Moral Perfectionism and Cavell's Romantic Turn

Abstract

The first book of Stanley Cavell’s that I read is the only book that I ardently wished I had written, The Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Why this book, and not some high impact, world-historical book like Heidegger’s Being and Time or Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations? Well, there are a number of reasons, some of them personal and some of them, well, Cavellian. Most immediately, the book explained to me why I so much enjoyed watching again and again over the course of more than three decades the films which are the objects of Cavell’s interpretations — why, in short, watching these films made me so happy, why they filled me with goofy delight, always ringing a smile to my face, a smile not unlike that smile of Cary Grant’s (from Holiday) reproduced in the pages of The Pursuits of Happiness.