A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises (The Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures) - Softcover

Cavell, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674669819 ISBN 13: 9780674669819

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1996

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover

What is the pitch of philosophy? Something thrown, for us to catch? A lurch, meant to unsettle us? The relative position of a tone on a scale? A speech designed to persuade? 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. Cavell asks how the voice of philosophy can be heard amid the commerce of everyday life. His autobiographical exercises begin at home with his parents, his father an accidental pawnbroker and accomplished raconteur, his mother a trained and talented musician. In the course of showing us his certain steps in the discovery of his trade, he conveys the sense of what it means to learn to walk on one's own, with a Thoreauvian deliberateness. He pays suitable attention to a serious ally and antagonist to the task of philosophy as he understands it, namely, Jacques Derrida - yet Derrida has mounted a full-scale attack on "voice" and other concepts that Cavell has held open for much of a lifetime. The chapters are interwoven with intense family reminiscences in Cavell's discovery of J. L. Austin, his understanding of Wittgenstein, his raising of Emerson to the philosophical canon, his fascination with film (images of women in a medium for women), the revelation that film and opera are the media of otherness for women. And the voice at the end: hearing in himself the voice of his mother, which is music. Complex, sentimental, witty, A Pitch ofPhilosophy is for anyone who cares to take on philosophy, under whatever name it goes.

About the Author

Stanley Cavell is Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0674669819
• ISBN 13: 9780674669819
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 196