Platonic friendship...?

Hamlet and Othello

The two plays by William Shakespeare , Hamlet and Othello , reflect the Renaissance philosophy , with its most important schools- Platonism Aristotelianism and Humanism , especially in their treatment of human nature and human condition . The works of the two philosophers - Plato and Aristotle , which formed the basis of the two movements that took the names of their initiators , were reinterpreted by many scholars of the Medieval and Renaissance period , and of the later periods

Platonism and Aristotelianism were opposed philosophies in their first articulation . The Platonists believed that there is

a world of abstractions , the pure world of ideas . The characteristics of the material objects , formed an abstract world , which was moreover , the true word . For example , the Platonist school of thought implied that the material world was only a reflection of the perfect world of ideas , that is , a beautiful object is only the reflection of the idea of beauty

Aristotle revised these ideas that Plato had first initiated , and proposed an opposed view , which was based on an empirical way of knowing the world , and which constituted the first step towards natural science .The two doctrines referred obviously to both ontological and epistemological facts about the world

On the other hand , the Renaissance humanism which was actually the most characteristic philosophy for this period , emphasized the nobility of human nature , and the powers of human intellect and spirit , while joining the two main philosophies - Platonism and Aristotelianism

As Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmitt observed in their Renaissance Philosophy , both Platonism and Aristotelianism presented many problems for the humanists and for the theologians as well , like , for instance the transmigration of souls and other beliefs which seemed incompatible with Christianity

Why should an upwardly mobile scholar or bureaucrat sympathize with Plato 's elitism ? Were humanists not troubled by his scorn for poets and rhetoricians ? Plato 's advocacy of communism and advertisement of homosexuality invited political and social complaint . Even his renowned piety seemed out of tune with a philosophy that made matter eternal , the human soul preexistent and migratory , and the gods and demons many powerful , and worthy of worship . As the Renaissance came to know Plato better , discussion of his thought could not have been other than complex and divided , and the controversy had been prepared by an anti-Platonic tradition long sustained by pagans and Christians alike . As early modern thinkers developed new modes of reading unknown to antiquity and the Middle Ages , Plato 's compatibility with Christianity remained the leading question . (Copenhaver , 129

However , many of the ideas of the two philosophies were either kept or reinterpreted as the main philosophical views at the time of Renaissance , and this is very well reflected in the plays of William Shakespeare

In Hamlet , which is one of Shakespeare 's plays that most approaches a metaphysical view of human nature seems to waver in its essential purport upon the edge separating Platonism from Aristotelianism . One of the greatest dilemmas in Hamlet is that of individual action

Shakespeare 's...