On Humanism Richard Norman by Richard Norman instant download after payment.

Is this a statement of something we could call ‘humanism’? It comes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and it is often quoted as a celebration of the qualities that make us human, perhaps also with the suggestion that recognising these qualities can inspire us to use them to the full. If we look further, however, we find that things are not so simple. The context of Hamlet’s words is not a declaration of faith in human life, but an expression of despair. Our quoted passage is preceded by these words:

I have of late, – but wherefore I know not, – lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.