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Life Arts    H4'ed 7/23/13

Critchley and Webster Study Hamlet's Complicated Grief

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Plato commemorates the trial of Socrates in his dialogue known as the APOLOGY. Because Socrates was sentenced to death in the restored democracy, Plato understandably never thought highly of democracy. Subsequently, Plato wrote numerous artful dialogues, many of which featured a character named Socrates. By all accounts, Plato was a master on ancient Greek. Plato's dialogues do not include anything comparable to the chorus in ancient Greek tragedies. However, in other respects, his dialogues have a certain family resemblance to the dialogue-parts in ancient Greek tragedies. As is well known, the Homeric epics, the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY, consist mostly of dialogue. Moreover, Plato's dialogues also happen to include a number of myths. But the artful Plato is known as a philosopher, not as a playwright or a poet. Indeed, the artful Plato even provides us with the contrast of philosophy versus poetry -- which involves an unfortunate denigration of the spirit of poetry that Critchley and Webster set out to challenge by rectifying how we view tragedy. They say, "Tragedy is not some prephilosophical expression of a traditional way of life" (page 191). Using the above quote from Gorgias as a touchstone, Critchley and Webster claim that "tragedy is always something spectated; it always involves a theoretical or cognitive distance" (page 191). Here is how they explain their own reasoning: "As is well known, the ancient Greek word for "theory' (theoria) is linked to theoros, the spectator in a theater, and can be connected to the verb that denotes the act of seeing or contemplation (theorein)" (page 16). Critchley and Webster also say that "we don't believe that there is psychical existence without fantasy" (page 189). Fantasy may be involved in sublimation, which they define as "the transformation of passion" (page 200). Passion is related to desire. END OF DIGRESSION.

 

In Plato's REPUBLIC, we learn about the famous Parable of the Cave. In the Parable of the Cave, a fellow who has been chained experiences shadows, or illusions. However, he manages to work his way out of the Cave and sees the light. Now, it strikes me that when psychoanalysis works optimally, it helps people work their way free from certain illusions in their lives and see themselves and their lives clearly -- without illusions.

 

Moreover, it strikes me that Critchley and Webster are trying to see the play HAMLET clearly -- if it is possible to see it clearly. Indeed, the play seems to be designed to remind us of all the times when we are not able to see things clearly.

 

We should pause here and ask ourselves what we understand the experience of leaving the Cave and experiencing the light of the sun to mean. I understand this imagery to stand for mystic experience and mystic awareness. I understand mystic experience to be an intra-psychic experience. Both people who hold a materialist philosophic view and people who hold a non-materialist philosophic view (e.g., Plato) can have mystic experiences, because they are intra-psychic experiences. Moreover, mystic experiences can enable us to see clearly the illusions in our lives, including the illusions that we ourselves create through our verbal constructs and predications of our verbal constructs. As a result of my understanding of the light imagery in the Parable of the Cave, I consider Plato to be a mystic philosopher.

 

Basically, I accept Anthony de Mello's description of the mystic in his posthumously published book THE WAY TO LOVE (reissued Image, 2012). In the 31 short meditations in this book, Anthony de Mello, S.J., from India champions what he refers to as awareness. What he refers to as awareness is the equivalent of what Aristotle refers to as contemplation in his NICOMACHEAN ETHICS.

 

In any event, Critchley and Webster explain Freud's understanding of two kinds of love:

 

(1) narcissistic love that gives a heightened self-regard; and

 

(2) the love that exceeds narcissism and leads to a form of humility and an expenditure of desire (page 117).

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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