Because it's seminar time

"Suppose that there is an outlook intuitively sketched out (sometimes negatively) in some imaginary interplay among the following texts. (I ask almost nothing from the idea of this interplay. It is not meant to do more than momentarily activate the fantasy, perhaps it vanishes early, that there is a place in the mind where the good books are in conversation, among themselves and with other sources of thought and pleasure; what they often talk about, in my hearing, is how they can be, or sound, so much better than the people who compose them, and why, in their goodness, they are not more powerful.)"

Cavell, Introduction, Conditions Handsome & Unhandsome, 4-5. (My professor lent me this book, so I feel compelled to find all I can in it--specifically, connections between both of the papers I'm writing, before I start writing either of them--before I return it.)

Those Connections Are

The question (problem?) of how anyone can mean anything at all, and the question (problem) of how one can ever make anything truly new--how one can make new values, repudiate tradition, redefine a word--if one has thrown out all values altogether, or if values or words are only defined with respect to a culture or practice: these questions come from similar perspectives. Each question also has a "How is such-and-such possible at all?" aspect and a "How can we do it, practically?" aspect.

Why? McDowell's criticism of anti-realist interpretations of Wittgenstein makes it clear that if we demand agreement on the patterns of language-use in which we agree, that agreement will never be found. The anti-realist (Wright, Kripke--in his book on W. anyway) demands that our agreement in judgments and forms of life itself be explained or justified. This "locates 'bedrock' lower than it is" and jeopardizes, contrary to the intentions of Wright and Kripke, the possibility of meaning anything at all.

In "The Argument of the Ordinary" Cavell sandwiches his discussion of Kripke & Wittgenstein on rule-following between discussions of Emerson (the first and the last 2 pages). Now I see why: Rules are precisely the things we are asked to consider carefully, to repudiate if necessary, if we are to be conscientious citizens. And if we are to find meaning, live meaningful lives, create lives of "insight and not of tradition," we must be prepared to turn away from society. So we must be allowed to free ourselves from agreement and disagreement on a particular issue and still be able to "mean" what we say independent of consensus. We must be able to take agreement in forms of life and judgments for granted in order to mean anything--whether or not its content agrees with any found in those practices we take for granted.

And deliberation, within the self, has to have a similar dynamic.

Of course, I'm obscuring everything I don't understand about these things. (It's a "gathering" post.)