Moral Conduct Under Conditions of Moral Imperfection

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Hamlet best illustrates the problem with which a thoughtful and morally motivated person is confronted if crime, dishonesty and betrayal flourish in his or her social surroundings. The Danish prince finds himself in a genuine moral dilemma upon learning that his father, the former king, died not of natural causes but was insidiously murdered by his own brother, Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, who now reigns over Denmark and shares the bed of the victim’s widow, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet vacillates for some time about what he ought to do. Finally, not without hesitancy and reluctance, he resolves to take revenge. To conceal his intentions, he acts as if he were crazy, astonishing the royal court with his altogether strange behavior. By doing so, however, he provokes the mistrust of King Claudius all the more. Claudius employs the Lord Chamberlain, Polonius, to whose daughter Ophelia Hamlet finds himself attracted, and two friends from Hamlet’s youth, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, to spy on him. Acting on his emotions, Hamlet kills Polonius, an unprincipled and foolish schemer. This gives Claudius a welcome opportunity to get rid of Hamlet by banishing him, guarded by Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, to England, with the intention of having him murdered there (something Hamlet’s guards are unaware of). Yet Hamlet has become suspicious. In the luggage of his companions he finds the king’s letter with the order for his murder, and he replaces it with another, instructing those to whom it is addressed to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He himself succeeds in escaping and returns to the Danish royal court. There he runs into Laertes, the son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia (who, in the course of events, had gone mad and committed suicide). Laertes, who cannot wait to take revenge for the deaths of his father and sister, becomes entangled by Claudius in a disgraceful attempt on Hamlet’s life. They persuade Hamlet into agreeing to a fencing match, not knowing that, whatever the outcome, he will die. For Laertes fences with a poisoned blade, and Claudius has a poisonous drink for Hamlet in reserve. The tragic end of the story is well known.

I would like to thank Thomas W. Pogge (New York) and Peter Strasser (Graz) for their critical comments on an earlier, German draft of this paper. Moreover, I wish to thank those participants of the Vienna Circle-Symposion in Vienna, 1993, who commented on the lecture from which this article emerged, particularly Dieter Birnbacher (Essen), Johannes Brandi (Salzburg), Georg Graf (Salzburg), Anton Leist (Zurich), and Julian Nida-Rümelin (Göttingen). Last but not least, I wish to express my special gratitude to Stanley L. Paulson (St. Louis, Göttingen) for his endeavours in improving the English version of the paper.