GOLDSTEIN TO CAVELL - IT'S A HOLLYWOOD THING, PHILOSOPHICALLY

Some time earlier this year, on the 25^th June, Celia and I went to visit with Jerome Fletcher and JR Carpenter at Cerisy-la-Salle, where they had been invited to give performances of their work. We had not been there before and knew little of the place and its significance in the scheme of things.  It was a great visit and quite a history lesson. 

Since we have been in Paris, I have been lurking through the philosophical halls of the Sorbonne under the guise of ‘auditeur’. Apart from a bit of ‘recherche du temps perdu’ I have been researching through various texts by Scottish and American enlighteners of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  The French have not had much of a look in, unlike my earlier sojourn at Dartington which was full of Frenchman.  Rather than Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, it has been, Smith, Hume and Thoreau –rather good names for firms of solicitors. They have each set out quite a brief.

Derrida

Foucault

Deleuze

The question of what is philosophy has become more than somewhat prominent in one’s thoughts. It is just that question that Martin Heidegger posed at a performance lecture at Cerisy-la-Salle in 1955 – Was ist das-Die Philosophie?

George Steiner, French born American essayist and professor, suggested “The stress lies as heavy on ist and on das as it does on Philosophie.  He makes the notion ‘philosophie’...dependent on, ancillary to, the greater, more pressing question and notion of ‘isness’ and ‘whatness’.  The fuller translation of the title could read: ‘What is it to ask – what this thing philosophy, is?’  It is our task, begins Heidegger, to set discussion on its way, to bring it ‘on to a path’.  The infinite article is intended to underline the postulate that this path is only one among many, and that there is no a priori guarantee that it will conduct us to our goal.”  Heidegger proposed a distinction between matters which he called fraglich ‘questionable’ and those which are fragwürdig ‘worthy of being questioned’. ‘Questionable’ is used in the sense of capable of being the subject of a question rather than something suspect, and is also a question for which there is a clear or definitive answer (e.g. Whose yacht is that?). As to that which is worthy of being questioned, the subject can be inexhaustible, one comes to no specific conclusion. The fragwürdig apparently “dignifies the question and the questioner by making of the process of interrogation and response an ever renewed dialogue and counterpoint.”.

G. Steiner

Heidegger

I am not at all comfortable with the notion that certain questions are more worthy than others merely because they have no conclusion.  The idea that posing such questions is more dignified or intellectually uplifting is questionable. We all do it all the time, in one form or another.

Of more interest to me however, is that I have discovered people who should have been known to me before. Stanley Cavell is an instance in point. He is now 90 years old. He was born Stanley Louis Goldstein in Atlanta Georgia. When he was 16 years old, in the year of my birth, he changed his name from Goldstein to Cavell. He also, like myself, attended UCLA and left without having taken a degree. Unlike me, who took another 45 years to get a degree, he went on to get a degree from Berkeley and later a Ph.D. from Harvard. His main topic is 20^th Century Western Philosophy and he is very interested in film theory. One of his books, “The Pursuits of Happiness” describes his experience of seven prominent Hollywood comedies: The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam’s Rib, and The Awful Truth.  Now I ask you, what could be better than that? Cavell argues that these films, from the years 1934–1949, form part of what he calls the genre of "The Comedy of Remarriage," and he finds in them great philosophical, moral, and indeed political significance. Specifically, Cavell argues that these Hollywood comedies show that "the achievement of happiness requires not the [...] satisfaction of our needs [...] but the examination and transformation of those needs." According to Cavell, the emphasis that these movies place on "remarriage" draws attention to the fact that, within a relationship, happiness requires "growing up" together with one's partner. I would add to this list, Midnight, Palm Beach Story and Miracle at Morgan’s Creek.

Stanley Cavell

He is also a fan of J.L. Austin. In his book of collected essays,  Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow Cavell makes the case that J. L. Austin's concept of performative utterance requires the supplementary concept of "passionate utterance": "A performative utterance is an offer of participation in the order of law. And perhaps we can say: A passionate utterance is an invitation to improvisation in the disorders of desire." The book also contains extended discussions of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Fred Astaire, as well as familiar Cavellian subjects such as Shakespeare, Emerson, Thoreau, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger.

Why am I only finding out about him now? And what about Fred Astair?