From scepticism to romanticism: Cavell’s accommodation of the ‘other’

Abstract

ABSTRACT Much of what Stanley Cavell wrote following the publication of The Claim of Reason, was preoccupied with making sense of the sudden “outbreaks” of “moments and lines of romanticism” in the final part of that book. “As I was trying to follow the last part, part 4, of my book The Claim of Reason to a moment of conclusion, my progress kept being deflected by outbreaks of romantic texts” (IQO, ix). These romantics outbreaks compelled Cavell to ask himself, retrospectively: Why did I suddenly, inexplicably, let romanticism, of all things (!), intrude into my philosophically sober discussion of skepticism? Why did I let the end of my story be dictated by romanticism? It thus became imperative for Cavell to find out, as he makes clear in the opening pages of In Quest of the Ordinary, why he had postulated some decisive or fateful “interplay between skepticism and romanticism” (IQO, x), such that he could no longer avoid the task of “uncovering the connection with romanticism” (IQO, 6). In this paper, I offer a critical assessment of Cavell's attempt to uncover the connections between his account of skepticism and his unexpected and consequential reception of romanticism.