Acknowledgment Beyond Empathy

Reclaiming Stanley Cavell’s Philosophy of the Ordinary

Abstract

Stanley Cavell asks us to shift our manner of doing philosophy and, in so doing, makes us rethink why philosophy matters to us. How he says what he says illustrates how we might change aspects in our ways of seeing the other — the world and our own selves. And yet it is not easy to explain to other people how or why his words matter to us. To repeat what he says is futile: he asks us to find our own words in response to what he says and to test them in the eyes of others, including testing them against what Cavell himself has written.