Skepticism and Redemption The Political Enactments of Stanley Cavell.

详细信息   

• 作者：Jackson ; Larry.
• 学历：Ph.D.
• 年：2013
• 导师：Nikulin, Dmitri,eadvisorCrary, Aliceecommittee memberCritchley, Simonecommittee member
• 毕业院校：The New School
• Department：Philosophy
• ISBN：9781303176227
• CBH：3566445
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：1119089
• Pages：309

文摘

This essay examines the political significance of Stanley Cavell's thought. I begin by relating the concept of philosophy that Cavell advances in The Claim of Reason to the criticism of culture (or politics of interpretation) that he finds in the writings of Austin, Wittgenstein, and Emerson. I then show how Cavell himself carries out this philosophical task in his earliest published writings, the essays found in Must We Mean What We Say?. Interpreting these essays as responses to the political tragedies of the 1960s&mdash；the war in Vietnam, segregation, nuclear armament&mdash；I go on to describe The World Viewed and The Senses of Walden as attempts to undo the curses of Cavell's time. Taking these political issues to be central to Cavell's writings not only illuminates his philosophical project, but it also suggests that his work can make a valuable contribution to political philosophy more generally. I devote the remainder of the essay, then, to crafting a Cavellian theory of the political that places his early writings in dialogue with the concepts of passionate utterance, the argument of the ordinary, and the conversation of justice, while also drawing on Cavell's essays about art, music, comedy, and tragedy. I argue that the theory of politics that Cavell articulates proceeds from a condition of estrangement that he equates with skepticism. The goal of politics, then, is to count both transitively and intransitively, and in doing so, to "call back the world." This redemption, as Cavell calls it, occurs when one claims the right to revalue things and people: the rights of desire. But in staging a demand for acknowledgment&mdash；an enactment of existence&mdash；the political subject risks unintelligibility by voicing human pains and desires that society has not yet accounted for, though its principles and practices of justice may be deemed "good enough." While Cavell speaks of this political redemption in distinctly American terms&mdash；as the finding and founding of a new world&mdash；it is not the citizen who makes this demand, but the immigrant or exile, the person who exists outside the order of law. The enactment of existence is, therefore, not just a matter of issuing a particular petition or demand, but of simultaneously inventing of a new political scene&mdash；the creation of an altogether new politics.