Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Humanities

Degree Program

Humanities, PhD

Committee Chair

Gibson, John

Committee Member

Beattie, Pamela

Committee Member

Adams, V. Joshua

Committee Member

Steineger, Joseph

Author's Keywords

literature and philosophy; Shakespeare; Hamlet; moral perfectionism; Stanley Cavell; philosophy in Hamlet

Abstract

Through a selection of and close reading of key passages, I offer an interpretation of Hamlet that seeks to illuminate the play as an important work of moral philosophy, and to situate the play within a strand of moral philosophy named moral perfectionism by Stanley Cavell. Indeed, Hamlet is a masterpiece of Renaissance drama, but when read with attention to moral perfectionism, the play yields additional layers of meaning. Hamlet is a “philosophical drama” that navigates the “moral calling of philosophy”—a text that seems to, almost uncannily, elicit the audience to think reflectively, to ask fundamental human questions along with Hamlet as he struggles through suffering on a path toward an expanding or fuller understanding of himself and the world. Hamlet is a perfectionist text because the play is a drama about the ‘self-divided’ crisis or dissatisfaction in the human condition—and the consequent desire to recollect, restore, and move toward harmony within and outside the self: harmony in one’s inner life (psychological, mental, spiritual), and harmony in one’s relationship with others (love relationships, family, community). This awareness of “perfection” and the consequent movement toward and desire for “perfection”—for wholeness, fulfillment, satisfaction, or even something transcendent beyond the self—often requires a deeply affecting experience, event, or period of suffering, followed by a recognition and resignation that leads to a turn (or re-turn), and a desire to traverse the difficult path toward “enlightenment” or a “more perfect state,” which requires growth in self-knowledge, concern for others, and the desire to perceive the substance of reality through the deceptive veil of appearances. Hamlet undergoes this “perfectionist journey” of ‘problem-recognition-solution’ through his exploratory moral and philosophical soliloquies and dialogues, which he uses to deal with his melancholy and despair with himself and the world; to think about and make use of the dramatic arts; to exercise and explore the reaches of language; and to process his moral and intellectual deliberation (problem and recognition). This is followed by his (resignation) and assertive actions, even unto death (resolution/solution) at the end.

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