Seeking for philosophy the same spirit and assurance conveyed by artists like Fred Astaire, Cavell presents essays exploring the meaning of grace and gesture in film and on stage, in language and in life. Critical to the renaissance in American thought Cavell hopes to provoke is the recognition of the centrality of the "ordinary" to American life.
Seeking for philosophy the same spirit and assurance conveyed by artists like Fred Astaire, Cavell presents essays exploring the meaning of grace and gesture in film and on stage, in language and in life. Critical to the renaissance in American thought Cavell hopes to provoke is the recognition of the centrality of the “ordinary” to American life.
Stanley Cavell looks closely at America's most popular art and our perceptions of it. His explorations of Hollywood's stars, directors, and most famous films—as well as his fresh look at Godard, Bergman, and other great European directors—will be of lasting interest to movie-viewers and intelligent people everywhere.
This book is an invitation to the life of philosophy in the United States, as Emerson once lived it and as Stanley Cavell now lives it--in all its topographical ambiguity. Cavell talks about his vocation in connection with what he calls voice--the tone of philosophy--and his right to take that tone, and to describe an anecdotal journey toward the discovery of his own voice.
For today's organizations, our exponentially changing world has come with great consequences. In this book, Peter Hinssen tells the story of the pioneers who managed to adapt to those changes and who moved beyond today and even tomorrow in their approach of innovation. In doing so, they were able to change the course of entire industries. Peter's book focuses on the business models of these pioneers, on the organizational culture, the talent, the mindset and the technology we should tap into in order to maximize our chances for survival in the 'Day After Tomorrow'. It will shift your perspective on your future, on the future or your company and even that of your grandchildren.
Humanity is moving ever towards its final destination without knowing why, when, where: teloi, multiple paths, leading towards God’s eschaton. These essays examine the movement towards this day of reckoning, and how such eschatological events are projected back into time. Towards the Day after Tomorrow, or the one after that, or months, decades—centuries—away, often we behave as though the end is upon us. These essays start with the beginning of the end: the incarnation. We examine the origins of Karl Barth’s realized eschatology in Expressionism. We consider death and judgment, as usurped by humanity, an eschaton without God’s forgiving judgment: multiple Holocausts. War ushers in the eschaton, but how do Christians handle conflict in the light of a redefined just war theory? We analyze the eschatological insights into humanity’s end in The Simpsons—post mortem. Consider the issue of atheistic human authorities usurping God’s judgment. Finally crisis and judgment are glimpsed in the mindset of people who suffer seizures—postlapsarian exile, the sufferance of salvation: how God blesses us despite the chaos of our human-generated teloi, in preparation for the end. As the end approaches, events become darker, chaotic, confusion reigns: “Judas immediately went out. And it was night.”
Looks at seven classic romantic comedies of the thirties and forties, and compares what each film expresses about marriage, interdependence, equality, and sexual roles.
Since Socrates and his circle first tried to frame the Just City in words, discussion of a perfect communal life--a life of justice, reflection, and mutual respect--has had to come to terms with the distance between that idea and reality. Measuring this distance step by practical step is the philosophical project that Stanley Cavell has pursued on his exploratory path. Situated at the intersection of two of his longstanding interests--Emersonian philosophy and the Hollywood comedy of remarriage--Cavell's new work marks a significant advance in this project. The book--which presents a course of lectures Cavell presented several times toward the end of his teaching career at Harvard--links masterpieces of moral philosophy and classic Hollywood comedies to fashion a new way of looking at our lives and learning to live with ourselves. This book offers philosophy in the key of life. Beginning with a rereading of Emerson's "Self-Reliance," Cavell traces the idea of perfectionism through works by Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, and Rawls, and by such artists as Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, and Shakespeare. Cities of Words shows that this ever-evolving idea, brought to dramatic life in movies such as It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth, The Philadelphia Story, and The Lady Eve, has the power to reorient the perception of Western philosophy.
This groundbreaking collection of contributions by leading philosophers offers a new way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself.
In response to the contemporary crisis of democracy as a way of life, in particular, the anxieties of inclusion, this important new book explores the contemporary significance of American philosophy (the pragmatism and American transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau) and tries to present new ways of cultivating political emotions and political citizens. To take up this philosophical-political-educational task, the book introduces Cavell’s idea of philosophy as translation– a broader sense of translation as being internal to the nature of language, and hence to the condition of human being as linguistic being and, hence, as political being. Translation is a lens through which to enhance the possibilities and to elucidate the shifting identities of American philosophy. Through this, a hidden tension within American philosophy, between pragmatism and transcendentalism, is exposed. Ultimately, the book presents a vision of an alternative political education for human transformation and perfectionist cosmopolitan education.
