Cavell, Stanley (1926–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Theory Of Value

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanley Cavell has held the Walter M. Cabot Chair in Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University since 1963. The range, diversity and distinctiveness of his writings are unparalleled in twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. As well as publishing essays on modernist painting and music, he has created a substantial body of work in film studies, literary theory and literary criticism; he has introduced new and fruitful ways of thinking about psychoanalysis and its relationship with philosophy; and his work on Heidegger and Derrida, taken together with his attempts to revitalize the tradition of Emersonian Transcendentalism, have defined new possibilities for a distinctively American contribution to philosophical culture. This complex oeuvre is unified by a set of thematic concerns – relating to scepticism and moral perfectionism – which are rooted in Cavell’s commitment to the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, as represented in the work of J.L. Austin and Wittgenstein.

Cavell, Stanley (1926–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Theory Of Value

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanley Cavell held the Walter M. Cabot Chair in Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement in 1997. The range, diversity and distinctiveness of his writings are unparalleled in twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. As well as publishing essays on modernist painting and music, he has created a substantial body of work in film studies, literary theory and literary criticism; he has introduced new and fruitful ways of thinking about psychoanalysis and its relationship with philosophy; and his work on ‘Continental’ philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, together with his attempts to revitalize the tradition of Emersonian Transcendentalism, has defined new possibilities for a distinctively American contribution to philosophical culture. This complex oeuvre is unified by a set of thematic concerns – relating to scepticism and moral perfectionism – which are rooted in Cavell’s commitment to the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, as represented in the work of J.L. Austin and Wittgenstein.

Morals of Encounter in Steve Jobs

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 134-155
Author(s):  
Kyle Barrowman ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Probative Value ◽  
Performative Utterance ◽  
Steve Jobs

In this article, the author argues for the probative value of ordinary language philosophy for the discipline of film studies by way of an analysis of the conversational protocols discernible in the film Steve Jobs (2015). In particular, the author focuses on the work of J.L. Austin, specifically his theory of speech acts and his formulation of the performative utterance, and Stanley Cavell, specifically his extension of Austinian speech act theory and his formulation of the passionate utterance, and analyzes the interactions between the titular character and his daughter through this unique Austinian/Cavellian lens. In so doing, the author endeavors to encourage more scholars in the field of film-philosophy to explore the key concepts and arguments in ordinary language philosophy for use in analyzing films. Despite its having been virtually ignored by film scholars over the last half century, one of many regrettable effects of the Continental bias of film scholars generally and film-philosophers specifically, the author contends that ordinary language philosophy provides powerful tools for the analysis of dialogue and communication in film, with Steve Jobs serving as a particularly insightful test case of the broad utility of ordinary language philosophy for film studies.

Hedda’s Words

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toril Moi
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

For ordinary language philosophy—the philosophical tradition after Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, as constituted and extended by Stanley Cavell—meaning arises in use. Utterances are actions and expressions. This philosophy, therefore, is closely attuned to the work of language in theater. This paper shows that ordinary language philosophy gives rise to a kind of literary criticism that considers reading an practice of acknowledgment, as en effort to understand exactly why the characters say precisely these words in precisely this situation. By paying close attention to Hedda’s interactions with three different linguistic worlds—the Tesman world, the Brack world, and the world she shared with Løvborg in the past—this chapter brings out the contrast between the conventionality and brutality of Hedda’s surroundings and Hedda’s ideals of courage and freedom, and shows that Hedda is more vulnerable, and more damaged, than previous readings have assumed.

scholarly journals Reading Silence

2018 ◽  
pp. 74-94
Author(s):  
Larry Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Wide Range

Stanley Cavell roams across a wide range of fields in his first book, Must We Mean What We Say? most obviously those of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. But nowhere in the book’s ten essays does he advance an explicit political theory. Still, this book, published in 1969 and written over the course of the preceding decade, quietly poses persistent political questions, even in essays on such topics as skepticism and King Lear, Kierkegaard’s Book on Adler and Beckett’s Endgame, atonal music and ordinary language philosophy. Just who is the “we” spoken of in the book’s title (we philosophers? we Americans? we human beings?)? Is there any relationship between democratic equality and the philosophical appeal to our everyday language, as described in the book’s eponymous essay? 1 Does the account that Cavell offers in his piece on Wittgenstein of practices and behaviors shared across cultures—the “whirl of organism” of our forms of life—suggest a nascent theory of human solidarity? Our freedom in language and the responsibility we bear for meaning, topics of the book’s opening essays, raise the question of what we might owe to one another and how we might offer—or withhold—it in our choices of words. Is this the beginning of a theory of justice? The concept of acknowledgment, described in the book’s final essays as a response to the challenge of skepticism, shifts the problem from what I can know to what I might do. Is this a theory of moral or political action (or both)?

Revolutions of the Ordinary: Victorian Studies and the Turn to Ordinary Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Wright
Keyword(s):  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Victorian Studies ◽  
As If

“To engage seriously with ordinary language philosophy,” Toril Moi tells us in the introduction to Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell, “is a little like undergoing psychoanalysis. Wittgenstein assumes that we don't begin doing philosophy just for the sake of it, but because something is making us feel confused, as if we had lost our way.” As Moi begins her project of explaining to an audience of literary critics the insights of ordinary-language philosophy, represented primarily by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Stanley Cavell, and making a case for the value of their ideas for the practice we usually call close reading, this psychoanalytic metaphor makes a sudden turn to diagnosis, or to the initiation of a kind of therapeutic address that can feel coercive even in its charisma. You must recognize your sickness, Moi insists, before you can be receptive to the treatment. “Who wants to undergo philosophical therapy,” she goes on to ask, “if they feel that everything in their intellectual life is just fine as it is? Paradoxically, then, the best readers of the reputedly ‘conservative’ Wittgenstein might be those who genuinely feel the need for a change” (12). What kind of therapeutic project does Moi want to pursue in this book, which begins by distinguishing the best readers (the readiest patients) from those who think, conservatively, that everything is “just fine as it is”?

scholarly journals O vrijednosti: rekonstrukcija pojma nakon „smrti” estetike

Ars Adriatica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Nikola Dedić
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Structuralist Theory ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Late Works

The article addresses the issue of value present in Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of art. It focuses on Cavell as the representative of the Anglo-American ordinary language philosophy and his attitude towards the European tradition of post-structuralism as well as his attitude towards the problem of intersocial communication, rationality and poststructuralist antihumanism. The main argument is this: while post-structuralist theory of art deconstructs the notion of value and gives prominence to the notion of transgression, Cavell draws on the philosophy of ordinary language in the late works of Wittgenstein and manages to offer a materialistic and informalist reconstruction of the notion of artistic value.

scholarly journals Film and skepticism Cavell’s „correction“ of poststructuralist philosophy of arts

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-225
Author(s):  
Nikola Dedic
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Poststructuralist Theory ◽  
Utopian Theory

The main aim of this paper is the critique of poststructuralist theory of art, and particularly thesis about the avant-garde peace of art as a kind of transgression. As a starting point of this critique, the ordinary language philosophy developed by American philosopher Stanley Cavell is used, particularly his film theory. While poststructuralist philosophy was developed around the notion of ideology, Cavell interprets film and arts in general around the notion of skepticism. While poststructuralism, because of thesis about avant-garde as a kind of transgression within the field of ideology, is a kind of philosophy of negation, we point out that Cavell?s philosophy is a utopian theory of transcending of skepticism where avant-garde film has significant but not crucial place. Cavell?s thesis is used as a basis for re-thinking of modernism, which is in opposition to postmodernist turn realized by poststructuralism.

Changing Politics: Thoreau, Dewey and Cavell, and Democracy as a Way of Life

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-193
Author(s):  
Naoko Saito
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Emotional Dimensions

This paper reconsiders the meaning of political action by way of a dialogue between Dewey, Thoreau, and Cavell. These philosophers demonstrate possibilities of political engagement and participation. Especially in response to the psychological and emotional dimensions of political crisis today, I shall claim that American philosophy can demonstrate something beyond problem-solving as conventionally understood in politics and that it has the potential to re-place philosophy in such a manner that politics itself is changed. First, I shall draw a contrast between the ways of political action demonstrated respectively by Dewey and Thoreau. Some points of divergence are revealed within American philosophy. I shall then explore the partially different sense of political action implied by Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy, identifying this as the politics of acknowledgment. Finally, I shall propose the idea of challenging inclusion as an alternative political education for human transformation, taking this as a key to changing politics.

The “Cinema Remarks”: Wittgenstein on Moving-Image Media and the Ethics of Re-viewing

October ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 171 ◽  
pp. 47-76
Author(s):  
Kate Rennebohm
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Phenomenological Experience ◽  
Film And Media Studies ◽  
Nature Of Time

This essay uncovers and analyzes philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's little-known writings on film and related media, revealing their importance for film and media studies, the field of film philosophy, and for understanding Wittgenstein's later ethical thought. Through an explication of Wittgenstein's idiosyncratic ordinary-language philosophy, the author argues that these cinema remarks speak to Wittgenstein's sense that cinematic media offered new conceptualizations for thought on a variety of subjects. These include the nature of time, visual and phenomenological experience, and subjectivity. The remarks make clear, among other discoveries, that Wittgenstein was thinking about the relation of cinema and “the skeptical mindset” decades before Stanley Cavell made his influential arguments for such a connection. While the first half of the essay draws out the ethical stakes behind Wittgenstein's film remarks, the latter half turns explicitly to the philosopher's later, complex thought about ethics itself. Showing the importance of aesthetics, visuality, and sight to Wittgenstein's understanding of the field, this section addresses his notions of “aspect-seeing” and “aspect-change.” From this, the final section of contends that Wittgenstein's ethics want to work in the way he feels film can—by enabling one to “see anew” one's way of seeing as a way of seeing, thus opening new ethical-existential possibilities for one's way of being in the world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document