A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises

by Stanley Cavell

This book is an invitation to the life of philosophy in the United States, as Emerson once lived it and as Stanley Cavell now lives it―in all its topographical ambiguity. Cavell talks about his vocation in connection with what he calls voice―the tone of philosophy―and his right to take that tone, and to describe an anecdotal journey toward the discovery of his own voice.

Genres: Philosophy, Biography

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Stanley Cavell was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, and ordinary language philosophy. As an interpreter, he produced influential works on Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau, and Heidegger. His work is characterized by its conversational tone and frequent literary references.

Reviews

[Jenny Webb]

Cavell reads widely and thinks seriously about the way the words he reads and writes function in the world. Essentially, Cavell examines the seemingly paradoxical structure of an education for philosophy via the topography of voice (i.e., its pitch). The autobiographic gives access to this topography as both completely unique (the one voice of the one life) and in that absolute uniqueness, universal (I.e., all human are completely unique). The tensions of this topography are explored via the Derrida/Searle debate, as well opera.

[Fernando Fernández]

Tenía ganas de retomar a Cavell pero la traducción es terrible, un ejemplo: "glossy (...) photo" (foto de prensa rosa, de papel cuché, o de revista de modas...) es "fotografía en papel brillante". Cuesta leerlo, en algunos pasajes requiere avanzar a través de la sintaxis retorcida y las malas interpretaciones de su traducgor, a veces asoman algunas frases intactas que muestran que el texto original tampoco es sencillo, pasajes más narrativos y comprensibles, lecturas muy lúcidas, y es una pena que se pierdan en una mala edición. En fin, sirve como caso de estudio de traducción descuidada.

[jeremiah]

Cavell on finding your philosophical voice, among the usual things, Austin, opera, skepticism, etc. Dreamlike and inspiring.