The Claim of Reason as a Study of the Human Voice

Abstract

Cavell’s goal in The Claim of Reason has been to “bring the human voice back into philosophy.” For Cavell, the stakes of ordinary language philosophy (particularly Wittgenstein and Austin’s work; see Toril Moi, Avner Baz) are to make it understood that language is spoken; pronounced by a human voice within a form of life. In The Claim of Reason, his aim is to shift the question of the common/shared use of language—central to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations—toward the less-explored question of the definition of the subject as voice, and the re-introduction of the voice into philosophy as a redefinition of subjectivity in language.