Conversations with History: Stanley Cavell

[mathproof]

Lately, I have attended public lectures and found that I haven't been completely comfortable with the philosophical allusions of the speakers. The reason is that-like most people who attend a standard four year university-the typical survey courses don't provide the broad exposure to the discipline like a "Principles Course in Economics: both micro and macro" or the typical sequence of freshman and sophmore classes in anyone of the sciences. So, the books below address this problem. Enjoy!

[mathproof]

For anyone interested in philosophy but not knowing where to start, may I direct you to the 9 volume set of "A History of Philosophy " by Frederick Copleston. These may be purchased on Amazon in paperback for about $10 or less per book. Once these books have been read and you have the breadth of the 2000 year old conversation that this discipline has to offer, the primary text can come next.

Cont. ...

[S2Cents]

His accent and tonality reminds me of Harold Bloom.

[1888junkteam]

excellent work!

[DirectorJim]

Cavell was a casualty of the development of Film Studies, which saw him as a threat because of his philosophical approach. This left its mark on a generation. One could denounce Cavell in a film journal without knowing anything about philosophy or Cavell. But the study of film has advanced. Now there are knowledgeable critical publications on Cavell and also acceptance and integration by a growing number of film scholars. The damage was done--to the detriment of film studies--but things change.

[sorenssongs]

Why have under 5,000 people watched this? I'm convinced Cavell will be lauded by future generations who will find the discrepancy between the low interest in his work and the phenomenon of celebrity worship to be a sure indicator of our culture's anti-intellectualism and academia's isolationism. We need to be paying attention to this guy.

[rudijow]

here here, but what to do,,,,,except not be one of them,,,

[bclukay1]

because he says absolutely nothing and it is completely boring

[dantean]

@bclukay1 Cavell's turn toward film study is a reflection of the influence on him of continental philosophers of the Heideggerian stamp:

"thinkers" whose summations of their own concerns w the world should strike the astute high schooler as self-evident & ultimately not worth the brutal effort required 2 read these guys. Even forgetting that one must ignore that all the "thinking" resulted in joining the Nazi or Communist parties in their day. Cavell's another blowhard minus the ugly baggage.

[mathproof]

I think that you have over simplified Dr. Cavells approach to using ones own concerns as the basis for philosophical inquiry. In my interactions with philosophers, the approach is always to understand the nature of how a specific problem can be generalized and studied rigorously. So, perhaps what the arbitrary astute high school pupil considers mundane and droll is true only if you concede that they didn't really understand the superstructure of philsophical inquiry in the first place. Cont....

[mathproof]

Regarding Heidegger and the Nazis, many critics have proffered the idea that Heideggar was simply trying to be the incarnation of Plato's "Philosopher King". In this context, Heideggar can be viewed as someone who didn't quite understand the true nature of "Die Fuehrer" (although a reading of Mein Kampf should have given him a clue) and once invested found that a subsequent disassociation to be highly impractical. Hence, a desire to survive and not overthinking might more aptly explain this.

[dantean]

@mathproof :I remember hearing the story years ago that Heidegger, whose department office sat atop a university tower edifice would tell students: "when you see a light on in the tower you know God is thinking."

While once enjoying "Continental philosophy" back in graduate school many moons ago, I now find precious little of note in any of it not already to be had from reading Kant and his greatest pupil, Herder. The rest constituting execrably written elaborations at excruciating length.

[mathproof]

Well, perhaps Heidegger was trying too hard to be something that he ultimately never would have been able to achieve.

I attended graduate school for math; so, I'm not as fluence with the major periods/schools of philosophy as I would like to be. For that reason, I'm working through the nine volumes of "The History of Philosophy" that I referenced earlier. I'm sure that at some point different authors & schools of thought will gain and subsequently loss favor with me as my world view varies.

[dantean]

@mathproof Interestingly, a number of philosophers of the group we're talking about had math backgrounds: I've always thought there a connection between several of the more obscure of the mathmaticians-turned-philosoph­ers such as Pythagoras or. for example, Edmund Husserl than is noted by those who take "Continentals" seriously...as if both disciplines encourage one to disregard the world of physical objects around us for some other one underlying it. One fundamentally escaping description.

[mathproof]

Well, I'm not really speaking nearly as broadly as you ( how could I, eh?): the statements that you have made are with respect to the Continentals and I'm just referencing Heidegger. Regarding mathematicians turning into philosophers, my understanding in Husserl's case is that he treated the subjects as mutually exclusive; so, it is a better characterization to say "and he studied philosophy, too."

[Amileoj]

It's a question Cavell himself might ask, in a slightly different spirit: What is it about our experience of film that resists our taking it as seriously as he would want it to be taken--that resists the idea that everything in a film matters?

OTOH, I have seen Cavell keep a roomfull of self-consciously hip and radical academics spellbound with a clip and subsequent discussion of Fred Astair doing "I've Got a Shine on my Shoes" (Bandwagon), so clearly there are limits to the indifference.

[mathproof]

Well, the reaction is to Cavell's eloquence and not necessarily to the movie.

Regarding your very nice philosophical question, I think Dr. Cavell only needed to wait until 'Snakes on a Plane' was released in order to provide an answer: movies don't have to possess any artistic or culture value. For that reason, people don't inherently treat them seriously. To quote Christopher Hitchens "They don't make movies for people like me."

[Amileoj]

@mathproof : Cavell's effect on his audience that day was something like this: he provoked us (well, me anyway) into noticing everything we had just watched happen on that screen.

Cavell's idea that everything in a film matters doesn't imply a particular aesthetic judgement about a particular film. I think it does however imply the idea that any aesthetic judgment that ignores any of what happens on screen is necessarily incomplete, or say partial. Criticism is representative.

[clarakapp]

You are worried that popular culture ignores important thinkers like Cavell? Look at the pompous language that you use to claim something as mundane as this. I suspect that it is language like this that contributes to what you call "our culture's anti-intellectualism".

[featheon]

@clarakapp Quite right.

[thisisnothappening2]

Thank you.