Abstract

Shakespeare continues to articulate the central problems of our intellectual inheritance. The plays of a Renaissance playwright still seem to be fundamental to our understanding and experience of modernity. Key philosophical questions concerning value, meaning and justice continue to resonate in Shakespeare's work. In the course of rethinking these issues, Philosophical Shakespeares focuses on and encourages the growing dissolution of boundaries between literature and philosophy. Philosophical Shakespeares includes contributions from the first rank of contemporary criticism, drawing together original and previously unpublished essays by leading European and US scholars. The approach throughout is interdisciplinary and ranges from problem-centered readings of particular plays to more general elaborations on the significance of Shakespeare in relation to individual thinkers or philosophical traditions.