The Return To The Authentic Self

The mystery of Hamlet's procrastination in avenging his father has been perplexing generations of readers and critics and at the same time, has produced many heated debates and still more controversial explanations. This dissertation, by introducing Heidegger's theory of authenticity and the ways to achieve authenticity in the reading of Hamlet, attempts to approach the inner workings of Hamlet from the perspective provided by Heidegger and thus to locate the reasons why Hamlet at last takes action to kill Claudius.Heidegger holds that proximally and for the most part, Dasein comports itself in the mode of inauthenticity, and thus has lost its authentic self in the"they"1.Theoretically speaking, Dasein can still win back its authentic self, but first it has to find its authentic self, and this task can be performed by anxiety, because anxiety can dislodge Dasein from its lostness into the"they". When Dasein's authentic self has been removed from its tranquilized fallenness into the"they", Dasein can locate it in the truth. But to find its self is not all, Dasein still has to accumulate enough courage to retrieve its authentic self, and we shall witness this happening in Dasein's proper understanding of the call of conscience, or the realizing of Dasein's essential Being-guilty—which is termed by Heidegger as"resoluteness"—a kind of choice to make up for not choosing. And the final return to one's authentic self is fulfilled in Dasein's anticipation of death—death as a possibility which is one's ownmost, no-relational, not to be outstripped, certain, and indefinite.Following this line of reasoning, the dissertation views Hamlet's avenging of his father as symbolic of his authentic self, and therefore the fulfilling of the revenge as his final return to his authentic self. Taking this as the point of departure, the dissertation treats respectively the various stages where Hamlet finds himself in this progress he has to undertake in seeking and finally retrieving his authentic self: first, the concealment of his authentic self in the state of inauthenticity; second, the...