The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy

I'm not going to summarize it here. Its basic burden ("burden" is a word Cavell likes to use--think of it in both senses, as both "weight" & "refrain") is an effort to grapple with the Western epistemological tradition, & to suggest that it contains a major blind spot. Post-Cartesian philosophy has been preoccupied with skepticism about the possibility of proving the accuracy of our knowledge about or, or even the existence of, the material world. Cavell is interested in this skepticism for two reasons: (1) its ultimate unanswerability; (2) the curious evanescence of its conclusions: as Hume notes, once one leaves the study & goes out into the real world of social interaction & daily concerns, the skeptical conclusion evaporates, looks "cold & strained". Cavell then traces out another kind of skepticism: the problem of the existence of other minds, or more generally the question of our knowledge of others. In Cavell's view, other-minds skepticism "makes sense" in a way that material-world skepticism does not: or rather, it is "live" in our everyday interactions (it's not news to anyone that we have only glimpses of the inner being of others). In other words, with the problem of other minds, "we live our skepticism" (the four-word formula which the entire book builds up to).

This is a neat opposition which Cavell admits is itself somewhat unstable. But it leads him to suggest that the history of Western & in particular post-Cartesian philosophy has been a history of ignoring the problem of the other; for Cavell it is a concern that has been instead most deeply grappled with in literature. The book concludes with a sketch of four of what he takes to be the most fruitful ways philosophy could develop a history of the problem of the other; & with readings of _The Merchant of Venice_, _The Winter's Tale_ & (in particular) _Othello_ as dramas of other-minds skepticism.

As you'll see I've approached the book, so to speak, from the back-end: it takes quite some time before these larger themes are fully set forth. The opening sections take on several different thinkers (Rawls, Austin) but are largely an exposition of Cavell's reading of Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_. The key move here is his case that Wittgenstein's notion of "criteria" has been misunderstood by most of Wittgenstein's readers: Cavell (to my mind persuasively) argues that Wittgenstein did not conceive of criteria as criteria for (proof of) something's _existence_; but that instead they are criteria of _meaning_: of what makes something "count as", identifiable as something.

This is the kind of book which is, simply, too full for any single reading: it's as much a sourcebook as it is a sustained argument, & I can see why Cavell continues to use it as such. There are elements I wish he had extended further. For instance, I find myself desiring that Cavell had taken time to spell out, not just the distinction/interrelation between material-world skepticism & other-minds skepticism, but also between material-world skepticism & scientific knowledge & practice, as forms of thinking that both contradict what we "know" about the world in everyday life. (What I'm getting at is: in the "skeptical recital", as Cavell puts it, the exchange runs something like: "How do you know this envelope on this table exists?" "By means of my senses." Then: "But could you not be deceived by a clever trickster? "Couldn't you be hallucinating or dreaming?" or "But you can't see the _other_ side of the envelope." &c. But what if instead the speaker pointed out the disparity between the data give by the senses, & the way that the world is conceived of in the modern atomic theory for instance? What distinguishes this kind of cognitive dissonance from skepticism?) This is not a criticism, exactly--obvious Cavell has different fish to fry--but it seems an odd omission given the book's interest in Romanticism, which on my understanding is in part a response to science's disenchantment of the world (Keats complaining about optical science's ruining the charm of the rainbow, &c). Cavell's discussion of our disappointment with knowledge would have been richer, I think, if it had touched on this other area.

A last word on the style of the book, which I might describe as "companionable". The book is not without its miry spots, but on the whole it's an enjoyable, rather friendly read, with a lot of interesting eddies of internal dialogue (like Wittgenstein, Cavell likes to introduce imaginary interlocutors). The more tortuous (Henry) Jamesian style of later Cavell is only rarely in evidence, perhaps because so much of the book derives from his early dissertation (though obviously extensively reworked). For all the sheer unruliness of the book's structure, it's the kind of book that stays with you, a touchstone & resource.


Can I ever know what he really thinks?   June 6, 2004
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

In an episode of a popular TV series, a female character tired of the obscurity in her relationship complains to her partner that, even though she can see his lips moving as he speaks, she can never know what he is really thinking. What is it that she is accusing him of, and is her complaint necessarily melodramatic? Stanley Cavell's long, difficult book on scepticisim and our knowledge of other people would be an excellent guide in considering this question and assessing its source in the dialogue as a philosophical text.

One answer might be that, to her mind, he is strenuously trying to hide something from her, with the result that the way he speaks draws her attention primarily to his efforts in stopping himself from saying what he would say spontaneously if it wasn't for the strain of attempted secrecy. Instead of simply attending to him as usual, without any interpretation, she finds herself inferring, from all kinds of bodily clues, that he is deliberately denying her access to his thoughts and feelings. If he wasn't trying to be so secretive and deceitful, she would see straightaway that his words were somehow aligned with his thoughts, and would have no reason to accuse him of wanting to mislead her. On this reading, there is nothing particularly melodramatic about the situation at hand - it is all just an ordinary anxiety about a lover's desire to avoid transparency.

But there might also be a second answer: she has lost all confidence in his words and actions ever revealing his thoughts. It isn't just that his face communicates something about him that she finds incompatible with what he is saying about his love for her; rather, it is that nothing he ever does could give her any reliable clues as to what goes on inside him: his mind and heart remain forever sealed off from her by his body. No matter what he says or does, none of these things ever express what she really wants to know - he is closed in on himself, inaccessible to her precisely where she would want most intimacy with him. Now this is an evidently melodramatic reading: it goes beyond the situation as described and precludes any chance of success for the lovers - it is not because of anything he does deliberately that he is hidden from her, it is just how human beings are doomed to relate to each other in mutual ignorance. But is it a real worry for anyone?

Stanley Cavell's book falls into four interconnected parts. The first part discusses the notion of a criterion - what is involved in saying that a given thing is called this or that, and how that sort of claim differs from saying that it is a real specimen of a particular kind. Cavell's guide here is the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations, and it is worth noting here how one person's thinking and writing can be an inexhaustible source of wonder and inspiration for another without turning them into a mere epigone. The second part concerns the idea that our fundamental relation to the world is one of knowledge - a view that holds a deep fascination for the philosopher but is nevertheless questioned as untrue to how human beings relate to things in the world. The third part concentrates on the place of rules in morality, whereas the fourth is a collection of essays, with rather unclear boundaries, on the temptation to think that our fellow human beings are not really human. A self-reflective book easy to get lost in - in more than one way.


Cavell's Opus   June 7, 2001
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

Despite "long sentences," this book is an essential and personal Auseinandersetzung with philosophical issues ranging from Skepticism (of the world, of other minds), rule-following, common-sense knowledge, ordinary language philosophy, essentialism, foundationalism and much more. Cavell articulates a very particular and unorthodox interpretation of Wittgenstein, making use of his methodology, his examples and characterizations of ordinary, everyday problems by taking his 'philosophical intentions' to be essentially 'therapuetic' as opposed to 'constructive.' This is something Cavell has in common with both McDowell and Rorty though his hopes and desires for philosophy go beyond a simple critique of culture and beyond 'vocabulary changes' (Rorty) to include positive attempts to embody a philosophy that can live with the age old problems (of skepticism, the mind-body problem) that has plagued it for thousands of years. Though there are no end-all solutions to these problems, he believes, there is also no way to avoid grappling with them. The Claim of Reason is an attempt to embody and exemplify this belief by confronting traditional epistemology as well as the Wittgensteinian and Austinian methods of coming to terms with it. (Other reading sympathetic to this line of thought can be found in 'the new wittgenstein' eds. Alice Crary & Rupert Read)


The best work by one of our best thinkers.   May 11, 1997
9 out of 13 found this review helpful

One of the finest works of American philosophy ever written. Cavell brilliantly and carefully traces the intersections among language, literature, and ethics, and ultimately demonstrates how philosophizing (and living in general) is a kind of reading. His reasoning is subtle and his writing is clear, stimulating, and thankfully not for specialists only


The Claim of Reason   December 11, 2002
Maisy Chan (Seattle, WA United States)
Professor Cavell's exploration of Wittgenstein's writings, skepticism and the drama of tragedy is itself a long journey for the reader. I think that the philosophic re-enactman of Wiggenstein's philosophical thoughts, and the analysis of skepticism as a theme of tragedy of the doubting self may elude the non-philosophic reader, but once the reader gets it, it is worth these few hundreds of pages.