Hamlet And Free Will Essay

Is the future at all certain? Do we as mortals have the free will to change the future? These are all questions that as sentient human beings, we are forced to ask ourselves. No human could know the answer to these metaphysical questions regarding of the nature of being itself. Instead of searching for a scientific answer we much look towards an ontological answer. The Christian answer to these questions would revolve around the concept of God’s intervention via divine providence and special providence. We have free will over our emotions and reactions fate, whether it be God or another divine being or some other man behind the curtain. Hamlet believes this when he says, “There's a divinity that shapes our ends/ Rough hew them how he will.” Though this would view make reconciling the vast amount of pain one caused easily it set the premise for a dangerous and barbaric world. This worldview presents serious pragmatic, ethical and scientific objections.

Consequently, Killing a man or woman is acceptable because God intended for that murder to happen. Therefore, to assert that a micromanaging Stromboli controls every human action creates little need for any type of accountability. Even if someone ignores repercussions for murder imposed by the legal system humans would not suddenly engage in murder without mercy on a massive scale because we have an a priori sense of goodness. If we do have the free will to change the future we must reject the notion of being powerless to fate, or we more easily fall to evil impulses or what Jews call Yetzer Hara. Instead, we must retain our sense of personal accountability and by writing off the future as inevitable we only serve to exacerbate