: Hamlet is a play about nothing in which Ophelia emerges as the true hero. From the illusion of theatre and the spectacle of statecraft to the psychological theatre of inhibition and emotion, what Hamlet makes manifest is the modern paradox of our lives: where we know, we cannot act. The Hamlet Doctrine is a passionate encounter with a great work of literature that continues to speak to us across centuries.

About the Author

SIMON CRITCHLEY is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. His many books include Very Little... Almost Nothing, Infinitely Demanding, The Faith of the Faithless, and The Book of Dead Philosophers. JAMIESON WEBSTER is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is the author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis. She has written for Cabinet, The New York Times, and many psychoanalytic publications. She teaches at Eugene Lang College.

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