CONSEQUÊNCIAS TRÁGICAS DO CETICISMO EM OTELO

Abstract

This article analyzes, in light of Stanley Cavell's philosophy, how Othello dramatizes

the tragic consequences of modern skepticism. It argues that the play stages, in terms of human

relations, the evasion of responsibility for meaning—that is, for what is said and done—as the

core of its tragic outcome. In dialogue with Wittgenstein, Cavell maintains that the limitless

search for foundations converts human finitude into “intellectual lack,” producing

disappointment with language and obscuring the possibility of sharing situations of mind

(plights of mind). In this context, the problem of other minds is shifted from the strictly

epistemic register to that of recognition: the tragic does not stem primarily from the absence of

evidence, but from the refusal to recognize the other as human and vulnerable. In Othello, the

demand for certainty is linked to the protagonist's idealized self-image, sustained by the

mirroring offered by Desdemona. When this perfection becomes unstable, Iago begins to

function as an alibi for the demand for “proof” and for the denial of Desdemona's finitude—

and, by implication, his own. It follows that the tragedy culminates in the petrification of the

heart: the death of the other as a legitimate interlocutor and the collapse of the shared

intelligibility that sustains ordinary human life.