The Ethical Imagination in Shakespeare and Heidegger

Description

While large bodies of scholarship exist on the plays of Shakespeare and the philosophy of Heidegger, this book is the first to read these two influential figures alongside one another, and to reveal how they can help us develop a creative and contemplative sense of ethics, or an 'ethical imagination'. Following the increased interest in reading Shakespeare philosophically, it seems only fitting that an encounter take place between the English language's most prominent poet and the philosopher widely considered to be central to continental philosophy. Interpreting the plays of Shakespeare through the writings of Heidegger and vice versa, each chapter pairs a select play with a select work of philosophy. In these pairings the themes, events, and arguments of each work are first carefully unpacked, and then key passages and concepts are taken up and read against and through one another. As these hermeneutic engagements and cross-readings unfold we find that the words and deeds of Shakespeare's characters uniquely illuminate, and are uniquely illuminated by, Heidegger's phenomenological analyses of being, language, and art.

Andy Amato is Senior Lecturer in Humanities and Philosophy at The University of Texas at Dallas, USA.

Heidegger was the first major German philosopher since the time of Herder not to celebrate the poetic genius of Shakespeare. Yet as Andy Amato brilliantly demonstrates, there are important parallels between Shakespeare's plays and Heidegger's ways of thinking. -- Andrew Cutrofello, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, USA Elegantly written, fastidiously developed and cogently argued, Amato preforms an expressive enactment of the intimate, needful relation between philosophy and the poetic for the birth of new ideas and the envisioning of an ethical world. This book illuminates how we can be transformed by opening to the embrace of language. It is as an incisive philosophical commentary, contributing clarity to essential philosophical questions and Heideggerian motifs. Amato restores passion to language and philosophy. -- Janae Sholtz, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Alvernia University, USA