End Times According to Stanley Cavell

[a review essay of Larry Jackson’s 'Skepticism and Redemption: The Political Enactments of Stanley Cavell']

Abstract

Unintelligibility. Madness. Death. These are strange and ominous words to lead any essay, but the words themselves are not so strange to philosophy, and certainly not to anyone with an ear for Stanley Cavell’s voice. Then certainly philosophy uses them in a strange way, or, say, in unconventional ways. To assume these words mean what they “ordinarily” do (when reading Cavell) is to put on a presumption of drama that is not only uncalled for, but romantically irritating. When Cavell says unintelligibility, he doesn’t really mean unintelligible; when he says madness, he cannot possibly mean madness; and when he says death, he cannot possibly mean death. So what is with philosophy’s or Cavell’s insistence on using these words outside of their ordinary habitat, particularly when Cavell is so obviously sympathetic to the Wittgensteinian plea to bring language back from holiday?