Stanley Cavell

{{Infobox philosopher

| image = StanleyCavellBrooklineMonmouth2016.jpg

| caption = Cavell in 2016

| name = Stanley Cavell

| birth_name = Stanley Louis Goldstein

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1926|9|1}}

| birth_place = Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2018|6|19|1926|9|1}}

| death_place = Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

| education = University of California, Berkeley (BA)
University of California, Los Angeles
Harvard University (PhD)

| institutions = Harvard University

| school_tradition = Postanalytic philosophyMichael Adrian Peters, Education, Philosophy and Politics: The Selected Works of Michael A. Peters, Routledge, 2012, p. 210.

| main_interests = Skepticism, tragedy, aesthetics, ethics, ordinary language philosophy, American transcendentalism, film theory, William Shakespeare, opera, religion

| notable_ideas = Linguistic film theory,The Dualist [https://books.google.com/books?id=N1u6AAAAIAAJ Vols. 1–6], Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, 1994, p. 56. moral perfectionism

|doctoral_students={{hlist|Paul Guyer, Paul W. Franks, Arnold Davidson, Nancy Bauer, Barbara Herman, David Macarthur}}

}}

Stanley Louis Cavell ({{IPAc-en|k|ə|ˈ|v|ɛ|l}}; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, and ordinary language philosophy. As an interpreter, he produced influential works on Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau, and Heidegger. His work is characterized by its conversational tone and frequent literary references.

Life

Cavell was born as Stanley Louis Goldstein to a Jewish family in Atlanta, Georgia. His mother, Fannie (Segal), the daughter of immigrants from Romania, was a locally renowned pianist for radio, vaudeville, and silent films.{{Cite book |last=Brino-Dean |first=Terry |url= |title=Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers |publisher=A&C Black |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-84371-037-0 |editor-last=Shook |editor-first=John R. |pages=459 |language=en |chapter=Cavell, Stanley Louis |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ijpj1tB3Qr0C&pg=PA459}} She trained him in music from his earliest days.Cavell, Stanley, Little Did I Know, 21 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). During the Great Depression, Cavell's parents moved several times between Atlanta and Sacramento, California.Little Did I Know, 24 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). As an adolescent, Cavell played lead alto saxophone as the youngest member of a black jazz band in Sacramento.Little Did I Know, 169 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). Around this time he changed his name, anglicizing his father's original Polish name, Kavelieruskii (sometimes spelled "Kavelieriskii").{{Cite news |last=Smith |first=Harrison |date=2018-06-26 |title=Stanley Cavell, philosopher who drew insights from Shakespeare and cinema, dies at 91 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/stanley-cavell-philosopher-who-drew-insights-from-shakespeare-and-cinema-dies-at-91/2018/06/21/b6c835ac-755d-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html |access-date=2024-10-08 |newspaper=Washington Post |language=en-US |issn=0190-8286}} He entered the University of California, Berkeley, where, along with his lifelong friend Bob Thompson, he majored in music, studying with, among others, Roger Sessions and Ernest Bloch.Little Did I Know, 85, 157-62, 166, 183 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). After graduation, he studied composition at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, only to discover that music was not his calling.Little Did I Know, 220-225 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010).

He entered graduate school in philosophy at UCLA, and then transferred to Harvard University.Little Did I Know, 247 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). As a student there he came under the influence of J. L. Austin, whose teaching and methods "knocked him off ... [his] horse."{{Cite book |last=Cavell |first=Stanley |url=https://archive.org/details/claimofreasonwit0000cave_v5t1 |title=The claim of reason : Wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy |date=1999 |publisher=New York : Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-513107-9 |pages=xv |orig-date=1979 |url-access=registration |via=Internet Archive}} In 1954 he was awarded a Junior Fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Before completing his Ph.D., he became an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956.Little Did I Know, 326 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). Cavell's daughter by his first wife (Marcia Cavell), Rachel Lee Cavell, was born in 1957.{{Cite book |last=Wheatley |first=Catherine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jQFbEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA7 |title=Stanley Cavell and Film: Scepticism and Self-Reliance at the Cinema |date=2021-02-25 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-350-19135-8 |page=7 |language=en}} In 1962–63 Cavell was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he befriended the British philosopher Bernard Williams.Little Did I Know, 149 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). Cavell’s marriage to Marcia ended in divorce in 1961. In 1963 he returned to the Harvard Philosophy Department, where he became the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value.Little Did I Know, 435 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010).

In the summer of 1964, Cavell joined a group of graduate students, who taught at Tougaloo College, a historically black Protestant college in Mississippi, as part of what became known as the Freedom Summer.Little Did I Know, 373 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010). He and Cathleen (Cohen) Cavell were married in 1967. In April 1969, during the student protests (chiefly arising from the Vietnam War), Cavell, helped by his colleague John Rawls, worked with a group of African-American students to draft language for a faculty vote to establish Harvard's Department of African and African-American Studies.Little Did I Know, 508–512 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010).

In 1976, Cavell's first son, Benjamin, was born. In 1979, along with the documentary filmmaker Robert H. Gardner, Cavell helped found the Harvard Film Archive, to preserve and present the history of film.{{Cite web | url=http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2007novedec/cavell.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110610050128/http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2007novedec/cavell.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=2011-06-10 | title=An Evening with Stanley Cavell - Harvard Film Archive}} Cavell received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992.{{Cite web |title=Stanley Cavell |url=https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-1992/stanley-cavell |access-date=2024-10-29 |website=www.macfound.org |language=en}} In 1996-97 Cavell was president of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division).{{Cite web |last=Parsons |first=Lian |date=2020-12-02 |title=Stanley Louis Cavell, 91 |url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/12/stanley-louis-cavell-91/ |access-date=2024-10-10 |website=Harvard Gazette |language=en-US}} In 1984, his second son, David, was born. Cavell remained on the Harvard faculty until retiring in 1997. Thereafter, he taught courses at Yale University and the University of Chicago. He also held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in 1998.{{Cite web |last=Amsterdam |first=Universiteit van |date=2024-10-02 |title=Spinozaleerstoel afdeling Filosofie |url=https://www.uva.nl/discipline/filosofie/spinozaleerstoel/spinozaleerstoel.html |access-date=2024-10-08 |website=Universiteit van Amsterdam |language=nl}}

Cavell died in Boston, Massachusetts of heart failure on June 19, 2018, at the age of 91.{{cite news |last=Genzlinger |first=Neil |date=June 20, 2018 |title=Stanley Cavell, Prominent Harvard Philosopher, Dies at 91 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/obituaries/stanley-cavell-prominent-harvard-philosopher-dies-at-91.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180621093419/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/obituaries/stanley-cavell-prominent-harvard-philosopher-dies-at-91.html |archive-date=June 21, 2018 |access-date=June 21, 2018 |newspaper=The New York Times}} He was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.{{Cite web |title=STANLEY CAVELL Obituary (2018) - Brookline, MA - Boston Globe |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/stanley-cavell-obituary?id=1720271&referrer=0&preview=false |access-date=2024-10-08 |website=Legacy.com}}

Philosophy

Although trained in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, Cavell frequently interacted with the continental tradition.{{Cite book|last=Wheatley|first=Catherine|title=Stanley Cavell and Film: Scepticism and Self-Reliance at the Cinema|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|year=2019|isbn=978-1-7883-1025-3|location=London|pages=19|language=en}} He includes film and literary study in philosophical inquiry. Cavell wrote extensively on Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Martin Heidegger, as well as the American transcendentalists Henry Thoreau{{Cite book|last=Hunt|first=Lester H.|title=The Philosophy of Henry Thoreau: Ethics, Politics, and Nature|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|year=2019|isbn=978-1-350-07902-1|location=London|pages=x|language=en}} and Ralph Waldo Emerson.{{Cite book|last1=Standish|first1=Paul|title=Stanley Cavell and Philosophy as Translation: The Truth is Translated|last2=Saito|first2=Naoko|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2017|isbn=978-1-78660-289-3|location=London|pages=45}} His work was for a time frequently compared to that of Jacques Derrida, whom he met in 1970. Although their exchange was congenial, Cavell denied the full extent to which deconstruction could undermine the possibility of meaning, instead taking an explicitly ordinary language approach to language and skepticism.Gordon C. F. Bearn. “Sounding Serious: Cavell and Derrida.” Representations, no. 63, University of California Press, 1998, pp. 65–92, https://doi.org/10.2307/2902918. He writes about Wittgenstein in a fashion known as the New Wittgenstein, which according to Alice Crary interprets Wittgenstein as putting forward a positive view of philosophy as a therapeutic form.{{Cite book|last=Peters|first=Michael A.|title=Wittgenstein, Anti-foundationalism, Technoscience and Philosophy of Education: An Educational Philosophy and Theory Reader Volume VIII|publisher=Routledge|year=2020|isbn=978-1-000-02800-3|location=Oxon|language=en}} Cavell's work incorporates autobiographical elements concerning how his movement between and within these thinkers' ideas influenced his views in the arts and humanities, beyond the technical study of philosophy.

Cavell established his distinct philosophical identity with Must We Mean What We Say? (1969), a collection of essays that addresses topics such as language use, metaphor, skepticism, tragedy, and literary interpretation from the point of view of ordinary language philosophy, of which he is a practitioner and ardent defender. One of the essays discusses Søren Kierkegaard's work on revelation and authority, The Book on Adler, in an effort to help reintroduce the book to modern philosophical readers.{{cite journal |journal=The Journal of Religion |date=July 1977 |title=Some Remarks on Authority and Revelation in Kierkegaard |last=Jones |first=Joe R. |volume=57 |issue=3 |page=237 |doi=10.1086/486547 |jstor=1201641 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1201641}} In The World Viewed (1971) Cavell looks at photography, film, modernism in art and the nature of media, mentioning the influence of art critic Michael Fried on his work.

Cavell is well-known for The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979), which forms the centerpiece of his work and has its origins in his doctoral dissertation. In Pursuits of Happiness (1981), Cavell describes his experience of seven prominent Hollywood comedies: The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam’s Rib, and The Awful Truth. Cavell argues that these films, from 1934–1949, form part of what he calls the genre of "The Comedy of Remarriage," and finds in them great philosophical, moral, and political significance. Specifically, Cavell argues that these comedies show that "the achievement of happiness requires not the [...] satisfaction of our needs [...] but the examination and transformation of those needs."Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness, 1981, pp. 4–5. According to Cavell, the emphasis these movies place on remarriage draws attention to the fact that, within a relationship, happiness requires "growing up" together with one's partner.Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness, 1981, p. 136.

In Cities of Words (2004) Cavell traces the history of moral perfectionism, a mode of moral thinking spanning the history of Western philosophy and literature. Having used Emerson to outline the concept, the book suggests ways we might want to understand philosophy, literature, and film as preoccupied with features of perfectionism. In Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow (2005), a collection of essays, Cavell makes the case that J. L. Austin's concept of performative utterance requires the supplementary concept of passionate utterance: "A performative utterance is an offer of participation in the order of law. And perhaps we can say: A passionate utterance is an invitation to improvisation in the disorders of desire."Cavell, Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 19. The book also contains extended discussions of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Fred Astaire, as well as familiar Cavellian subjects such as Shakespeare, Emerson, Thoreau, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. Cavell's final book, Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory (2010), is an autobiography written in the form of a diary. In a series of consecutive, dated entries, he inquires about the origins of his philosophy by telling the story of his life.

A scholarly journal, Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies, engages with his philosophical work. It is edited by Sérgio Dias Branco and Amir Khan and published by the University of Ottawa.{{Cite web |title=About the Journal {{!}} Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies |url=https://uottawa.scholarsportal.info/ottawa/index.php/conversations/about |access-date=2024-10-10 |website=uottawa.scholarsportal.info}}

Honorary degrees

Doctor of Humane Letters, Kalamazoo College, 1980
Doctor of Letters, Iona College, 1985
Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Chicago, 1987
Docteur, Honoris Causa, Université de Strasbourg, 1996
Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa, Hebrew University, 1997
Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa, University of East Anglia, 2009
Docteur, Honoris Causa, École normale supérieure de Lyon, 2010
Doctor of Letters, Wesleyan University, 2010
Doctor of Theology, Institut protestant de théologie de Paris, 2010

Selected honors

Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1953–56
Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, 1962–1963
Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California, Berkeley, 1961
Fellow, Wesleyan University Center for the Humanities, 1970–1971
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1978–
Fellow, MacArthur Foundation
President, American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division), 1996–97
2000 Centennial Medalist, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Romanell Phi Beta Kappa Professorship, 2004–05
Member, American Philosophical Society, 2005-

Selected special lectureships

Patricia Wise Lecture, American Film Institute, 1982
Mrs. William Beckman Lectures, University of California, Berkeley, 1983
Tanner Lecture, Stanford University, April 1986
Carus Lectures, American Philosophical Association, 1988
Plenary Address, Shakespeare World Congress, Los Angeles, 1996
Presidential Address, American Philosophical Association, Atlanta, 1996
Howison Lectures, University of California, Berkeley, February, 2002

Bibliography

Must We Mean What We Say? (1969)
The Senses of Walden (1972) Expanded edition San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981.
[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674961968 The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film] (1971); 2nd enlarged edition (1979)
The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979) New York: Oxford University Press.
[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674739062 Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage] (1981) {{ISBN|978-0-674-73906-2}}
Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes (1984)
Disowning Knowledge: In Six Plays of Shakespeare (1987); 2nd edition: Disowning Knowledge: In Seven Plays of Shakespeare (2003)
In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Scepticism and Romanticism (1988) Chicago: Chicago University Press.{{Cite magazine |last=Rorty |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Rorty |date=June 19, 1989 |title=The Philosophy of the Oddball |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/149224/philosophy-oddball |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180621040346/https://newrepublic.com/article/149224/philosophy-oddball |archive-date=June 21, 2018 |access-date=2024-10-10 |magazine=The New Republic |issn=0028-6583}}
This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein (1988)
Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (1990)
[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674669819 A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises] (1994)
Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson, Austin, Derrida (1995)
Contesting Tears: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman (1996)
Emerson's Transcendental Etudes (2003)
Cavell on Film (2005)
[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018181 Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life] (2004)
[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022324 Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow] (2005)
Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory (2010){{Cite web |last=Cohen |first=Marshall |date=2019-04-27 |title=Must We Mean What We Say?: On the Life and Thought of Stanley Cavell |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/must-we-mean-what-we-say-on-the-life-and-thought-of-stanley-cavell/ |access-date=2024-10-08 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books}}{{Cite journal |last=Johnson |first=Christopher D. |date=2010 |title=Review of Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23012523 |journal=MLN |volume=125 |issue=5 |pages=1147–1151 |doi=10.1353/mln.2010.0031 |jstor=23012523 |issn=0026-7910 |url-access=registration}}
Here and There: Sites of Philosophy (2022)

References

External links

[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~phildept/cavell.html Harvard Philosophy Department website] [https://web.archive.org/web/20050309030220/http://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/facultymember.php?key=1 2005 version] (archived)
[https://uottawa.scholarsportal.info/ojs/index.php/conversations Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies]
[http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Cavell/cavell-con0.html A Philosopher Goes to the Movies: Conversation with Stanley Cavell] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170120014215/http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Cavell/cavell-con0.html |date=2017-01-20 }}
Daniel Ross, [http://tlweb.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/screeningthepast/19/philosophy-day-after-tomorrow.html Review of Cavell, Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow]
[http://study.stanley-cavell.org A study (in French) on Cavell's idea of perfectionism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728053606/http://study.stanley-cavell.org/ |date=2011-07-28 }}
{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20130720234629/http://stanley-cavell.net/ Stanley Cavell]}}
[http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Cavell.php PennSound page with audio and video links]
[https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Cavell/Cavell-Stanley_Close-Listening_12-10-12.mp3 Radio interview by Charles Bernstein]
Cohen, Marshall (2019). [https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/must-we-mean-what-we-say-on-the-life-and-thought-of-stanley-cavell/ "Must We Mean What We Say?: On the Life and Thought of Stanley Cavell"]. Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2024-10-08.