Editorial Comment

Abstract

Let us pick up where we left off. Part I started a conversation — pun intended — on Stanley Cavell’s intellectual legacy after the publication of Here and There with the help of scholars who have repeatedly and proficiently engaged with his work. The purpose, retained here, is to lead Cavell’s philosophy back where it is at home by spelling out the terms of criticism he contributed to set out and invite new attention to themes and argumentative tropes he cultivated. Given the range of directions in which Cavell’s philosophy extends, it is little wonder that one volume could not contain everything worth touching on. Hence, the need for the Part II you are now reading. Part II has clearly no ambition to be exhaustive, though. But there is no perversity, we believe, in thinking that leaving something out can dovetail with our aim of letting someone in: once again, if the essays here collected will go someway toward rekindling the interest in Cavell’s philosophy or, more generally and importantly, toward showing the aliveness of its philosophical approach to understand the world and ourselves, we will have enough ground to plant the flag we are trying to wave.