Philosophy of Mind Becomes Aesthetics

Cavell and Dialectics

Abstract

That human (op)positions, contradiction and conflict, permeate our world is obvious; however, if, we (human beings) share a conceptual scheme, common to us all, how then we can agree and disagree, accept and reject, admit or repress, recognize and misrecognize so much in our worlds—between others and ourselves—is not obvious, or needs to be recounted. Notwithstanding, we want to reconsider our shared conceptual scheme—the necessities apart from which we cannot say what we ordinarily say, or even do. To be sure, the (op)positions result from these necessities. It is that sort of necessity, so to say, logic, or “what is common to us all,” that “we” want to describe, figure out or find out in ordinary language. To acknowledge a Cavellian insinuation: the necessities, being human, we must affirm and deny at once (i.e. the sense I sketch out from the epigraph above). In this essay, I claim that that is a dialectic inherent in ordinary language (in human forms of life).