Book contents
- Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? at 50
- Cambridge Philosophical Anniversaries
- Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? at 50
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations for Cavell’s Works
- Introduction
- Part I Ordinary Language and Its Philosophy
- Part II Aesthetics and the Modern
- Part III Tragedy and the Self
- 9 Philosophy as Autobiography
- 10 The Finer Weapon
- 11 On Cavell’s “Kierkegaard’s On Authority and Revelation” – with Constant Reference to Austen
- 12 Tragic Implication
- 13 Gored States and Theatrical Guises
- Bibliography
- Index of Names and Subjects
- Index of References to Cavell’s Works
11 - On Cavell’s “Kierkegaard’s On Authority and Revelation” – with Constant Reference to Austen
from Part III - Tragedy and the Self
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2022
- Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? at 50
- Cambridge Philosophical Anniversaries
- Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? at 50
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations for Cavell’s Works
- Introduction
- Part I Ordinary Language and Its Philosophy
- Part II Aesthetics and the Modern
- Part III Tragedy and the Self
- 9 Philosophy as Autobiography
- 10 The Finer Weapon
- 11 On Cavell’s “Kierkegaard’s On Authority and Revelation” – with Constant Reference to Austen
- 12 Tragic Implication
- 13 Gored States and Theatrical Guises
- Bibliography
- Index of Names and Subjects
- Index of References to Cavell’s Works
Summary
What is it to forget a concept, confuse one, or lose one? These are familiar terms of criticism for Kierkegaard, but they can seem strangely otiose or themselves confused. In his essay, Cavell elucidates these terms, their critical purport in Kierkegaard’s practice, and he seeks to offer an assessment of that practice – in particular, to assess whether the practice is itself philosophical. Cavell’s assessment leads him to discuss (early in the essay) the connection between the religious and the psychological and (late) the connection between the aesthetic and the psychological. Jolley reassesses Cavell’s assessment: he refocuses on the forgetting, confusing, or losing of concepts, and on the use of such terms of criticism – in Kierkegaard’s specifically, but also more generally in many philosophical practices that understand themselves as at once logical and dialectical. E.g., What is the difference, for Kierkegaard, between qualitative dialectic and quantitative? Is the making of such a distinction an application, a moment, of one or the other dialectic, and if so, what are the consequences of such self-application? Along the way, Jolley revisits Cavell’s understanding of the connection between the religious and the psychological, and the aesthetic and the psychological.
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- Cavell's Must We Mean What We Say? at 50 , pp. 179 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022