Andrew Cutrofello’s All for Nothing retraces the trajectory that Shakespeare’s Hamlet (the play and the character) has taken across the Continental and Analytic philosophical traditions, and it is no small achievement that, despite the literally centuries of commentary and criticism on this Shakespearean play, Cutrofello has succeeded in shedding new light on its literary and philosophical significance. There are two ways of approaching Cutrofello’s All for Nothing: 1) as an in-depth philosophical commentary on the concept of negativity, particularly as this concept comes to life against the backdrop of Hamlet; and 2), as a work of literary criticism that opens up new avenues of interpretation into the play via the longstanding philosophical rapprochement with the concept of negativity. Whether readers are coming to this book as scholars and students of Shakespeare and Hamlet, or as scholars and students of the history of philosophy and of the concept of negativity, they will surely not be disappointed in what they take away from All for Nothing.

Cutrofello begins by positioning Hamlet as a ‘conceptual character,’ the chief representative not only of Shakespearean thought (as Zarathustra is of Nietzsche’s, for instance, or the Angelus Novus is of Benjamin’s), but also a character that can be played and played differently by whichever philosopher happens to decide to step into the role. Cutrofello: “There are as many ways of playing Hamlet within the space of philosophical positions as there are of playing him on stage. Just as theatrical performance histories compare Garrick’s, Schröder’s, Kemble’s, Siddons’s, Kean’s, Bernhard’s, Oliver’s, Gielgud’s, and Branagh’s Hamlets, so we may compare those of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, and Žižek” (2). Cutrofello’s methodological innovation consists in converting a dramaturgical question into a philosophical one: how has Hamlet been played? becomes, in the hands of Cutrofello, how has Hamlet been thought? From this methodological point of departure, Cutrofello zeroes in on what makes Hamlet so philosophically attractive to so wide a range of philosophical tastes. Insofar as philosophy deals with fundamental questions relating to ways of being, ways of thinking, and ways of experiencing the world(s) in which we live, the figure (the concept) of Hamlet is appealing by virtue of its capacity to never cease questioning how it is that Hamlet exists relative to its world (in the play). What does Hamlet know about Hamlet? What does the Self know about the Self? Cutrofello’s overarching thesis is that Hamlet’s interminable, irresolvable journey towards self-consciousness, Hamlet’s “capacity for self-affection,” is “rooted in a more fundamental power of negativity, and that it is this power that Hamlet personifies” (2). Hamlet is thus the first post-Cartesian conceptual persona not just because he expresses scepticism vis-a-vis the onto-epistemological certitude of his existence, but because he is sceptical about whether the entirety of what he knows about himself and his world will vanish or erode as time (the time of the play, time historical, time eternal) goes on: “Both ‘To be or not to be’ and ‘I think, therefore I am’ give voice to a distinctively modern experience of subjectivity,” one that unravels in a multiplicity of directions and assumes a multiplicity of forms that Hamlet was perhaps the first conceptual character consciously and unrelentingly to suffer (5). The consequences of Hamlet’s negativity (his melancholy) are gauged by Cutrofello according to their psychological, epistemological, ontological, political, and metaphysical significances. While dividing his reading of Hamlet’s negativity according to these categories of critique, Cutrofello simultaneously unearths a conceptual history of negativity using Hamlet as multi-faceted exemplar of negativity’s theoretical and practical diversity of expression.

It will come as no surprise to readers familiar with Hamlet that Hamlet’s honour at being widely regarded as a pioneer of modern subjectivity is not without its burdens. Deeply melancholic over the murder of his father and his mother’s subsequent marriage to Claudius, Hamlet proceeds through the play deprived of the vengeful enthusiasm required for securing redemption and justice by the time of the play’s end. Against critics who have been quick to chastise Hamlet for his inability (or unwillingness) to avenge the death of his father, Cutrofello is more patient in asking “what is the psychological nature of Hamlet’s melancholy? Is the negativity of melancholy something that ought to be embraced or overcome?” (13). Cutrofello’s response to this second question hinges on a revaluation of the Hegelian capacity for tarrying with negativity and of facilitating negativity’s revolutionary promises. One of the dimensions of Hamlet that makes it a remarkable play is precisely Hamlet’s refusal to act, Hamlet’s indecisiveness in the face of what to do with the knowledge of the circumstances surrounding his father’s untimely death. Cutrofello demonstrates the error in viewing Hamlet’s negativity as an obstacle that the play seeks to overcome rather than the very core of the problematic that Shakespeare used Hamlet in order to pose. Put otherwise, Hamlet’s refusal to act mimics an ethic of theoretical contemplation and practical action whereby the greatest achievements of thinking and acting alike stem from a refusal to compromise on one’s scepticism and passivity. But such an achievement is not easily celebrated, as an ethic of scepticism and passivity thereby becomes indistinguishable from nihilism and cowardice. Cutrofello sees in Hamlet the capacity to tarry between scepticism and nihilism in a way and with a determination unmatched in the history of literature. Hamlet’s melancholy is the psychological price to be paid for this ambivalent distinction. In representing Hamlet’s melancholy as one of several discrete expressions of Hamlet’s negativity, Cutrofello’s opening chapter stages a reciprocally illuminating dialogue between Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and Derrida around ways of philosophical escape from Cartesian rationalism, thereby enabling Cutrofello to track the migration of negativity’s multiple representations across the expansive post-Cartesian landscape of contemporary critical theory. This is indeed an impressive, intelligently-conceived and executed study, and the balancing act Cutrofello performs between literary and philosophical criticism is maintained with excitement and complexity until the very end of his journey through Hamlet and the history of negativity.