The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy

by Stanley Cavell

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Literature, Theory, Collections, Classics, Unfinished

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Stanley Cavell 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.

Reviews

[Szplug]

This book, this gorgeous, fresh, brand-spanking-new book, smells like a little slice of pulp heaven. It's a wild and heady perfect bound aroma that acts upon your literary libido like a platter of oysters freckled with chilies and a Dian Parkinson Playboy™ Special on the side...

[Vincent Saint-Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Friends and Monsters,

The world is too full of meaning. It is spilling uncontrollably from my sentences. And yet I feel very much like you understand what I mean.

Please do,

V

[Blakely · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little unwieldy towards the end. But restored my faith in philosophy as something that addresses questions and concerns that I have.

[Nat]

In Rorty's "Cavell on Skepticism", he says the book "takes us from epistemology to romance". I'd only ever dipped into the epistemology parts (1 and 2), and never made it to the sprawling romance of part 4, until this read. The big payoff is the comparison of external world skepticism (which is the focus of parts 1 and 2) with other minds skepticism.

While the dialectic of external world skepticism first challenges our knowledge of everyday objects by arguing that we don't meet the conditions for knowing some generic object even in a best case situation, and then dissolves in ordinary situations where we have to act (we know "for all practical purposes..."), other minds skepticism does not dissolve in ordinary situations, but is pervasive in our doubts and inability to connect with other people, and the "ideal of knowledge implied by skepticism with respect to other minds--of unlimited genuineness and effectiveness in the acknowledgement of oneself and others--haunts our ordinary days, as if it were the substance of our hopes" (p.454).

Cavell says that "tragedy is the public form of the life of skepticism with respect to other minds" (p.493), and he uses Othello, The Winter's Tale, and King Lear to illustrate failures of knowledge and acknowledgement of other minds. This makes some sense out of the otherwise kind of weird policy that was in place when I was teaching the first year Philosophical Perspectives sequence at the U of Chicago, which involved a course on early modern philosophy (Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Hume, Montaigne) but also featured one of Shakespeare's tragedies (Hamlet, when I was teaching it). I believe that that combination was the idea of some former Cavell students on the faculty.

[Micah Enns-Dyck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this is a long and difficult book, every nugget you manage to excerpt is well worth the effort. Cavell's work uniquely follows Wittgenstein's investigative method and thus seriously challenges you to slow down, think, and most importantly, pay attention to what is shown (not told!). A truly brilliant account of finitude, knowledge, and skepticism.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

my obsession with inside/outside might be leaving me soon...

[Audrey Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful mammoth

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very enthusiastic about the way Cavell does things (though his writing does feel verbose at times). I don't have the most sophisticated understanding of /The Claim of Reason/ yet but I would characterize him as approaching basic longstanding questions (how do I know I'm not dreaming? how do I know that other people are conscious? how are moral claims justified?) through the work of writers like Wittgenstein and Shakespeare in an unusual and edifying way: rather than as intellectual puzzles such questions are interesting in what they expose about the nature and quality of our relationships to ourselves, others, and the world. He makes philosophical thought personal, turns my attention to MY life and the people close to me. But I shouldn't try to be too general. Each chapter (book?) is interesting, detailed, and pretty self-contained. If you like philosophy and literature and wish that they made better bedfellows, check out Cavell.

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

STILL CURRENTLY READING but this is the first time ever reading a philosophy book that I have cried "THIS IS SO MISERABLE!" It literally feels like my brain cells are engaging in medevial feuds with one another, replete with swords and shields. HELP!

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a landslide knockout. I only thought I should read it for some additional context before re-reading Cavell's various books on Shakespeare and on Film, which I've loved (if finding a little uneven) for some time...was not expecting Claim of Reason to be such a goddamn masterpiece. I read Wittgenstein twenty years ago and am certainly no expert on Austin or Skepticism--but in my dilettante opinion, this is the most intriguing philosophical text written by an American in the twentieth century, and one of the most beautiful expressions I know for the right regards philosophy and literature might have of one another.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up Cavell because I was interested in ordinary language philosophy. I've read some stuff I've really liked that's similarly downstream of Wittgenstein (Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment I still feel is what really delivers on the promise of the phrase "meaning is use"), and I've heard people talk about how Cavell's writing is beautiful and he makes great use of literature. I also make it a point to try to read philosophers like Cavell who in addition to writing about morality, are widely regarded as nice, normal guys. Cavell notably went south for Freedom Summer.

After a discussion of Wittgensteinian "criteria", Cavell addresses the problem of skepticism of an external world. Cavell rightfully points out the the ordinary language user finds this problem "cold, strained, and ridiculous" (a beautiful phrase of Hume's). I personally was pretty bought in to Richard Rorty's preferred method for dealing with problems that have outlived their usefulness: by "changing the way we talk", or more simply, by changing the subject. So why should we address skepticism of an external world at all?

The move that Cavell makes is to not let us off the hook for our responsibility to the philosopher. The central insight of ordinary language philosophy is that an ordinary language user has expertise in how to use words, so their insights can't simply be discounted by a philosopher claiming to make valid arguments with those words. So, to borrow J. L. Austin's example, when you say you see a goldfinch, and your friend asks you, "How do you know that's a goldfinch?" an acceptable answer is "from the marking on its head", whereas "by means of the senses" is not acceptable, because it does not address the question we know the friend is asking. This is something we have to take into account when we are analyzing whether it makes sense for a philosopher to ask questions of the form "How do you know?" that come up in discussions of the existence of the external world. But crucially, the philosopher is a person too. While it's possible for people to misuse words (try to use them when they mean something other than what their ordinary use would communicate, even allowing for stretches of meaning such as metaphor), we ought to lend some credence to the philosopher's use of words in understanding their meaning.

One of the things I really love about Cavell's rhetoric is his lists. Lists of the objects philosophers choose to make their points in skeptical arguments: "bits of wax, tables, chairs, houses, men, envelopes, bells, sheets of paper, tomatoes, blackboards, pencils". Cavell points out that these objects are "generic" in some sense, and also some kind of "best case" for knowledge. If you don't "know" that there is a ball of wax in front of you when there is one, how are you going to "know" the existence of anything else? Thus the choice of "generic" object will allow us to generalize from the failure of knowledge in this case to the failure of knowledge in general: skepticism.

So we come then to ask of the ball of wax, "how do we know" it's there? In ordinary language you would normally give an answer like you'd give to about the goldfinch: a mark of identification. But this is a perfectly generic object in a best case- you shouldn't have trouble identifying it. Only concrete claims, like J. L. Austin's claim about a goldfinch, require this kind of justification. So in ordinary usage, nobody would ever ask you how you know the ball of wax there. So the philosopher can't claim to be adhering to ordinary use of our language, "to know". The philosopher's claim to be calling into question whether we really know what we mean when way say "to know" is itself called into question.

The “dilemma” the traditional investigation of knowledge is involved in may now be formulated this way: It must be the investigation of a concrete claim if its procedure is to be coherent; it cannot be the investigation of a concrete claim if its conclusion is to be general.

This is all well and good. Like I said, I take my cues from Rorty, who I take to maintain that you can just change the subject if the philosopher is bothering you. So this "disproof" isn't really necessary qua "disproof"; after all, the skepticism by itself naturally seems "cold, strained, and ridiculous" once you go about your day. It's the direction Cavell goes in for the second half of the book that's interesting. What experience is the philosopher responding to when they try to use language this way?

... an experience which I described as one of being sealed off from the world, within the round of one’s own experiences, and as one of looking at the world as one object (“outside of us”). The philosopher’s experiences of trying to prove that it is there is, I will now add, one of trying to establish an absolutely firm connection with that world-object from that sealed position. It is as though, deprived of the ordinary forms of life in which that connection is, and is alone, secured, he is trying to reestablish it in his immediate consciousness, then and there. (This has its analogues in non-philosophical experience, normal and abnormal.)

Where can this experience of being sealed off from knowledge about the world come from? Cavell's most convincing examples begin to come from the problem of other minds rather than the problem of an external world. How is it possible that others can make known what they are thinking to us, and vice versa? What does it look like when the faith in this possibility is shattered, and what causes this shattering?

A fantasy of necessary inexpressiveness would solve a simultaneous set of metaphysical problems: it would relieve me of the responsibility for making myself known to others—as though if I were expressive that would mean continuously betraying my experiences, incessantly giving myself away; it would suggest that my responsibility for self-knowledge takes care of itself—as though the fact that others cannot know my (inner) life means that I cannot fail to.

Why does Cavell start calling skepticism of the knowledge of others a "fantasy"? Who would want to believe such a thing? Cavell concludes by analyzing (among others) Lear and Othello- two characters whose madness intimately involves a seeming failure to know or recognize others.

Lear fails to recognize his own daughter Cordelia because he would have to acknowledge what he has done to her if he were to recognize her. Othello becomes obsessed with the idea that he can never truly know what's going on with Desdemona. He forces himself to ignore all the outward signs of Desdemona's faithfulness in order to make himself believe what Iago is saying. It is more bearable for Othello to believe that knowledge of the Other is impossible altogether. More bearable than what? Perhaps- tolerating ambiguity, accepting responsibility for one's own commitments, risking failure, being known.

I find this convincing for a reason to be interested in the problem of skepticism! Skepticism contains the allure of safety from your responsibility to yourself and others. Its appearance in ordinary language reflects the fact that it arises in situations that matter to us and our values.

I am not much interested in some problem about the existence of the external world when what I am thinking about are the interesting things there are to be known and the interesting ways in which I may undertake to know them, and the gripping uses to which I may put that power.

[Tully · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book as beautiful and wise and ethically transformative as any in american philosophy.

[Valérie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pas tout compris mais Cavell se répète bcp

[Daniel Crouch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since this is my second foray into Cavell, the normal stylistic hang-ups and deficiencies can be glossed over. A unique issue with this work, though still minor, is a the monotonous dealing with the problem of other minds. This all aside, Cavell engrosses his readers with everyday and idiosyncratic examples alike as well as a conversational tone as he wrestles with our understanding of words, conventions, and even ourselves.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, it may seem as if Cavell is being obscure in order to flaunt his literary prowess. On closer examination, though, one sees that his style is purposefully chosen to reflect the nuances he finds in the epistemological and ethical problems of everyday life.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about being and denying being human. It is a full work of rich and perceptive philosophy in the Wittgensteinian tradition of paying close attention to words, their speaking and meaning. It demands full attention but repays it with interest.

[Kaidi Pan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[jeremiah]

Here, as in all his writings, Cavell is like a philosophical DJ, cutting and scratching, spinning back, and bending the pitch of Wittgenstein, Austin, Descartes, Thompson Clarke, Shakespeare, Heidegger, et al. Stephen Mulhall has a great paper called "On Refusing to Begin" in which he wonders what The Claim of Reason is about, what kind of text it is. A tough question, to be sure, but for starters, we know it is, in part, a grand remix of the Philosophical Investigations, the Meditations, Othello, etc.

[Joni · Rating 4 out of 5]

hard read