Hearing things: voice and method in the writing of Stanley Cavell

Abstract

What does philosophy have to do with the human voice? Has contemporary philosophy banished the from the field of legitimate investigation? This text examines these questions through the philosopher most responsible for formulating them, Stanley Cavell. It systematically treats the relation between Cavell's pervasive authorial voice and his equally powerful, though less discernible, impulse to produce a set of usable philosophical methods. Timothy Gould argues that a tension between voice and method unites Cavell's broad and often perplexing range of interests. From Wittgenstein to Thoreau, from Shakespeare to the movies, and from opera to Freud, Gould reveals the connection between the voice within Cavell's writing and the voices Cavell appeals to through the methods of ordinary language philosophy. Within Cavell's extraordinary productivity lies a new sense of philosophical method based on elements of the act of reading.