ABSTRACT
It has been said that not everyone is quite comfortable with Stanley Cavell as a philosopher. As Gerald Bruns puts it, “Cavell is an analytical philosopher for whom the priority of responsiveness and acceptance of others displaces the sovereignty of the cognitive subject…Yet Cavell remains a moral perfectionist who affirms in Emerson’s name ‘the absolute responsibility of the self to itself.’” 1 Furthermore, Bruns says, “his philosophy is not made up of arguments; instead it is composed of descriptions, readings, musings, fantasies, puzzles about words, imaginary conversations, improvisatory flights” and so on. 2 Anyhow, there is no coherence in Cavell’s philosophy. Nothing is necessary and nothing is essential.
