Chapter 3

Existentialism:

Soren Kierkegaard is often referred to as the father of Existentialism. This 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian wrote vast amounts on the topic of the individuals existence in a Christian world. He has much in common with Luther in that he is one of those rare thinkers who had a deep and lasting impact on people’s lives. It would be impossible to talk about existentialism without giving a brief summary of Sartre as well. Although there are many Existential writers and philosophers, I am using these two because the represent the two main threads of the philosophy. I will also be paying particular attention to Simone DeBeauoir and her book The Ethics of Ambiguity.

From Kierkegaard’s view existentialism is related more with Christianity then with philosophy. Although I will be using his philosophy as a backdrop for much of my discussion of Hamlet I will only be able to give a brief description of it. I would also like to show how it is relevant to the discussion of a Renaissance work. There is much in common between his view of despair and that of the theological despair we find in Luther and Calvin.

In Fear and Trembling we find the foundation for his knight of faith in the retelling of the story of Abraham. He uses this story to show how the individual, acting out of faith, can rise above the ethical. In his story about Abraham, Kierkegaard expressed the ethical duty of a father to his son and contrasted it with the angel’s bidding to sacrifice Isaac. If Abraham is to slay his child he will be stepping outside of the ethical. But since he is acting on his faith in God, then he is indeed outside of the ethical, but not subordinate to it. This is because of the supremacy of the religious stage over the ethical that allows the individual to act outside of the ethical. When I discuss Hamlet I will go into more detail of how this applies to the character of Hamlet.

In The Sickness Unto Death we get a rather morbid description of a man’s obsession with death. In this short work Kierkegaard talks about despair and the effects it has on a person. As in Lutheran theology to be able to despair is "regarded as surpassing excellence" (15) by Kierkegaard. For it is only through despair that one may obtain an understanding of the individuals situation in the world. But to actually be in despair "is not only the worst misfortune and misery—no it is ruination." (15) This is quite similar to the theology of the Renaissance which saw despair as a stepping stone to salvation (Stachniewski, 18) Even though this despair can ruin a person it is essential to realising Man’s finite situation and the salvation that can be found in the infinite grace of God.

This is the type of despair that Macbeth finds himself mired in. He is despairing over the choice he has made in murdering the King and forgoing any sort of ethical life. He has decided to live for his own means and does not believe in the ethical let alone the religious. But he is in despair because he knows that he is not living the ethical or religious life and fears damnation because of it. This is also paralleled with Kierkegaard’s concept of existential dread that can be found in The Concept of Dread.

In this book Kierkegaard describes dread as something that is "between possibility and reality."(Cheung, 430) It is "the alarming possibility of being able" (Kierkegaard, 40) to act on a choice that can lead to evil. It is the knowledge that one may act on one’s desires or may move on to the ethical or religious stages. As Cheung points out Macbeth is thrown back by the possibility that he could be more then Thane of Glamis (431). It is during the first encounter that Macbeth begins his experience of Kierkegaardian dread. He has wetted his pallete for power, and has begun down the path of evil that is consumated when her murders Duncan.

We also see that Banquo is more capable of accepting the words of the witches prophecy with out experiencing this dread. He does no worry that his sons will be Kings hereafter nor does he plot or scheme to fulfil this prophecy. He is a good contrast to Macbeth. Macbeth is immediately startled by the prophecy. As Cheung argues this can be seen as the beginning of dread. Macbeth’s desire grows from this point on and his deeds become bloody (430-32). He chooses to lead the life of the aesthete and become King no matter what the deed may be.

This sense of dread is also connected with despair. The possibility to do such bloody deeds can lead to despair. To experience dread is the stepping stone to experiencing despair, and therefore making the leap from aesthete to the ethical, and then to the religious. Macbeth, like Hamlet, can choose his path toward being. Both men are confronted with the possibility of progressing from the aesthete to some thing higher or to become involved in evil deeds. It is the possibility to become that is essential to an existential reading of the two plays.

Kierkegaard explains his philosophy as thus. To be able to despair means that a person is capable of reaching beyond ordinary existence and recognise his own subjectivity. But to actually be in despair is a retched experience. It is debilitating to the process of recognising the self and can hinder the human development of self recognition. A person must constantly find ways to eliminate despair (14) and to not succumb to its misery. The most important aspect of what Kierkegaard says in his book relates to despair and its relation to Christianity.

There is so much talk about wasting a life, but only that person’s life was wasted who went on living so deceived by life’s joys and its sorrows that he never became decisively and eternally conscious as spirit, as self, or…never gained the impression that there is a God and that ‘he’ he himself, his self, exists before this God—an infinite benefaction that is never gained except through despair. (26-27)

This is closely related to the theology of the renaissance, which believed that a person who worked through his theological despair would become closer to salvation then before his despair.

In his work Shakespeare, Kierkegard, and Existential Tragedy, Michel Bielmeier gives us a concise summary of the different stages of life that Kierkegaard pointed out in his philosophical corpus. He discusses the three different realms of life. There is the Aesthetic, the Ethical, and the religious. It is necessary to progress through all three stages in order to become closer to God and to eliminate Man’s despair.

Bielmeier describes the aesthetic sphere as one where man is involved in trying to live a full life within the confines of his own finite existence. (2-4) For a person and time concerned with religion it is impossible for a Man to achieve this sort of full life. He will soon come to the point where he is unable to accept his bleak situation. Only so much can be achieved through the pleasures of the finite world before a man will come face to face with the despair he is trying to hide himself from. This despair is the knowledge that Man can not gain his own salvation through personal means. Wealth and noble titles will lose their appeal and leave a person seeking for something more.

The description he gives us this first stage focuses in on the four different types of Aesthete. They are the gross, the realistic, the refined, and the melancholic (2). The gross is only concerned with the immediate pleasures of the flesh. The realistic is a step beyond the gross but is still mired in personal pleasure. But he still finds his pleasure in the finite world. The refined is a person who one who has dedicated himself to a task such as being a good ruler or dutiful husband. Although this seems like a step towards ethical being it is not because it still has s its goal the personal pleasure of the man involved. These pleasures might be title or wealth; the kind of pleasures that Macbeth is interested in. He wants to be King not for the good of his country but to have the title of King. He is not concerned with the outer world, but only with his own interests.

The final phase of the aesthete is the melancholic stage. It is here that a man comes to the realisation of the "futility of seeking infinite variety in a finite world." (3) The melancholic state is where "one experiences that which would have once been deemed impossible or at least contradictory: the emptiness of Aesthetic fullness."(3) Once a person has come to this stage he is faced with the despair of his human condition. No longer do the pleasures he fins for himself seem to be able to lead to his escape from tedium. It is this stage that will make it possible for the refined aesthete to become and ethical figure. It enables a person to see beyond his own pleasure and search for a higher purpose or duty.

Once the person has reached the point of melancholy the ethical is the next step. In Fear and Trembling we get the description of the ethical stage in a parable. In the ethical stage Man is willing to forgo personal pleasure in order to fulfil the duties that society has. Whether it is to act in an ethical nature in an unethical world or to fulfil a duty these acts belong to a person who has made the leap into the ethical. When a person acts on the ethical he is doing what is acceptable. To commit a deed or to sacrifice oneself for the law of Man is what is ethical. A man is willing to sacrifice his own desires for the greater good. What he does is understandable.

It is this self-sacrifice that separates the Aesthete from the ethical. The Aesthete would never forgo his own personal pleasure for the greater good. But by acting in this fashion he moves from being the refined aesthete to an ethical hero. His sacrifice will bring him no other pleasure then to know that what he has done is universally accepted. Unlike the King who rules for the sake of his own glory the King who rules for his people and fulfils his ethical duties because of this has moved into a higher sphere. The ethical is something that is not always pleasant to the hero but it must be done and in doing so people will understand the sacrifice of the hero (Kierkegaard, 93).

The next sphere is the sphere of the religious. It is in the religious that the ethical is suspended for the ultimate will: the will of God. In the parable of Abraham, Kierkegaard shows us what the religious hero must do. He must forgo any personal pleasure and any sort of ethical duty. When Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his son he is asked to do something that is absurd to all. His action will not be an ethical one. His sacrifice will not be understood like the ethical hero’s. But he is still willing to do the deed because he recognises the grace of God and is willing to act in faith. Abraham is willing to kill his son because he believes in the will of God.

But this action is absurd. It is unlike the situation of Agamemnon who is called upon to make his sacrifice because of an ethical duty. There is no social obligation for Abraham to kill his son. If he does so he will be heralded s as a criminal who acted absurdly. But this is the ultimate sacrifice. For the ethical hero knows that his action will be understood but the religious hero knows that what he will do will appear absurd to others. It would be as if he were told to do some ethical task and refused to do it no matter how much the ethical pushed him. If it is God’s will to disobey the ethical then for the knight of faith this action is justifiable (90-95). This is what Kierkegaard refers to as the suspension of the ethical.

Kierkegard tries to go further in describing the difference between the ethical hero and the religious hero. The ethical hero is a tragic hero. Tragic in the sense that he is willing to submit his will to the will of the greater good. By doing so he becomes a person that the public can sympathise with. We can understand why the tragic hero does what he does. The religious hero, referred to as the knight of faith, is a person who is willing to submit himself to the will of God. He ignores the ethical and the aesthetic in order to do the bidding of god. We can not identify with the knight of faith because he is acting on the notion of the absurd. His actions are unintelligible because the public does not recognise the sacrifice he is going through and why he is going through it.

In relation to Renaissance theology this is similar to the step a person must make between following the law and following the gospel. In Protestant England this would have been something familiar to anyone who had knowledge of Luther. As Snyder points out it is only through recognising that the law is not infallible that a person can fully embrace the gospel. This is a theme that is started by Paul in his letters and is adopted and expanded upon by Augustine and Luther.

The other side of Existentialism is best represented, for my purposes, in the philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre. In particular I have looked at his defence of existentialism that can be found in a short work entitled Existentialsim and Humanism. His mantra that "existence comes before essence" (26) is the basis for his description of existentialism. Behind this Sartre also has a rather harsh look at Man’s responsibility towards himself, and the rest of humanity. "When we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men." (29) This means that Man must act as though he was acting as all of humanity and as if all men could act like him. This is quite similar to Kant’s categorical imperative except that it does not have its foundation in Christian ethics.

Sartre’s philosophy is further developed into a more systematic approach towards identifying the stages of a person on the way to becoming an existential hero in DeBeauoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. In this work she sets forth certain stages that man goes through in order to create his own being. It relies heavily on Sartre’s mantra that existence proceeds essence. Using this idea as the background for her own philosophy she develops a "hierarchy among man." (DeBeauvoir, 42)

This Hierarchy consists of many categories and types of man. DeBeauvoir has set out the difference between what she terms the "sub-man" (42) and the existential hero. These categories show a similar progression of the existential man, as he progresses from sub-man to hero, as is found in Kierkegaard. The sub-man is who can be identified "by the incoherence of his plans…his acts are never positive choices, only flights." (De Beauvoir, 43) The sub-man faces dread and despair and decides to ignore the call to create his own being.

The next important classification for my purposes is the serious man (45-52). The serious man is akin to the ethical hero. He loses sight of his own being in search of something else. It is important for the serious man to be able to lose himself in some task so that he can avoid despair. Macbeth is like the serious man when he becomes deeply involved in the deed that will make him King. Hamlet adapts this attitude before his departure to England when he declares that all his thoughts will be bloody. He has become fixated on a deed.

The last phase I wish to mention of the hierarchy is the genuinely free man. The free man is a person who has confronted the anguish of existence and strives to will himself to being. DeBeauvoir describes the free man in terms to another member of the hierarchy: the passionate man. The passionate man is someone who creates a task for himself and becomes absorbed in it. He does this at the expense of sublimating the existence of others. The free man, however, does not destroy the existence of others in pursuit of being. He has his task but also recognises the need of others to create being (65-67). Hamlet becomes this genuinely free man when he recognises providence in the fall of a sparrow.