relativism on Hamlet

             The speaker of this statement is Hamlet. It appears in a conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who visited Hamlet by Claudius’s order to spy on him. In this statement Hamlet is saying that because “good or bad” (relativism) depends on how people think, there is no mutual concept of “good or bad”. To Hamlet whether the world is to be seen as a full of confines and lies or not, it all depends on what people think about the world they are living. To Hamlet consequence of contemplation about what is right or wrong, or good or bad seems to be more important than the action itself. Action without the sense of morality is undesirable. Toward the end of the play Hamlet stop thinking about the validity of his motivation toward his action, and decide to let things go so much as “let God do the thinking” idea.
             Hamlet relates his action with relativism (being or seeming) in “To be, or not to be: that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind of suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms and arrows of outrageous fortune, and by opposing end them” (3.1.57). Here he is posing two choices of action; the action based on Stoic philosophy, constrain his passion so that the action will be healthy and upright will, or based on his public obligation to remove the rottenness in Denmark. Later in this scene he considers a third possible solution to his problem – suicide. But his thinking of what would happen after death puzzles his will of suicide. The statement is “But that the dread of something after death, the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will” (3.1.78). Hamlet contemplates endlessly what would be the proper and most effective way to solve his problem. By doing too much thinking he won’t be able to take an action, and he is well aware of it as in “thus conscience does make co...

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