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3 - The Names of Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Timothy Gould
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, The Metropolitan State College of Denver
Richard Eldridge
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
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Summary

We take some very simple action, like shoving a stone, usually as done by and viewed by oneself, and use this, with the features distinguishable in it, as our model in terms of which to talk about other actions: and we continue to do so, scarcely realizing it even when these other actions are pretty remote and perhaps much more interesting in their own right than the acts originally used in constructing the model ever were, and even when the model is really distorting the facts rather than helping us observe them.

J. L. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses”

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

Hamlet, III.i.86–90

Almost anywhere you turn in the work of Stanley Cavell you will encounter some aspect of the problem of human action. What is it for human beings to act? What is it for us to be active rather than, for instance, passive or inactive? From Cavell's early defense of J. L. Austin to his latest remarks about Emerson and Nietzsche, Fred Astaire and Henry James, or Middlemarch and Macbeth, Cavell's investigations are twined around his interest in our capacity for being the origin of our actions and for bearing up under our vulnerability to accidents and inadvertancies and, indeed in our ability to make something out of these very inadvertancies and happenstances.

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Chapter
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Stanley Cavell , pp. 48 - 78
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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  • The Names of Action
    • By Timothy Gould, Professor of Philosophy, The Metropolitan State College of Denver
  • Edited by Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Stanley Cavell
  • Online publication: 08 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613944.004
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  • The Names of Action
    • By Timothy Gould, Professor of Philosophy, The Metropolitan State College of Denver
  • Edited by Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Stanley Cavell
  • Online publication: 08 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613944.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Names of Action
    • By Timothy Gould, Professor of Philosophy, The Metropolitan State College of Denver
  • Edited by Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Stanley Cavell
  • Online publication: 08 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613944.004
Available formats
×