Recently, while reading The Search for an Eternal Norm, by Louis J. Halle, I was struck by a long passage about Hamlet, which delves into the deeper issues of the play and, in so doing, explores some basic issues of life itself. Because the excerpt is lengthy, I'm dividing it into two posts.
Although Halle doesn't mention it, his ruminations can be profitably compared to Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy.
The first part of the passage, excerpted below, is relevant to the never-ending battle between outsiders and the defenders of orthodoxy in any field, including the militant skeptics who guard the halls of Science.
The second part, to be excerpted in my next post, deals with the issue of death, as it presents itself to a mind like Hamlet's — that is, to any sensitive, introspective nature.
Incidentally, Halle's British spelling has been Americanized by my voice-recognition program (I dictated the passage using Dragon Dictate for Mac, which works well).
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Hamlet lives in the world we all know, the world of corruption satirized in Voltaire's Candide, the world epitomized in Hans Christian Andersen's story, The Emperor's New Clothes. The corruption consists of the pretenses of those who constitute society, whether at a Renaissance court or in the fashionable circles of our cities today.
Especially in the competitive upper ranges of society, the positions that people take on the issues that confront them, the attitudes they strike, are based, not on a concern for what is true, but on the objective of gaining credit for “right thinking.” In an elementary form this can be observed among young intellectuals in the lobbies of any concert-hall after a symphonic performance. Each in his comment tries to give an impression of critical appreciation, using a fashionable vocabulary to show that he is one of the initiated.…
I recall how shocked I was, when myself still a child, to read in Edward Bok's autobiography that, as drama critic for a New York newspaper, he sometimes did not bother to attend the performances of which he wrote his criticisms, relying on his native ingenuity to carry off the bluff. Most book-reviewers rarely do more than sample the books they review. They depend on a kind of bluff that becomes second nature to them, adopting the style of magisterial authority and indulging in little tricks of allusion and citation to suggest their mastery of the book's subject.
This universal pretense is no less prevalent in the councils of government, where the current fashion in right thinking quite overrides truth.…
In this corrupt world, anyone who seeks to emulate the child of the Anderson tale, and to make his career on that basis, will find himself facing barriers that are all but insurmountable. He will find himself intellectually isolated, standing in opposition to the common mind that governs the society in which he is trying to make his career. He will find that he has aroused, among the insiders who represent the common mind, the same atavistic instinct of hostility toward the outsider that is in evidence on any school playground.
The first barrier that he must face is that of confidence in his own faculties; for few of us have the self-assurance to believe even in the simple testimony of our own eyes when everyone around us is admiring the Emperor's new clothes. Many of us who have sat at the council-tables of government have had the experience of not daring to speak up when everyone else agreed on what appeared to be plainly untrue, fearing that we had missed some essential point in the argument or overlooked some factor evident to all the others–fearing that we would show ourselves unfit for our jobs.
The second barrier is in the power of those who represent the common mind to deny the outsider advancement in his career and opportunities for publication, or to discredit his work if it appears as a book for review. Where the standards of book-reviewing are pragmatic rather than principled, the first question to present itself to a reviewer is whether the author is “one of us,” and on the basis of the answer he decides whether the author should be honored or discredited.…
Again, if the man who thinks for himself wants a university appointment or hopes for promotion he is likely to find the way barred by those who represent the common academic mind.…
The pretenses to which I have referred are related to the process of forming the collective mind. The individual, as one member of a group that has to formulate its collective opinions on the issues to which it addresses itself, is involved in the politics of negotiation and compromise at the level of the common mind, which is never high. In these circumstances, the question is never one of truth but of what attitudes to strike; and the question of what attitudes to strike is a question of what will best promote the group's power in society, a power with which its members have identified themselves. This is what comes to constitute right thinking.
We take this kind of thing for granted in the behavior of political parties, but it has hardly been less true of French painters for generations past.…
Literary intellectuals, for their part, have belonged to categorically defined and recognized ideological groupings.…
The same inescapable corruption pervades and all pervades all professional and vocational circles. We take for granted the shoe-manufacturer's conviction that the general interests of society require a protective tariff against foreign shoes. But Plato, himself, was sure that philosophers should be kings. Anyone who suggests to a gathering of physical scientists that the world might not be better off if it were run only by people with their training and discipline will get a cold reception. Anyone who suggests to political scientists that they are not qualified, as such, to take over the decision-making functions of government will find that they regard him as unsound. There will be pursed lips and a shaking of heads.…
In all academic communities a distinction may be made between what everyone says and what is true. The former is, in a word, “correct.” Students at examinations, or in the papers they submit, may be well advised to aim at “correct” answers. The training they are undergoing is primarily in the orthodoxy that such answers represent. Again, wherever an ideological establishment rules the only question that arises is that of what is “correct,” and the very word “truth” disappears. So a sort of scholastic formalism develops the corrupts the intellectual enterprise of mankind. It has been so in all ages, in our own no less than in Galileo's.
The barriers to survival, in his career, of an individual who thinks for himself are not necessarily insurmountable. In exceptional circumstances, involving luck or the special providence referred to by Hamlet, he may at least be able to keep going for the normal duration of his career. But the barriers are so formidable and intimidating that, in all but extraordinary cases, there can be no question of not respecting them.
Every society is in constant danger of being finally overcome by the corruption I have described. That is why every society needs, in addition to the orthodox establishments that give it stability, a Socrates or a Voltaire for its constant purgation. I am not sure, however, that a Socrates or a Voltaire would have much chance of surviving in the highly organized mass-societies of our day, unless briefly and by virtue of an exceptional combination of circumstances. In a simpler age, Socrates did not need a publisher, a lecture-platform, an academic stipend, funds to support his studies; and although the difficulties and dangers that confronted Voltaire were in some respects even greater than those that would confront him today, they are different difficulties and dangers.…
What I have attempted to show above is the corruption that prevails at all the levels of power and influence in our world today, as in ancient Greece, in Rome, in Medieval and in Renaissance Europe, in ancient Persia, in Byzantium, in Confucian and in communist China. This corruption is always tending to engulf us, to become total. The saving grace, time and again, is that of the incorruptible individual who thinks for himself, is under an inner compulsion to utter what he thinks, and still survives long enough to be heard.…
Hamlet stands alone in opposition to his environment, unable to adjust himself to the existential world of corruption, unable to make the convenient thinking of others his own. His mind is dominated by a normative model of the world, a conception of what it was intended to be.…
The paradox of Hamlet's position was that, to realize the normative world in action, he would have had to embrace all the sordid devices of the existential world. He would have had to practice corruption to overcome corruption. He would have had to adopt a pragmatic means of conspiracy: secrecy, double dealing, hypocrisy, and violence. He would have had to give himself entirely to the struggle for personal power, thereby corrupting himself….
It is a standard dilemma of the world that has followed the expulsion from Paradise that one can hold to one's ideals, avoiding their betrayal in practice, only by withdrawal, by refusal to participate. Hamlet, moved by a revulsion against the corruption of the existential world, was consequently inhibited from embracing its devices even in the name of ushering in the ideal world.
Was this weakness?
Surely it was. I myself, living in a pragmatic post-paradisial world, have had to discipline myself all my life to acknowledge what is required to keep the world going, to maintain its essential function from year to year, from generation to generation–what is required simply to ward off chaos. I have had to discipline myself to reject the idealist's contempt for workability (for what he sometimes calls “expediency”), which he can maintain only so long as he, himself, remains aloof from direct responsibility for keeping the world going.… I can recognize Hamlet's misfortune in being born to such responsibility, but I cannot quite allow myself to commend him for his refusal to accept it. On the face of it, such a refusal is indeed weakness….
If, however, the question is not one of approval but of sympathy, then I must acknowledge myself on Hamlet's side. I, myself, have been increasingly free, as he was not, to follow Polonius's precept ["to thine own self be true"], and I have never had the slightest compunction at withdrawing, in the second half of my life, just as far as circumstances allowed me to.…
I question, moreover, whether the pure man of action represents the highest type of mankind. To me, the glory of our species is the human mind at the extremes of self-conscious awareness represented by a Socrates, a Montaigne, a Pascal, a Shakespeare–or Hamlet. To me Voltaire represents a higher type than Napoleon, and much as I admire Pericles I would set Thucydides above him. This is to say that I set Hamlet above Fortinbras, although it would have been better if Fortinbras have been born Prince of Denmark. It is not that mankind does not depend alike on its Fortinbras and its Hamlets; but it depends on the former for its present salvation, on the latter for its ultimate salvation. We must save the world from day to day, and for that we need our Fortinbras; but if we are ever to emerge from the tragic dilemmas of this post-paradisial age it will only be by that constant enlargement of our understanding for which we depend on the few thoughtful, introspective, and incorruptible minds that are able to work in something approaching the ideal of academic detachment. Hamlet's personal tragedy was that this, his true vocation, was denied him by inescapable circumstances.
[from The Search for an Eternal Norm, Louis J. Halle, 1981]
Ha! I thought, up until the last line, that you, MP, had written this and I was most impressed. Still, thanks for posting it. Sometimes the only solice a free thinker has in the world of corrupt group think is knowing that there are others out there who understand and feel the pain.
Another form of solice would be winning the big lotto and being so stinking rich that one could pursue whatever endeavor or form of self expression that one desired - no, that one's soul and passion demanded - in the manner that one desired; unfettered by the all pervasive web of corrupt dogmatic social pressure.
In fact, one could then set the tone, if not the exact message, of the group think as mediocre minds in our society tend to pay obedience to those with money, but then again, who wants an entourage of slavish fools?
Any how, an interesting perspective on Hamlet's suffering.
Posted by: no one | October 04, 2011 at 03:50 PM
"This is to say that I set Hamlet above Fortinbras, although it would have been better if Fortinbras have been born Prince of Denmark."
The author of this statement would seem to be more of a thinker than a man of action so I am not surprised at his preference for his own type.
I think it's impossible to say which type is better for civilization. Certainly thinkers have helped and hurt civilization. Communism being an example of the latter. It is the men of action who have gotten civilization into trouble following those thinkers but it is also the men of action who have gotten civilization out of trouble fighting them.
This reminds me of an old joke: There are four types of people defined by the two characteristics "intelligence" and "industriousness". Intelligent and industrious people are the people who make history. They contribute leadership and progress to civilization. Those who are intelligent and not industrious also make a great contribution. They make the best engineers, always finding ways to get more done with less work. Even stupid lazy people can be useful. If they are supervised well, they can do useful work. However the curse of humanity are those who are stupid and industrious.
I've see the part about stupid hardworking people to be true, much to my own dismay.
"Most book-reviewers rarely do more than sample the books they review. "
tldr
rotf lmao
Posted by: jshgfcre98ijyds | October 04, 2011 at 07:25 PM
Very interesting analysis, but personally, I wouldn't want to be too holier-than-thou. To be born human is to be born to lie. Even Hamlet pretends to be mad - his "antic disposition" leads to Ophelia's death.
Posted by: Ben | October 05, 2011 at 08:44 AM
The author is right in some ways, but I think the actual situation is much, much more complicated than he realizes.
We could make a square graph with two axes: Orthodox/Heterodox and True/False. Then we'd be closer to the actual situation.
Orthodox/True. The author doesn't acknowledge this quadrant, but it probably makes up about 80% of human knowledge. For the most part, sticking to the CV is a good idea. I'm talking about in many non-controversial cases. For example, kitchen towels shouldn't be made of nylon, and one shouldn't feed a dog chocolate bars.
Orthodox/False. This is what the author is rightly complaining about.
Heterodox/True. This is what the author is rightly celebrating.
Heterodox/False. The problem that the author is not really acknowledging. People advocate heterodox but false positions all of course think of themselves as holy rebels, but most are idiots. For every Voltaire, there are 1,000 idiots who think they have something to contribute but don't.
The close-minded skeptics are of this ilk. They think they are rebelling against the bane of religion, etc., but in reality they are wrong and forming their own insular orthodoxy at the same time.
Plus, there is probably also a z-axis of Known/Unknown, which further complicates things.
I like to think of myself as a hermetic rebel, but I try also always to keep in mind that one of the great pitfalls of the ego is to think that one is different and righteous while one is in fact just stupid.
Posted by: Matt Rouge | October 05, 2011 at 01:29 PM
Posted by: Roger Knights | October 06, 2011 at 10:41 AM
Something that I find troubling is that not many people seem prepared to commit themselves to changing the social mentality away from conformism. :-(
Posted by: Hrvoje Butkovic | October 11, 2011 at 11:14 PM