Othello and the Problem of Knowledge

Reading Shakespeare through Wittgenstein

Richard Gaskin (University of Liverpool, UK)

$83.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Routledge
26 August 2024

Plays & playscripts; Literary studies: plays & playwrights; Philosophy: aesthetics

Series: Routledge Research in Aesthetics

This book analyses the epistemological problems that Shakespeare explores in Othello. In particular, it uses the methods of analytic philosophy, especially the work of the later Wittgenstein, to characterize these problems and the play.

Shakespeare’s Othello is often thought to connect with traditional sceptical problems, and in particular with the problem of other minds. In this book, Richard Gaskin argues that the play does indeed connect in interesting—but also in surprising and so far relatively unexplored—ways with traditional epistemological concerns. Shakespeare presupposes a generally Wittgensteinian model of mind as revealed in behaviour, and communication as necessarily successful in general. Gaskin examines different epistemological models of the tragedy, and argues that it is useful to apply materials from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty to the analysis of Othello’s loss of confidence in Desdemona’s fidelity: Othello treats Desdemona’s fidelity as a ‘hinge certainty’, something that is so fundamental to the language-game that abandoning it results—so Wittgenstein predicts—in chaos and madness. The tragedy arises, Gaskin suggests, from treating the wrong kind of thing as a hinge certainty.

Othello and the Problem of Knowledge will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in aesthetics, epistemology, philosophy of literature, Shakespeare, and Wittgenstein.

By: Richard Gaskin (University of Liverpool UK)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 270g
ISBN: 9781032424941
ISBN 10: 103242494X
Series: Routledge Research in Aesthetics
Pages: 140
Publication Date: 26 August 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Richard Gaskin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK. He has published extensively in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of literature, literary theory and criticism, and the classical tradition. His books include Language and World: A Defence of Linguistic Idealism (Routledge, 2020), Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: A Philosophical Perspective (Routledge, 2018), and Language, Truth, and Literature: A Defence of Literary Humanism (2013).