THE ROUNDTABLE
BY ANDREW NORRIS
If culture is the cultivation of nature, its relationship to nature will be a dialectical one, in the Hegelian sense of the term. Culture can neither be simply identified with nature, as in Socrates’ noble lie, nor categorically distinguished from it, as, say, cups are distinguished from knives, or rabbits from wolves...
RESPONSE TO CAHILL: WHAT STANLEY CAVELL CALLS SCEPTICISM
BY STEPHEN MULHALL
Thirty years ago, I published a book on Stanley Cavell’s work in which I argued that his version of ordinary language philosophy was deeply rooted in the values of liberal modernity, and – using the resources of Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self – further claimed that some of the limitations of Cavell’s project could best be apprehended by appreciating its genealogical links with Christian patterns of thinking out of which that liberal modernity had grown, and by evaluating what had been lost as well as gained by the rise of that distinctively Western European mode of affirming the ordinary...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
Mulhall’s response to the third chapter of my book devotes much attention to Cavell’s 1989 essay “Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture”. In particular, he notes that my references to this essay are brief, perhaps surprisingly so, despite the fact that in a footnote I point out that it was this very essay that led me further to explore Cavell’s work...
A METAPHYSICS OF SEPARATENESS?
BY STINA BÄCKSTRÖM
What is it to be a human being and to understand oneself as such? This question is at stake in Kevin Cahill’s essay “Skepticism and the human condition”. There Cahill develops a criticism of Stanley Cavell’s thoughts on the self and the problem of skepticism. In the background of the essay, and the collection as such, is an important and difficult question, namely, how to understand the historical shift characteristic of secular Western modernity...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
By “queen of the sciences” I didn’t mean to assign to philosophical anthropology the position once held in some quarters by theology, in others by metaphysics. I meant instead to suggest the significance for philosophically informed anthropology or, alternatively, on anthropologically informed philosophy...
BY MARTIN SHUSTER
Kevin Cahill’s Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Culture is a joy to read. It shows again why Wittgenstein’s thought remains such a font of insight and inspiration, and it also cuts to the heart of many current and pressing issues in philosophy and the humanities...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
Martin Shuster quotes me as stating that, with regard to Cavell’s ontology of the self, the options are two: “what was there all along waiting to be liberated from the oppressive bonds of tradition was not a rational soul, but a compulsive neurotic”...
BY NORA HÄMÄLÄINEN
Post-Wittgensteinian philosophy is known for a view of language as dependent on
contextually embedded practices, and a view of philosophy as attention to the complexity of our lives with language. If we follow these threads in habitual ways, they might be expected to lead in the direction of attention to the cultural and historical contingencies of our concepts, beliefs and values...
BY KEVIN M. CAHILL
I wouldn’t dare to compare the achievements (or aspirations) of my book to Wittgenstein’s, but I will confess to being relieved and delighted to read the response by Nora Hämäläinen, who has read my book with understanding. But my relief and delight soon evaporated and turned to worry...
ART WORK: VILHELM HAMMERSHØI
The articles are illustrated with paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi. Hammershøi was a Danish painter celebrated as the 'master of silence and light'. He is best known for his enigmatic, minimalist interiors, which he captured using a restricted palette of muted greys and whites. Many of his most iconic works were painted in his Copenhagen apartment at Strandgade 30 and feature solitary figures, most notably his wife Ida, depicted from behind or engaged in quiet, introspective activities such as reading or sewing. Bridging the gap between 17th-century Dutch masters such as Vermeer and the solitary modernism of Edward Hopper, Hammershøi’s 'poetics of space' continues to influence contemporary filmmakers and designers with its timeless, melancholic atmosphere.
MONTREAL REVIEW CONTRIBUTOR'S ESSAY COLLECTION HONORED
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