Stanley Cavell

Walter M Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value Emeritus Honorary Associate of Adams House Stanley Cavell

A philosophical study of popular movies uses the viewer as a point of reference

Reflections on the Ontology of Film, Enlarged Edition

The World Viewed

Looks at seven classic romantic comedies of the thirties and forties, and compares what each film expresses about marriage, interdependence, equality, and sexual roles

The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage

Pursuits of Happiness

A Book of Essays

Must We Mean What We Say?

An autobiography in the form of a philosophical diary, Little Did I Know's underlying motive is to describe the events of a life that produced the kind of writing associated with Stanley Cavell's name. Cavell recounts his journey from early childhood in Atlanta, Georgia, through musical studies at UC Berkeley and Julliard, his subsequent veering off into philosophy at UCLA, his Ph.D. studies at Harvard, and his half century of teaching. Influential people from various fields figure prominently or in passing over the course of this memoir. J.L. Austin, Ernest Bloch, Roger Sessions, Thomas Kuhn, Robert Lowell, Rogers Albritton, Seymour Shifrin, John Rawls, Bernard Williams, W. V. O. Quine, and Jacques Derrida are no longer with us; but Cavell also pays homage to the living: Michael Fried, John Harbison, Rose Mary Harbison, Kurt Fischer, Milton Babbitt, Thompson Clarke, John Hollander, Hilary Putnam, Sandra Laugier, Belle Randall, and Terrence Malick. The drift of his narrative also registers the decisiveness of the relatively unknown and the purely accidental. Cavell's life has produced a trail of some eighteen published books that range from treatments of individual writers like Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau, Heidegger, Shakespeare, and Beckett to studies in aesthetics, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, cinema, opera, and religion.

Excerpts from Memory

Little Did I Know

This collection of essays explores Thoreau's Walden, and discusses the importance of Thoreau and Emerson on American thought.

An Expanded Edition

The Senses of Walden

A Note on the Captions Preface Introduction 1: Naughty Orators: Negation of Voices in Gaslight 2: Psychoanalysis and Cinema: Moments of Letter from an Unknown Woman3: Ugly Duckling, Funny Butterfly: Bette Davis and Now, Voyager 4: Postscript: To Whom It May Concern 5: Stella's Taste: Reading Stella Dallas Notes Bibliography Filmography Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman

Contesting Tears

This handsome new edition of Stanley Cavell's landmark text, first published 20 years ago, provides a new preface that discusses the reception and influence of his work, which occupies a unique niche between philosophy and literary studies.

Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy

The Claim of Reason

David Justin Hodge

This book is Stanley Cavells definitive expression on Emerson. Over the past thirty years, Cavell has demonstrated that he is the most emphatic and provocative philosophical critic of Emerson that America has yet known. The sustained effort of that labor is drawn together here for the first time into a single volume, which also contains two previously unpublished essays and an introduction by Cavell that reflects on this book and the history of its emergence. Students and scholars working in philosophy, literature, American studies, history, film studies, and political theory can now more easily access Cavells luminous and enduring work on Emerson. Such engagement should be further complemented by extensive indices and annotations. If we are still in doubt whether America has expressed itself philosophically, there is perhaps no better space for inquiry than reading Cavell reading Emerson.

Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes

Stanley Cavell's most important writings on cinema, collected together for the first time in one volume.

Cavell on Film

Seeking for philosophy the same spirit and assurance conveyed by artists like Fred Astaire, Cavell presents essays exploring the meaning of grace and gesture in film and on stage, in language and in life. Critical to the renaissance in American thought Cavell hopes to provoke is the recognition of the centrality of the "ordinary" to American life.

Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow

This book--which presents a course of lectures Cavell presented several times toward the end of his teaching career at Harvard--links masterpieces of moral philosophy and classic Hollywood comedies to fashion a new way of looking at our lives and learning to live with ourselves.

Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life

Cities of Words

«Stanley Cavell è un pensatore che ha ampliato i confini della letteratura e della filosofia, rinnovandone lo spirito. Le “letture” che Cavell dà di Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Emerson ci aiutano a comprenderli in modo più profondo e ci consegnano una visione di ciò che la vita e la cultura possono significare. Se dovessi consigliare a un giovane che si interroga sul futuro della filosofia e della letteratura, l’opera di un pensatore contemporaneo, gli consiglierei di leggere Cavell. Condizioni ammirevoli e avvilenti è un modo magnifico per iniziare a conoscerlo» (Hilary Putnam).

La costituzione del perfezionismo emersoniano

Condizioni ammirevoli e avvilenti

Ian Hacking

John McDowell

Cora Diamond

This groundbreaking collection of contributions by leading philosophers offers a new way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself.

Philosophy and Animal Life

These lectures by one of the most influential and original philosophers of the twentieth century constitute a sustained argument for the philosophical basis of romanticism, particularly in its American rendering. Through his examination of such authors as Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, Stanley Cavell shows that romanticism and American transcendentalism represent a serious philosophical response to the challenge of skepticism that underlies the writings of Wittgenstein and Austin on ordinary language.

Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism

In Quest of the Ordinary

Wittgenstein, Skeptizismus, Moral und Tragödie

Der Anspruch der Vernunft

Stanley Cavell is a titan of the academic world; his work in aesthetics and philosophy has shaped both fields in the United States over the past forty years. In this brief yet enlightening collection of lectures, Cavell investigates the work of two of his most tried-and-true subjects: Emerson and Wittgenstein. Beginning with an introductory essay that places his own work in a philosophical and historical context, Cavell guides his reader through his thought process when composing and editing his lectures while making larger claims about the influence of institutions on philosophers, and the idea of progress within the discipline of philosophy. In “Declining Decline,” Cavell explains how language modifies human existence, looking specifically at the culture of Wittgenstein’s writings. He draws on Emerson, Thoreau, and many others to make his case that Wittgenstein can indeed be viewed as a “philosopher of culture.” In his final lecture, “Finding as Founding,” Cavell writes in response to Emerson’s “Experience,” and explores the tension between the philosopher and language—that he or she must embrace language as his or her “form of life,” while at the same time surpassing its restrictions. He compares finding new ideas to discovering a previously unknown land in an essay that unabashedly celebrates the power and joy of philosophical thought.

Stanley Cavell

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