The Truth of Illusion
Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster, The Hamlet Doctrine: Knowing Too Much, Doing Nothing
Verso, 288pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781781682562
reviewed by Joel White
The history of the stage and screen production of Hamlet has been haunted by the exclusion of the ambiguous in favour of the particular. These exclusions have facilitated the movement from what is arguably a scattered constellation of ideas in Shakespeare’s original text into a Hamlet with one organising theme. They act to rationalise and produce a coherent meaningful form from the fragmentation of reflection that appears throughout the play. The Laurence Olivier film, for instance, entirely removes Fortinbras, the Norwegian prince who claims sovereignty from Hamlet’s dying voice, in order to focus on Hamlet’s internal deliberation and not to muddy the ending with any political obtrusions.
The capacity to exclude the overtly political in Hamlet (although often a political gesture itself) is largely a consequence of the rigidly melodramatic historical period in which Hamlet was originally compiled – the baroque. Hamlet, at least in Quarto 2 and the first Folio, is an ambiguous, unclear, and equivocal play that adjourns before finishing and lacks tragic redemption. Its indefinite form is characteristic of this petrified historical period, a feature that lead Walter Benjamin to distinguish ancient tragedy from the baroque Trauerspiel (mourning-play) - a trans-European genre that dominated the 17th century. As TS Eliot writes, ‘few have admitted that Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet only secondary.’ To praise philosopher Simon Critchley and psychoanalyst Jamison Webster’s Hamlet Doctrine, then, is to praise its affinity to the problem of Hamlet – the ambiguity of the play. For although the book exhibits an organising idea, that gathers around Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of a ‘Hamlet Doctrine’ - that ‘knowledge kills action’ and that ‘action requires the veil of illusion,’ - much of this book is presented as a scattered collection of philosophical and psychoanalytical ideas and reflections, the ambiguity of which does due justice to Shakespeare’s Trauerspiel.
An explicit mention of the ‘Hamlet Doctrine’ appears twice in the book. The first is in reference to GWF Hegel and the second in reference to its original author, Nietzsche. The first, found in a two-page chapter entitled ‘Hamlet is a Lost Man,’ draws attention to Hegel’s observation that Hamlet’s ‘noble soul was not made for ... carrying out his resolve.’ This resolve being the revenge against his uncle and the political rebalancing of the state of Denmark. Critchley and Webster’s argue that what Hegel catches sight of is in fact the Nietzschean ‘Hamlet Doctrine’. In other words, ‘the corrosive dialectic of knowledge and action where the former disables the latter.’ They argue that an insight into a fundamental ‘truth’ incapacitates Hamlet’s action to the point where it induces a ‘disgust’ with existence. The unfolding of this ‘truth’ does not occur until their engagement with Nietzsche later in the book, but what is at stake in the earlier reference to Hegel is the claim that Hamlet is incapable of fulfilling his own role as tragic hero. Following Eliot, instead of blaming Hamlet (the character) for the failure of the tragic, Critchley and Webster grasp the important point that one might accuse Hamlet (the play) as incapable of fulfilling its tragic function: ‘The final scene of Hamlet … is not the triumph of some Christian idea or providence nor is it any rebirth of Attic tragedy… Hamlet is a Trauerspiel whose force is tragicomic and whose macabre ending verges on the melodramatic.’
This argument, developed from Benjamin’s distinction between ancient tragedy and Trauerspiel, developed earlier in the book, stems from Benjamin’s claim that ‘only Shakespeare was capable of striking Christian sparks from the baroque rigidity of the melancholic.’ Critchley and Webster do not accept Benjamin’s claim, which pivots tentatively on Hamlet’s allusion to special providence, and for this reason comprehend- perhaps more than Benjamin - the internal logic of this play: Hamlet is not an ancient Attic tragedy, no break between historical or mythical ages occur and the emergence of a new ethical and political community is denied by Hamlet’s dying voice and the continuation of sovereignty. As they rightly state, Hamlet is a Trauerspiel.
Now to understand the ‘truth’ that Critchley and Webster hinge their reading of Hamlet on, and thus The Hamlet Doctrine itself, one has to bypass the central chapters on Jacques Lacan and Freud in order to concentrate on a brief chapter toward the end of the book entitled ‘Lethargy and Disgust’. This chapter, starting with a long citation from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, establishes that which creates the condition for inaction, namely, knowledge of the ‘Dionysian void.’ The Dionysian void is reached through transgressing the ordinary boundaries of existence, and is described by Nietzsche as the ‘chasm of oblivion that separates everyday reality and Dionysian reality.’ Dionysian reality is thus defined by looking truly into the essence of things which, contrary to the Platonic transcendentals of the One, the Good and the True, negates being, or the purpose of being. It regards ‘being’ as absurd. It is due to this knowledge, the knowledge of the absurdity of existence, that the Dionysian man is incapable of acting. To act disgusts him, he feels it to be ‘ridiculous or humiliating’; to be asked to put right a world that is out of joint. Action requires the veils of illusion, and illusion for Critchley and Webster requires the theatre.
If philosophy, as Hegel writes ‘is its own time apprehended in thoughts,’ and these thoughts are to be grasped dialectically, viz., in movement, then the putting-on-stage of Hamlet might be considered the very movement with which to catch the conscience of the time. Theatre is the illusion of truth represented as truth, it thus allows for the philosophical unfolding of thought through its theatrical movement. As Critchley and Webster point out, tragic poetry is the step towards thinking dialectically, and thinking dialectically is the thinking of historical time. The truth expressed by the theatre is therefore the truth of historical time made sensuously accessible to the community, only this is a truth masked as illusion. If any sense is to be made of the ambiguity of Hamlet then the truth of the illusion has to be put into confrontation with the truth of Dionysus. For this reason if we are to act we require the illusionary nature of the theatre that can access the movement of time – in other words, dialectics. It is for this reason that Plato was so fearful of the theatre for he fully grasped what it means to be a spectator. That is, not to watch the One, the Good and the True, but to experience the inner workings of historical time and thus to be emancipated by the sensuous experience expressed by the truth of theatre - dialectics. For they who control the sensuous expression of history – art – control power.
The breadth of Critchley and Webster’s scholarship in The Hamlet Doctrine is to be highly commended; it is an ideal accompaniment to any philosophically engaged reading of Hamlet. One is presented with a constellation of ideas that are both rich in philosophical variety and definitional clarity. Nevertheless, in order to rationalise this breadth one is compelled to betray the book’s affinity to the ambiguity of Hamlet, and thus Hamlet itself, and concentrate on a particular. If one particular from The Hamlet Doctrine is to be emphasised, then, it should be the transgressive power of the theatre. For the theatre reveals the truth of illusion; a truth that can emancipate the spectator by willing him to act.
The capacity to exclude the overtly political in Hamlet (although often a political gesture itself) is largely a consequence of the rigidly melodramatic historical period in which Hamlet was originally compiled – the baroque. Hamlet, at least in Quarto 2 and the first Folio, is an ambiguous, unclear, and equivocal play that adjourns before finishing and lacks tragic redemption. Its indefinite form is characteristic of this petrified historical period, a feature that lead Walter Benjamin to distinguish ancient tragedy from the baroque Trauerspiel (mourning-play) - a trans-European genre that dominated the 17th century. As TS Eliot writes, ‘few have admitted that Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and Hamlet only secondary.’ To praise philosopher Simon Critchley and psychoanalyst Jamison Webster’s Hamlet Doctrine, then, is to praise its affinity to the problem of Hamlet – the ambiguity of the play. For although the book exhibits an organising idea, that gathers around Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of a ‘Hamlet Doctrine’ - that ‘knowledge kills action’ and that ‘action requires the veil of illusion,’ - much of this book is presented as a scattered collection of philosophical and psychoanalytical ideas and reflections, the ambiguity of which does due justice to Shakespeare’s Trauerspiel.
An explicit mention of the ‘Hamlet Doctrine’ appears twice in the book. The first is in reference to GWF Hegel and the second in reference to its original author, Nietzsche. The first, found in a two-page chapter entitled ‘Hamlet is a Lost Man,’ draws attention to Hegel’s observation that Hamlet’s ‘noble soul was not made for ... carrying out his resolve.’ This resolve being the revenge against his uncle and the political rebalancing of the state of Denmark. Critchley and Webster’s argue that what Hegel catches sight of is in fact the Nietzschean ‘Hamlet Doctrine’. In other words, ‘the corrosive dialectic of knowledge and action where the former disables the latter.’ They argue that an insight into a fundamental ‘truth’ incapacitates Hamlet’s action to the point where it induces a ‘disgust’ with existence. The unfolding of this ‘truth’ does not occur until their engagement with Nietzsche later in the book, but what is at stake in the earlier reference to Hegel is the claim that Hamlet is incapable of fulfilling his own role as tragic hero. Following Eliot, instead of blaming Hamlet (the character) for the failure of the tragic, Critchley and Webster grasp the important point that one might accuse Hamlet (the play) as incapable of fulfilling its tragic function: ‘The final scene of Hamlet … is not the triumph of some Christian idea or providence nor is it any rebirth of Attic tragedy… Hamlet is a Trauerspiel whose force is tragicomic and whose macabre ending verges on the melodramatic.’
This argument, developed from Benjamin’s distinction between ancient tragedy and Trauerspiel, developed earlier in the book, stems from Benjamin’s claim that ‘only Shakespeare was capable of striking Christian sparks from the baroque rigidity of the melancholic.’ Critchley and Webster do not accept Benjamin’s claim, which pivots tentatively on Hamlet’s allusion to special providence, and for this reason comprehend- perhaps more than Benjamin - the internal logic of this play: Hamlet is not an ancient Attic tragedy, no break between historical or mythical ages occur and the emergence of a new ethical and political community is denied by Hamlet’s dying voice and the continuation of sovereignty. As they rightly state, Hamlet is a Trauerspiel.
Now to understand the ‘truth’ that Critchley and Webster hinge their reading of Hamlet on, and thus The Hamlet Doctrine itself, one has to bypass the central chapters on Jacques Lacan and Freud in order to concentrate on a brief chapter toward the end of the book entitled ‘Lethargy and Disgust’. This chapter, starting with a long citation from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, establishes that which creates the condition for inaction, namely, knowledge of the ‘Dionysian void.’ The Dionysian void is reached through transgressing the ordinary boundaries of existence, and is described by Nietzsche as the ‘chasm of oblivion that separates everyday reality and Dionysian reality.’ Dionysian reality is thus defined by looking truly into the essence of things which, contrary to the Platonic transcendentals of the One, the Good and the True, negates being, or the purpose of being. It regards ‘being’ as absurd. It is due to this knowledge, the knowledge of the absurdity of existence, that the Dionysian man is incapable of acting. To act disgusts him, he feels it to be ‘ridiculous or humiliating’; to be asked to put right a world that is out of joint. Action requires the veils of illusion, and illusion for Critchley and Webster requires the theatre.
If philosophy, as Hegel writes ‘is its own time apprehended in thoughts,’ and these thoughts are to be grasped dialectically, viz., in movement, then the putting-on-stage of Hamlet might be considered the very movement with which to catch the conscience of the time. Theatre is the illusion of truth represented as truth, it thus allows for the philosophical unfolding of thought through its theatrical movement. As Critchley and Webster point out, tragic poetry is the step towards thinking dialectically, and thinking dialectically is the thinking of historical time. The truth expressed by the theatre is therefore the truth of historical time made sensuously accessible to the community, only this is a truth masked as illusion. If any sense is to be made of the ambiguity of Hamlet then the truth of the illusion has to be put into confrontation with the truth of Dionysus. For this reason if we are to act we require the illusionary nature of the theatre that can access the movement of time – in other words, dialectics. It is for this reason that Plato was so fearful of the theatre for he fully grasped what it means to be a spectator. That is, not to watch the One, the Good and the True, but to experience the inner workings of historical time and thus to be emancipated by the sensuous experience expressed by the truth of theatre - dialectics. For they who control the sensuous expression of history – art – control power.
The breadth of Critchley and Webster’s scholarship in The Hamlet Doctrine is to be highly commended; it is an ideal accompaniment to any philosophically engaged reading of Hamlet. One is presented with a constellation of ideas that are both rich in philosophical variety and definitional clarity. Nevertheless, in order to rationalise this breadth one is compelled to betray the book’s affinity to the ambiguity of Hamlet, and thus Hamlet itself, and concentrate on a particular. If one particular from The Hamlet Doctrine is to be emphasised, then, it should be the transgressive power of the theatre. For the theatre reveals the truth of illusion; a truth that can emancipate the spectator by willing him to act.