Stanley Cavell Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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- Film Studies, Film Theory, Stanley Cavell, Film Criticism
- by Bruce Krajewski
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- Film Studies, Stanley Cavell, William Faulkner, Ordinary Language Philosophy

What happens to philosophy and the way we think, which is to say write, once philosophy opens itself to an encounter with film? What happens to our experience of film once we approach it as a philosophically creative medium of communication? In what follows I offer some fragmentary remarks in response to these questions, suggesting that we can find a more robust and meaningful way of understanding Cavell’s claims concerning the kinship between film and philosophy by entertaining the possibility that both stand to be transformed by their mutual engagement. [A shorter version of my Cavellian Meditations: How to Do Things with FIlm and Philosophy]

- by Robert Sinnerbrink
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- Aesthetics, Philosophy of Film, Film-Philosophy, Stanley Cavell
- by Kyle Barrowman
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- Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, Media Studies

A discussion of the relationship between Wittgenstein's published work and the Wittgenstein papers which argues that attention to the way in which he wrote can cast light on the nature of his contribution to philosophy. Special attention is given to the editorial problems posed by Wittgenstein's repeated revision and rewriting of his remarks and the work on a complete electronic edition of his papers. Because the Wittgenstein papers are the product of such an extensive act of rewriting, they are not so much a collection of texts as a hypertext, an interconnected network of remarks.

- by David Stern
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- Stanley Cavell, Wittgenstein, Hypertext, Cavell

A partir de The Avoidance of Love, de Stanley Cavell, e da obra de Shekespear King Lear faz-se uma reflexão sobre as ideias de amor, ignorância e (re) conhecimento. O problema do ser humano não é conhecer-se mas, quando esse auto-conhecimento se afigura inevitável, ultrapassar as consequências dessa fatalidade. Uma forma de o fazer é substituir o “knowledge” pelo “aknowledge”. O caminho para a felicidade far-se-ia “(re)conhecendo”, ao invés de “sabendo”. Não “reconhecer” impede o amor e conduz à tragédia.

La muralla verde muestra cómo el cine puede existir, según Cavell observa, “en un estado de filosofía, donde sea inherentemente auto-reflexivo y pueda tomarse a sí mismo como parte inevitable de la añoranza especulativa que le es propia a la filosofía.” La película de Robles Godoy satisface esa añoranza filosófica al presentar un interés serio por –y una exploración constante de— el lenguaje fílmico, al que echa mano con gran arte para revelar a lo sublime escondido en lo ordinario. La muralla verde es un ejemplo del tipo de pensamiento que Cavell promueve como antídoto a lo que podríamos llamar la melancolía cultural.

- by VICTOR J. KREBS
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- Cultural Studies, Latin American Studies, Philosophy, Ethics

In this article I analyse the TV series Mad Men from a filmphilosophical point of view. I argue that the main character represents a particular concept of integrity: namely as the permanent attempt to integrate himself into a narrative of... more

- by Susanne Schmetkamp
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- Philosophy, Ethics, Stanley Cavell, Film Aesthetics
- by Audrey Mitchell
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- Stanley Cavell, Film and Philosophy, Cinema Studies, Robert Pippin

et la photogénie de l'ordinaire » Introduction J'ai beaucoup de chance. En un trimestre, et alors que je viens de soutenir une thèse consacrée aux nouvelles approches philosophiques anglo-saxonnes du cinéma 1 , l'opportunité m'aura en effet été donnée de participer à deux colloques en l'honneur et en la présence de deux grands philosophes du cinéma, -même s'ils n'accepteraient peutêtre pas ce titre -, Stanley Cavell, début octobre pour la sortie de la traduction française de son livre Philosophie, le jour d'après-demain 2 et Edgar Morin, aujourd'hui. Puisque j'ai disposé de très peu de temps pour préparer mon intervention, je vais me permettre de commencer par exposer la conception que j'avais alors proposée pour caractériser brièvement la pratique cavellienne de la philosophie. J'espère ainsi suggérer qu'il y a comme un air de famille entre ces deux penseurs « indisciplinés » et que tâcher de démêler le « réseau compliqué de similarités qui s'entrecroisent et s'enveloppent les unes les autres » 3 dans leurs deux premiers chefs-d'oeuvre consacrés au cinéma, La projection du monde 4 et Le cinéma ou l'homme imaginaire 5 , est un projet qui mériterait bien plus d'efforts que ceux que j'ai pu faire depuis lundi midi pour indiquer les quelques pistes de travail qui vont suivre. Pour la même raison et parce que la « métamorphose du

- by Hugo CLEMOT
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- Philosophy, Edgar Morin, Stanley Cavell, Cinema Studies

A reading of the film Moonstruck (1987) is presented in two movements. The first aligns Moonstruck with certain Hollywood film comedies of the 1930s and 40s, those Stanley Cavell calls comedies of remarriage. The second turns to some aspects of Emerson's writing – in particular his interest in our relation to human greatness, and his coinciding interest in our relation to the words of a text – and shows how Moonstruck inherits these Emersonian, essentially philosophical interests.

- by William Day
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- Aesthetics, Film Studies, Philosophy of Film, Stanley Cavell
- by Jensen Suther
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- Theodor Adorno, Stanley Cavell, Lars von Trier, Caravaggio

The viewer’s experience of Malick’s cinema can be arguably approached from the notion of dwelling. As Toles points out, the essence of this dwelling derives from the use of the medium’s capacities to reveal the world as something real. In contrast with earlier films, ‘The Tree of Life’ (2011) opens up the possibility of transcendence by pushing the limits of the world revealed by the film medium: here the world is no more an absolute presence, but the visible sign of a further presence, that of its Creator. The chain of revelations is thus expanded: the filmic dwelling holds the world’s presence and, in turn, this screened world points towards God’s presence. In this vein, the image of Jack O’Brien standing at the enigmatic doorframe in the wilderness might well illustrate the experience of the viewer of ‘The Tree of Life’.

- by Pablo Alzola Cerero
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- Christianity, Film Studies, Religion and Film, Film-Philosophy

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in anv form or bv any meaDs, electrotric, mechanical, photocopying, r-ecording, or otherrvise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

- by K. L. Evans
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- Literary Criticism, English, Stanley Cavell, Melville Studies

This essay aims to understand the relations between Stanley Cavell’s theoretical generalities regarding the medium of film and his readings of individual films, with a particular focus on his writing on color in his book The World Viewed. I argue that a specific idea of color as connected to abstraction (as well as a correlative idea of black-and-white as connected to figuration) grounds the relations between Cavell’s general statements about color and his readings of individual color films, and that this conception of color helps to bring out the level of medium specificity required for understanding Cavell’s notion of “projecting” a world. I likewise argue that this idea of color and abstraction lies behind Cavell’s claims about projecting a “unified” world in his writing on color’s connection with fantasy and futurity, in his approach to Jean-Luc Godard’s films, and even in his writing on color that follows The World Viewed.

- by Byron Davies
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- Aesthetics, Philosophy of Film, Stanley Cavell, Siegfried Kracauer
- by Samantha Fenno
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- British Literature, Psychology, Philosophy, English Literature

The aim of this paper is to apply the ideas of American philosopher Stanley Cavell to urban planning theory and practice. Cavell's thought has been applied in literary theory and film studies and to bridge the gap between deliberative and... more

- by David Mitchell
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- Philosophy, Urban Planning, Stanley Cavell, Urban And Regional Planning

Le 30 novembre 2019, à Chartres
L’expérience des séries télévisées peut être de nature philosophique. En effet, la philosophie doit aider à perfectionner nos façons de penser et d’agir. Or, regarder certaines séries télévisées peut changer nos façons de penser et de nous comporter, un changement qui conditionne leur amélioration. L’intervention exposera cet argument en l’illustrant à l’aide d’exemples tirés de plusieurs séries populaires.

- by Hugo CLEMOT
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- Ethics, Film-Philosophy, Stanley Cavell, TV Series

This essay establishes a distinction between two different modalities of criticism, which it calls "conclusive" and "implicative." The former reports on conclusions previously reached and invites verification or refutation from the reader; the latter displays the writer's process of thinking and invites continuation. Discussing criticism by Eve Sedgwick, Stanley Cavell, Neil Hertz, Raymond Williams, and D.A. Miller, and drawing on the writing of J.L. Austen, the essay turns from recent spatial discussions of close and distant criticism to conceive of criticism as a temporal matter of finished and unfinished writing.

- by Andrew Miller
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- Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Stanley Cavell, Ordinary Language Philosophy

Dans "Conditions Nobles et Ignobles", Cavell accuse Rawls d'avoir mal lu "Schopenhauer Educateur" de Nietzsche et de se tromper en faisant de Nietzsche le défenseur d'un perfectionnisme téléologique élitiste et anti-démocratique. À la place, Cavell propose une lecture démocratique de Nietzsche selon laquelle Nietzsche enjoint chacun à se perfectionner soi-même et non à se sacrifier pour le bien d'êtres suprérieurs. Dans cet article, je montre, contra Cavell, que la lecture de Rawls est bien plus fidèle au texte nietzschéen que la lecture partielle et biaisée de Cavell. J'en tire quelques leçons quant au perfectionnisme moral émersonien.

- by Florian Cova
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- Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanley Cavell, Moral Perfectionism, Perfectionism

Desde su aparición en 1971, 'El mundo visto' de Stanley Cavell ha marcado una pauta en los estudios sobre cine al elevarlo a la altura de la filosofía y ha supuesto un desafío para la propia filosofía de Cavell, enfrentada al escándalo... more

- by Antonio Fernández Díez
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- Ontology, Ethics, Avant-Garde Cinema, French Cinema

In semem Buch «Screening History» stellt Gore Vidal fest, Hollywood sei zur Lingua franca des 20. Jahrhunderts geworden. Freuds berühmtes Diktum umformulierend, erklärt er: «Heute, wo Literatur war, ist Kino geworden.» Von der kulturellen Brisanz des Mainstreams Hollywoods ausgehend, lässt sich vermuten, dass wir in einer Zeit leben, in der historische und politische Realität immer aufdringlicher in Fiktion umgeschrieben und als solche kulturell vertrieben wird. Eine historische Erinnerung lebt – vielleicht nicht nur, aber vornehmlich – durch ihre filmisch-fiktionale Aufbereitung weiter. Qhne den Kulturpessimismus eines Horkheimer und Adorno zu bemühen, ist doch die kulturelle Brisanz populärer Kunstformen unübersehbar geworden, scheint es dennoch zweifellos wichtig, den Begriff des «reality check» in die unsaubere Schnittfläche zwischen politischen Realitäten und deren kultureller Umsetzung wieder einzuführen. Und weil diese Realitäten immer im Zusammenhang mit Phantasien stehen – im imaginären Bereich ausgehandelt und umformuliert werden –, scheint es heute zudem wieder von besonderer Dringlichkeit, den Traumcharakter jener Werte, an denen wir im Westen unser Leben und unser Handeln messen, hervorzuheben. Deshalb sollen die folgenden Überlegungen zum «American Dream » als Bestandteil jenes vitalen kulturellen Transformationsprozesses verstanden werden, den man eine Globalisierung der amerikanischen Unterhaltungskultur nennen könnte. Denn obgleich man heute eher geneigt ist, für den Dialog zwischen Amerika und Europa eher die Differenzen und Unstimmigkeiten zwischen diesen beiden Kulturen herauszuarbeiten, ist es doch offensichtlich, dass auf der Ebene der Populärkliltur ein fast nahtloser Austausch existiert.

- by Elisabeth Bronfen
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- American Studies, Film Studies, Film Theory, Television Studies

Beginning with Emerson’s turn from his pulpit, many argue that American philosophy has rigorously held forth against supernaturalism and metaphysics. While most read self-reliance as a call for individualism, I argue that self-reliance is the application of the moral sentiment to the source of existence Emerson calls the Over-soul. Figures like George Kateb, Stanley Cavell, and Jeffrey Stout have presented a very different picture of American pragmatism. Stout, in particular, is responsible for building up what I call “the myth of the Emersonian democrat.” We find that a few philosophical positions generally constitute this myth. The Emersonian democrat is secular, sceptical, relativist, anti-realist, and anti-metaphysical. In
fact, on my reading of the strand of pragmatism running from Emerson through James to Dewey, the
pluralism of the Emersonian democrat depends on certain metaphysical commitments. The traditional
reading of Emerson as anti-religion, and by extension, anti-religious, impedes a better understanding of self-reliance and obfuscates some of the Emersonian inheritances in James and Dewey.

- by Randy L . Friedman
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- American Studies, Pragmatism, Political Science, William James

J.L. Austin’s insight that language should be treated as a domain of human action, rather than merely as a tool for the transmission of information, has been enormously influential. His analysis of speech acts continues to be widely utilised in a vast number of fields, from the philosophy of language to social and political philosophy, the philosophy of law, gender and literary studies, as well as a variety of social sciences. Yet scholars have so far focused on performative utterances and illocutionary acts, while the perlocutionary dimension of speech has generally been dismissed as unessential. This special issue, drawing inspiration from Stanley Cavell’s seminal work on passionate utterance, aims to shed new light on the philosophical, moral and political relevance of the perlocutionary.

- by Daniele Lorenzini
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- Performativity, Stanley Cavell, Ordinary Language Philosophy, Speech acts

This paper takes up the philosophical problem of modernism as it arises with respect to dance. While the “of” in the phrase “philosophy of dance” is most often construed as an objective genitive—philosophical which takes dance as its object—the “of” can also be construed as a subjective genitive: philosophical reflection that belongs to dance itself. The paper seeks to clarify the conditions for the possibility of this kind of approach. In the first half of the paper, I characterize a standard approach to philosophy of dance that I take to be implicit in and shared by several attempts to adapt conceptions of modernism, which were developed in the first instance to explain changes in the visual arts, to dance. Once we make the standard approach explicit, I argue, it becomes clear that this approach fails to clarify any sense in which philosophical reflection might genuinely belong to dance that is art. The approach shows only that philosophical reflection is in some sense present in the work of choreographers such as Merce Cunningham or Yvonne Rainer. To say of a form of philosophical reflection that it belongs to dance, I argue, is to make a stronger and a more compelling claim: that there is a necessary relation between the aesthetic and the philosophical achievement of the work. In the second half of the paper, drawing on the conception of modernism developed by Stanley Cavell and Michael Fried, I develop an alternative approach. Following them, I argue that modernism is the condition an art enters when it enters the condition of philosophy. I show that this approach is able to make sense of the following possibility: a reciprocal relation of mutual dependence obtains between the philosophical and aesthetic dimensions of some forms of dance. Through elaborating this idea, I show that the alternative approach affords a far more compelling point of departure for something deserving the title “philosophy of dance”.

- by Kristin Boyce
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- Postmodernism, Stanley Cavell, Modernism, Philosophy of Dance

In this paper, I explore the experience of shame and its connections to recognition and love as manifested in Shakespeare’s King Lear. My main focus in this paper is the ethical relevance of shame. I start from Sartre’s account of shame in Being and Nothingness, and I consider Webber’s attempt to reformulate it in terms of bad faith. I reject this and propose a way to rethink shame through a study of the workings of recognition in King Lear, following Stanley Cavell’s reading of this tragedy. I claim that the experience of shame has a relational structure, which makes it a crucial part of our ethical sensibilities. My analysis of King Lear brings out this structure and underlines the ethical significance of shame at this structural level, by highlighting its connection to recognition and love.

- by Alba Montes Sánchez
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- Shakespeare, Shame Theory, Recognition, Love

95--This is an original, ambitious, and provocative book. It argues that Wittgenstein's later philosophy can best be understood as a response to two problems that animate post-Kantian idealism and romanticism, drawing primarily on the work of Fichte, Schiller, Schlegel, Hegel, Wordsworth, and Goethe. The first is the metaphilosophical problem of the "critique of critique," the question of what basis can there possibly be for critical philosophy if Kant's own appeal to the categories proves unacceptable. The second is the ethical problem of expressive freedom, the question of the relationship between Willkür, volitional freedom, or the power to choose between alternatives, and Wille, rational freedom, that is, free choice informed by rational norms or laws. Eldridge argues that the romantic response to these problems is simultaneously philosophical and literary: to argue that the desperately needed solution must remain beyond our grasp, and to enact this tragic drama of aspiration and its disappointment in writing that continually aspires to yet fails to reach its goal.

- by David Stern
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- Metaphilosophy, Stanley Cavell, Wittgenstein, Later Wittgenstein

To write a book on ‘Vertigo’ (1958) appears to be a vertiginous task in itself. Sixty years after its release, the feature film by Alfred Hitchcock stills casts its shadow over new viewers, raising interpretations that might never manage to escape the enigmatic spiral that trapped detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), the film’s protagonist. In this respect, this book by Robert B. Pippin refuses to be a mere interpretation: it is a ‘reading’, in the sense given by Stanley Cavell to this term, that is, a critical understanding of a film as a whole and, above all, of the experience that a viewer has of it. With a telling peculiarity: here the viewer is a philosopher who believes that sometimes the best though can take the form of film. As put by the author, “some films can be said to attempt to illuminate something about human conduct that would otherwise remain poorly understood”. In this sense, from his experience of ‘Vertigo’ stems a question that cannot be answered by just alluding to pleasure or entertainment: What is the reason for showing us this story in this precise manner? Why ‘Vertigo’?

- by Glen W Norton
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- Stanley Cavell, Modernism, Jean-Luc Godard

This essay attempts to demonstrate the Preface to Lyrical Ballads‟ critical and historical relevance, first, by considering its historical reception, and second, by reconsidering one of the key concepts of the Preface, the notion of the “real,” within the larger context of this reception. During his lifetime, Wordsworth was considered in two different respects: one, as the poet of simple ballads; the other, as the speculative, inwardly driven poet of The Excursion. I argue that this second model, expounded first by Coleridge in Biographia Literaria, has influenced such major critics as Hartman, Pottle, and Bloom, particularly in their interpretations of Wordsworth‟s early career. By considering the “other” Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the Preface, the dialectic can be historically resituated. Ultimately, I wish to rethink the Preface by importing the idea of philosophy into what has hitherto been considered to be not a philosophical work.

- by Douglas Scott Berman
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- British Romanticism, Stanley Cavell
- by Bernhard Stricker
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- History, Cultural History, Film Studies, Film Theory

This article explores the idea and practice of philosophical criticism in Stanley Cavell's work on cinema. Building on recent scholarship on Cavellian criticism, it stresses its origins in an anxiety whose sources are medium-specific, historically specific, as well as internal to the general project of philosophical criticism. It argues that these anxieties may serve to explain Film Studies' resistance to criticism in the sense discussed here, and may continue to pose a challenge to its practice even as the work of Cavell itself receives belated recognition from the discipline. The article also begins to draw similarities between the critical practices of André Bazin and Cavell, while examining the differences in the institutional contexts of their work.

- by Feroz Hassan
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- Film Theory, Philosophy of Film, Stanley Cavell, Film and Philosophy

"In 'I Don't Know, Just Wait: Remembering Remarriage in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', William Day shows how Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind should be considered part of the film genre known as remarriage comedy; but he also shows how Kaufman contributes something new to the genre. Day addresses, in particular, how the conversation that is the condition for reunion involves discovering 'what it means to have memories together as a way of learning how to be together'. One of the most innovative aspects of Kaufman's filmic representation of such a conversation is its effect on the audience: how the narrative structure 'replicates for the viewer the felt contingency of memory that we attribute' to the characters we see onscreen - a couple contending with the interrelated experiences of remarriage and remembering."
--David LaRocca, Introduction to The Philosophy of Charlie Kaufman, 12.

- by William Day
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- Aesthetics, Film Studies, Philosophy of Film, Stanley Cavell

The night is a double of the day, a comment on its activities, a counter- site. In most cultures, the setting of the sun has always been connected with the advent of a different way of thinking and behaving. As our sight diminishes, other senses - notably our faculties of hearing and of the imagination - come to be increased. Our sense of distance and measure changes, the contours of the persons or objects we meet become blurred, we encounter a sense of disorientation, which can be either fascinating or threatening. In contrast to its appearance in day- light, the world surrounding us is harder to characterize; it shifts between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The danger potentially lurking in the night has, furthermore, always inspired tales of superstitious powers beyond those ruled by diurnal reason. Apart from thieves, arsonists and conspirators, ghosts, vampires and the devil himself seek the protection of darkness to pursue their unholy goals. At the same time, precisely because the night requires a higher degree of vigilance than the day, its darkness affords revelations. The night is the right time for the divine visions of early Christian mystics, for encountering the spirits of one's departed loved ones, for telling ghost stories around a fire or for seeing in one's dreams things one's conscious mind would censor during the day.

- by Elisabeth Bronfen
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- Psychoanalysis, Hegel, Maurice Blanchot, Sigmund Freud

This book is, first of all, an inquiry in the nature of moral philosophy. The understanding of such discipline as a rational enterprise aiming at establishing very general rules and principles is criticized. Thanks to an original reinterpretation of the method and purpose of Aristotle’s Practical Philosophy, in particular the so-called "method of aporias", another picture of moral theory is outlined. For practical philosophy to regain its connection with the moral life of human beings, it has to start from a special class of
situations in which people sometimes find themselves. These “no-leeway situations” cause a particular form of suffering called "spiritual suffering": it makes itself visible in the lack of words and concepts to articulate one's own experience and find a place for different forms of value. Moral philosophy should offer conceptual distinctions allowing people to understand (and respond
to) these situations. A comparison with the work of Stanley Cavell is carried out to deepen this understanding of practical philosophy. The lack of concepts characterizing “no-leeway situations” should not be understood against the background of an individualistic conception of the agent: the poverty of symbolic tools available to a person depends on the symbolic misery of the society to which she belongs. The relationship between society and the cultural
dimension is investigated through the examination of the theories of Émile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz and Yuri Lotman: particular attention is paid to the link between practical resources (the so-called "customs") and symbolic resources.

- by Riccardo Fanciullacci
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- Ethics, Reflexivity, Stanley Cavell, Moral Philosophy
- by Nicholas L Guardiano
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- Philosophy of Art, Stanley Cavell, Philosophy of Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Although the ethics of humor is a relatively new field, it already seems to have achieved a consensus about ethics in general. In this paper, I implicitly (1) question the view of ethics that stands behind many discussions in the ethics of humor; I do this by explicitly (2) focusing on what has been a chief preoccupation in the ethics of humor: the evaluation of humor. Does the immoral content of a joke make it more or less humorous? Specifically, I analyze whether a sexist joke is more humorous because of its sexism. Contra recent trends in the ethics of humor, I answer this question affirmatively. To this end, the paper presents a detailed and novel reading of Bergson's philosophy of humor, which I argue connects most easily and significantly to the alternate view of ethics I have in mind.

- by Martin Shuster
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- Aesthetics, Ethics, Applied Ethics, Humor (Psychology)

"Miller is charming company, both humanly and intellectually. He is onto something-the theme of unled lives, and the fascinating idea that fiction intensifies the sense of provisionality that attends all lives. An extremely attractive book."-James Wood "A one-of-a-kind book that is at once literary and personal, drawing the reader into a world of reflection about the nature of the lives we have not lived. Why do we return to the past in order to understand who we are now? This is a profound question, and this book explores its possible answers more acutely, more humanly, than anything I have seen on the subject."

- by Andrew Miller
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- Narrative, Poetry, Stanley Cavell, Narrative Theory

Essay in "Stanley Cavell and the Event of Romanticism"; Romantic Circles, Praxis Series (2014)

- by Eric Lindstrom
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- Critical Theory, Romanticism, Autobiography, Stanley Cavell