The ironist and the romantic: reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell

206 Pages·2014·1.801 MB·English

by  Kelly, Aine;Mahon, Áine

The Ironist and the Romantic
Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy
Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy presents cutting-edge scholarship in
both the history of and contemporary movements in American philosophy. The
wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this
series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics
from across the field.
America’s First Women Philosophers, Dorothy G. Rogers
Dewey and the Ancients, edited by Christopher C. Kirby
Feminist Epistemology and American Pragmatism, Alexandra L. Shuford
John Searle and the Construction of Social Reality, Joshua Rust
The Legacy of John Rawls, edited by Thom Brooks and Fabian Freyenhagen
Nozick, Autonomy and Compensation, Dale F. Murray
Peirce, James, and a Pragmatic Philosophy of Religion, John W. Woell
Peirce’s Philosophy of Communication, Mats Bergman
Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry, Elizabeth Cooke
Philosophy of History After Hayden White, edited by Robert Doran
Pragmatist Metaphysics, Sami Pihlström
Quine on Meaning, Eve Gaudet
Quine’s Naturalism, Paul A. Gregory
Reality and Its Appearance, Nicholas Rescher
Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy, Timothy M. Mosteller
Richard Rorty’s New Pragmatism, Edward J. Grippe
Richard Rorty: From Pragmatist Philosophy to Cultural Politics, edited by
Alexander Gröschner, Colin Koopman and Mike Sandbothe
Thomas Kuhn’s Revolution, James A. Marcum
Varieties of Pragmatism, Douglas McDermid
Virtue Ethics: Dewey and MacIntyre, Stephen Carden
The Ironist and the Romantic
Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell
Áine Mahon
Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
Paperback edition fi rst published 2015
© Áine Mahon, 2014
Áine Mahon has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-4601-4
PB: 978-1-4742-6589-8
ePDF: 978-1-4411-0294-2
ePub: 978-1-4725-6952-3
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
1 Return of the Invisible Tomato 13
2 What’s the Use of Calling Cavell a Pragmatist? 43
3 The Turn to Literature 71
4 Stylists of the Philosophical 97
5 The Personal and the Political 125
Conclusion 153
Notes 163
Bibliography 179
Index 187
Acknowledgements
For the financial support that made this project possible, I would like to thank
the Fulbright Commission of Ireland, the Irish Research Council and the
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh.
Parts of Chapter 2 have appeared under my maiden name (Áine Kelly) in
Andrew Taylor and Áine Kelly (eds), Stanley Cavell, Literature and Film: The
Idea of America. I am grateful to Routledge for permission to reproduce this
material. A portion of Chapter 4 was previously published in European Journal
of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 2: 2 (2010), 211–23. Again, I would
like to thank the editors for permission to reproduce. Finally, I would like to
thank all those friends and colleagues who read and commented on various
stages of this project: Richard Bernstein and Alice Crary (The New School for
Social Research), Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin), Richard Eldridge
(Swarthmore College), Timothy Gould (Metropolitan State College of Denver),
Espen Hammer (Temple University), Paul Jenner (Loughborough University),
Richard H. King and Anthony Hutchison (University of Nottingham), Colin
Koopman (University of Oregon) and Martin Woessner (City University of
New York). Sincere thanks to you all; buíochas ó chroí libh go léir.
List of Abbreviations
AC Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-
Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
CHU Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The
Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1990).
CIS Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
CP Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972–1980
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).
CPP Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson (eds), Wallace Stevens:
Collected Poetry and Prose (New York: Library of America, 1997).
CR Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Morality,
Skepticism, and Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
CW Stanley Cavell, Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of
the Moral Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
DK Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge: In Six Plays of Shakespeare
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
ETE Stanley Cavell, Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2003).
QO Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism
and Romanticism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
LDK Stanley Cavell, Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
LT Richard Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical
Method (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
viii List of Abbreviations
LWS Holly Stevens (ed.), Letters of Wallace Stevens
(California: University of California Press, 1996).
MWM Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays
(Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
PDT Stanley Cavell, Philosophy The Day After Tomorrow (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2005).
PMN Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2009).
POP Stanley Cavell, A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
PP1 Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical
Papers, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
PP2 Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical
Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
PP3 Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
PP4 Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers,
Volume 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
PSH Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin
Books, 2009).
SW Stanley Cavell, The Senses of Walden (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
NYUA Stanley Cavell, This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures
After Wittgenstein After Emerson (Albuquerque, NM: Living Batch
Press, 1989).
TS Stanley Cavell, Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988).