Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 16 Number 2, August 2015
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Cutrofello, Andrew. All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity. Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press, 2014. 239 pp. $22.95
Reviewed by
University of Winnipeg
This book is a spectacular intellectual performance. Andrew Cutrofello, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago (and author of Continental Philosophy), takes the reader on a joyride through the twists and turns of Hamlet’s negativities; his melancholy; his negative faith, his nihilism; his tarrying; and his non-existence. All of these negativities are discussed by way of many philosophers who over time have addressed the problems of Hamlet and/or who have discussed problems like Hamlet’s, including Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Derrida, Badiou, Žižek, and many, many others.
An impressive array of thinkers is brought to bear in an attempt, it seems, to crack open the problems of negativity, rather than to give answers; Cutrofello riffs philosophical. This is all quite delightful and one does get nuggets along the way, such as, “Compassion cannot be commanded but arises, when it does, from a dim awareness that everything is fundamentally identical with everything else.” (P. 69).
In total, for me, the book is most enjoyable thought of as a kind of intellectual garden sprouting a plethora of insights but among such dense growth and over such a vast territory that it seems impossible to get an overview. The book is arduous reading for an interested non-philosopher like myself, tarrying outside the halls, and I suspect exacting even for a professional philosopher.
I’m really not sure what it all adds up to - perhaps simply the joy of watching erudition having fun? This is worthwhile as far as it goes. Even philosophers are allowed their fun, of course, and it is fascinating to read how a whole array of great thinkers has dealt with aspects of Hamlet’s issues. It can get wearing, stylistically repetitive, even in this small volume with 61 pages of notes. You forget at times that this is about a character in a play.
Read from a dramaturgical perspective it is difficult to get a sense of how it could be put to use. This may be an unfair task to put to a book that sets out to do something else, but it is one that I fear a lot of readers who pick up a book with Hamlet in title would like to get a clearer sense of. These readers will find themselves somewhat disappointed, if dazzled by Cutrofello’s performance.