Abstract
The article suggests a reading of Shakespeare’s Othello following the lead of Stanley Cavell’s interpretation. Othello pictures the denial of human finitude and of the contingency of the great values of loyalty, faith and authority as this is enacted by Othello’s repression of the fact of his dependency on Desdemona’s desire for him. By exploring the tragic consequences of the repression of such a fundamental knowledge of human life, the tragedy offers a lesson about the basis of the personal and political order of human bonds. Othello’s fantastic imagination of his “unhoused” condition leads him to the folly and the horror of murder; morality and politics require instead a capacity for habitation in a precarious and vulnerable world.