Hamlet or Europe and the end of modern Trauerspiel: On some shakespearians motifs in Walter Benjamin

Abstract

Hamlet’s character has been the benchmark against which a large part of the European philosophy has had to measure. Various authors, such as Pavel Florenskij, Lev S. Vygotskij, and Carl Schmitt, have seen in Hamlet the contradiction inherent to an unresolved epochal transition, characterized by the endless pain of an interim. My article explores the possibility of interpreting Hamlet’s time in this light, in relation to Walter Benjamin’s ideas on the German Trauerspiel. Unlike Florenskij, who reads Hamlet in a tragic manner, I follow Benjamin’s thesis that places Hamlet as the end of the modern Trauerspiel. Within this framework, the nature of modern consciousness and its relationship with truth is revealed, highlighting how Hamlet embodies the aporetic traits of modern politics, in contrast to Carl Schmitt’s premodern visión.