Hamlet Philosophy: what does 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' say about Free Will?

Do you have free will? Does it even matter? And how can Shakespeare help you find out? Let’s examine Stoppard’s ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ and see what it can tell us about free will…

Twitter: @PhilosopyTube

Suggested Reading:
‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’ are Dead by Tom Stoppard
‘Hamlet’ by that one guy, one you know, the one who wrote all the plays…
‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ in the ‘Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ by David Hume

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[Contrariwise]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: the original Lion King 1 1/2

[downsjmmyjones]

Would one day love to see someone in a courtroom prove that their actions were not chosen but were determined.

[catherinehorowitz]

really good video but guildenstern is definitely not super chill about how he has no free will like the entire play is basically just him having an existential crisis and also yelling at rosencrantz

[Hecatonicosachoron]

Existentialism
Epistemology
Etiology
Thanatosophy

These are some of the ideas - of a certain philosophical bent - that stood out as I read the play (I have been postponing reading it, but now with this video the opportunity did arise, so that's good)

All "absurdist" plays are an homage to existentialism, but beyond that the motif of perpetual recurrence (e.g. 92 coin-flips being heads, only then comically broken by a single 'tails' flip, which was not taken into account) reeks of Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer; and possibly even indian theology, Empedocles, Plato...). Also Stoppard tip-toes rather elegantly around the (also Nietzschean) concept that 'truth' is a normative beast. That's already too much existentialism for one day though.

The most interesting aspect is the presentation of basic problems of epistemology; Guildenstern appears to be, at times, a rather strident skeptic ( ROS: That must be east, then. I think we can assume that. GUIL: I'm assuming nothing) refuting almost every basis for belief, denying empiricism most vociferously ( ROS: Why don't you go and have a look? GUIL: Pragmatism?! - is that all you have to offer? You seem to have no conception of where we stand!). Along with the denial of axioms, he certainly does not make his life easier. These passages among others, once collected, form a complete exposition of Agrippa's trilemma. Interestingly, when considering Hamlet's fate (discussing the letter in the ship on the way to England) Guildenstern's Pyrrhonism seems to be shaken off.
Epistemological conundrums are also present which go deeper than G's characterisation. The issue at hand can be generalised as the 'problem of the criterion'. Specifically, the question asked amounts to "can testimony constitute knowledge?" This can be seen here:
    GUIL: We only know what we're told, and that's  little enough. And  for all we know it isn't even true. 
     PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust;  truth is only that  which is taken to be true. It's the currency  of living.  There may be nothing  behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?

and here:

     ROS: The sun's going down. It will be dark soon. 
     GUIL: Do you think so? 
     ROS: I was just making conversation. (Pause.) We're his friends. 
     GUIL: How do you know? 
     ROS: From our young days brought up with him. 
     GUIL: You've only got their word for it. 
     ROS: But that's what we depend on. 
     GUIL: Well,  yes, and then  again  no.

Ironically, what answer might have been hoped for had already been given:

     PLAYER: Uncertainty is the normal state. You're nobody special. 

The investigation of causality is inherent in many parts of the play; R and G hardly know how they came to be, where they came from and seem to have very little memory, to their annoyance (" We have not been.. picked out... simply to be abandoned...  set loose to find our own way... We are entitled to some direction... I would have thought.").

An obsession with death pervades the entire play; I found it very comical when Guildenstern presents the Epicurean view of death as Plato's. Finally the link to ancient scepticism is cemented in the brief speech before the Player's stabbing ("death  is not... It's the absence  of presence,  nothing more") which is similar to the view of Sextus Empiricus. The stated finality of death seems to contradict the recurrence of the coin-flips and the re-emergence of the characters at each performance of the play.

All in all it was very fun; it did remind me of Pirandello's "Six characters in search of an author" - I really do recommend that last one!

Although I highly doubt that anyone will read that far to take this recommendation...

[klondike]

Compatibilists can be very annoying -- but they can't help it.

[CasualGraph]

The play is sounding less like a critique of compatibilism and more like a joke about the fourth wall, but I haven't read it or seen it, so I wouldn't know.

[DerAykac]

I´m a bit late to the party, but holy shit, i´m so happy you did a thing about this.

[themoderncaveman]

As the guy who ranges from nihilism to absurdism to camusian-style thought, the reason I don't subscribe to determinism is the same reason people tend to subscribe to it: human limitations and evidence both logical and scientific. I don't feel confidnet in the idea that our science or logic knows enough about anything to put complete confidence we have about it with the one semi-exclusion of pure linguistic logic because we built it ourselves from the foundations up and we decide where it stops. Assuming that most studies are accurate enough to have total confidence in is not reasonable enough for me personally. Determinism while conceptually interesting and worthwhile to acknowledge, like any philosophy, isn't worth much unless you have a complete and intimate understanding of how everything works, from psychology to neurology to metaphysics to physics to the rest of existence's knowledge so far as it pertains to influencing the human mind. Unless the knowledge is perfect, it is still subject to uncertainty and the coin flip's result is still uncertain, or it can land on heads 157 times consecutively, despite the low probability of it occurring. The only logical conclusion I can draw is that I seem to not know much of anything for certain and very convincingly appear not to know everything. Thus, uncertainty is the primary possible truth in my mind. The solution: act like free will is there anyways, because even if it isn't, the result is the same (so far as I can tell from my perspective) I will do stuff, specifically whatever appears to be the best course of action.

[StephenDeagle]

Great video, as usual. You're quickly becoming one of my favorite YouTube personalities.

[EyeGlue]

Forgive me being (still) a student of Shakespeare's Hamlet here: but where oh where in Shakespeare's original (30k plus words) play do we share a moment when R & G KNOW that Hamlet will be executed once all and sundry arrive in England? This is MAJOR and I'm gobsmacked at not having understood their complicity -- but then, as I say, I am ONLY talking about Shakespeare's original not Stoppard's say you, Sir? Can you point me to the precise line/s in Shakespeare's original play that irrefutably prove/s that R & G conspired against Hamlet in a devious plan to have him I will not (nay, shall not!) sleep until I hear from

[allrightsreserved-toservew]

In legal arenas/theatres/court you are in for a "racket" and thus your 'play at it/game' is to "hit the ball/quest" back over the net untill your opponent does not return it.. The one stuck with the balm on his side looses "in the racket"..

Nouns are names for "thing (-s)" and "answering to a name" makes (contracts) " you into the" legal rackets" as a "thing" /"dead"/"objectified" /"slave (under the racketering of legal framing)".. You "become" a "noun/name/pronoun"

The eternal wisdom is "proverb" since living beings are "verb/living/actions" and follows self evident truths/"natural law".. (..note how this movie has the "law of nature/physics" allegorically possible to be a "natural law vs law of things/man" as a paralell theme running all through the film)

Proverbs is the versed higher language like in "universe" or the (one/uni) higher teaching language.. It is law or as Norse languages holds it in its word "lawful by praise of the priceless creation/natures self evident wonders" (lov/lovligt)

(Swedish: Ske lov och pris för skapelsen (skapad av skaparen)) ="lovligt/lawful"..

It is keenly interesting how the story line of this film (as many many films do) obviously lends itself to "secrets in plain sight presented" since "plausible deniability" is modus operandi for all "higher esoteric veiling in shrouds of mist".. (to "mistify")

The "trick" to make it "appear" as "a secret" even still in plain sight is to "misdirect" efforts of attention towards focusing on the semi transperent mist" in favor of "mistifying" with a "mist" something obvious shining through upon an observant indipendent (curious instead of misdirected) mind..

Your presentation still and all the same holds valid to its own points and is worthy of its own hurray!

In "court" you are assumed "dead" or a "name" thus "a piece of (dead) meat and thus a" thing/slave" and the "racketers of the courts" lends their sand box" to whomever "enters the game (the racketers set up)" and by "God" (not really though, actually like "Lucifer/the fallen angel") it will play "you" by its own set up rules.. Aka acts in case (-s) by legal framing of "a play for the plebes" thus the "public (audience)" is but to "hear" what is written in sentences sequence forming the outline (rules) of what the authors of the play has been ordered by the "one" who "pays the piper".. .

Good sports.. You (adhering to names) are the game..

Plebes be enter- (de-) -tained and he who pays the author to script the act is "your master"..

Let the veil open for the act of theatrics to commence and higher wisdom is proverbially superior to

You vers be in natural law of man (living life in reality) or pronouned into the scripted "legally dead" as a "slave/name"..

The Bible teaches: "Put no faith in a title (legal construct)" yet the Priest (a title) summons his "commune" when to preach is what a proverb really means and being a priest (title) is a pronoun and is faithlessly and untrue in to preach to the vers of higher (natural) law and natural order..

[LookingGlassUniverse]

Great video on Free Will and determinism. I'll have to mull it over because I'm still very confused about it. 

I'd like to ask one question about what you said on causes. In a classical theory of physics, everything is determinist and it's not so hard to pin down causes, but in quantum mechanics that isn't the case. For example, you may turn on a magnetic field and an electron in it will align or anti-align, but it 'chooses' which to actually do completely randomly (or so QM says). In the case is it fair to say the magnetic field caused the electron to anti-align? 

[Tulipa]

I would recommend a really good book called 'Sophie's World' by Jostein Gaarder. Besides being a good novel, it gives a summary of the ideas of some of the great philosophers.

I admire how you convey philosophy in a way that both makes it more interesting but also more accessible to students like myself. I really like your videos and please keep them coming!

As for the critique on compatibilism, I agree and the whole concept of determinism is really scary and daunting when you realise the fact that all of your 'choices' since you were a baby were really just meant to happen. And if this is true, then we are just alive to live a pre-determined life, like actors playing a character in a play. Like our good friend William Shakespeare once wrote:
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."

Looking forward to your discussion on Kant and the friend zone.

[MarcusBurkenhare]

I know I'm several years late but this just popped up on my feed and I had to watch it as R&G is my all-time favourite play.
If you don't mind, I'd like to tell a little story...
While doing a performing arts BTEC at college, I was in an even-numbered group of students and we were given the task of performing a short scene with only two characters. The rest of the group formed into pairs, except for three girls who decided they'd be the witches from Macbeth. Hence I was left alone. So in keeping with the spirit of the task, I performed the 'Questions' game from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by myself, taking both parts.
Thank you for this, it's great to see some real deep diving going on into what is one of the all-time great pieces of Absurdist comedy.

[jamesmackenzie]

What really intrigues me about this whole area of thought/study is when you start to ask larger questions about free will and power. I'm a big fan of Foucault's work on this and Steven Lukes' "Power: A Radical View" (well worth a read btw if anyone hasn't), but it keeps coming back to an almost utilitarian stand point for me, ignorance is bliss kind of thing I guess. Regardless, I know this is strolling pretty far off topic but i'm really looking forward to you getting further in your degree and exploring some of this kind of stuff, assuming you haven't already I guess. :)

[xXSellizeXx]

I often hear people tote the Uncertainty Principle as some kind of solution to the problem of free will.  I don't really understand that.  Really, just because the answer cannot be determined does not mean that we have any more agency over any particular quantum event than if it _were_ deterministic.  I don't quite see how adding randomness to the outcome of any particular event makes the idea of free will more plausible.

[GEdwardsPhilosophy]

I've always read it as a critique of Humeian compatibilism; though it pays to pay attention to the conceits of familiarity that Stoppard had to use in order to achieve that critique :)

[annarchie]

"We wanted to add a chapter about free will, then decided against it, and here it is: "

- Cohen&Stewart, "Figments of Reality"

[georgev]

Well the thing is that if they knew they were gonna die they wouldn't choose to act this way. They act this way and do what they do because they find it logical to do so. Therefore you can't conclude that they can't choose otherwise. If they knew they would die if they would die and didn't choose otherwise then i think you could say that its a one way street but since they don't it is a logical move for them to make. I think what choices you make and how many choices you have is equivalent with one's own capacity to think and see these choices in the first place.

[jakubzapotocky]

I want to point out on one amazing book written by Joisten Gaarder called Sophie's World. This book is also an example of plot where characters realize that they don't have free will becouse they are part of the story. By the way, this book is about  history of philosophy written in very simple way.