Conversations with History: Stanley Cavell

On this episode on Conversations with History, Stanley Cavell, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Harvard University, joins UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler to talk about his life as a philosopher and his passion for movies. Series: "Conversations with History" [12/2002] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 6919]

Category:

Education

Tags:

• philosophy
• Western
• analytic

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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."

[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, 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 :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, 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."

[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.

[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]

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!