ABSTRACT
Shakespeare’s Othello is often thought to connect with traditional sceptical problems, and in particular with the problem of other minds. Iago’s famous inscrutability, in particular, has been held to illustrate ‘the essential impenetrability of the mind, even in situations of utmost proximity’ (Colin McGinn). The problem of other minds arises in the Cartesian and empiricist traditions, so that if Shakespeare were engaging with it, that would represent a significant intellectual anticipation of later thought—even more so given that, though the problem is inspired by Cartesianism, Descartes himself did not think of it, and it is not until much later, mainly in the writings of Mill, Russell, and Wittgenstein, that the problem is addressed by philosophers in its own right. But in this chapter it is argued that Shakespeare does not, even in his portrayal of Iago, depict mind as essentially inaccessible to others; Shakespeare in general treats ‘reading another’s mind’ as an area in which we may go wrong (sometimes tragically), but in which there is no essential obstacle to obtaining knowledge.
