Cavell on Expression

Author(s): Stanley Cavell and David Hills

Source: The Journal of Philosophy , Nov., 1980, Vol. 77, No. 11, Seventy-Seventh Annual
Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov., 1980), pp. 745-746
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2025991

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 THE CLAIM OF REASON BY STANLEY CAVELL 745

CAVELL ON EXPRESSION *

HERE is some danger that philosophers will read The

Claim of Reason as if Part IV did not exist. It is compact,
allusive, and indirect; it makes massive demands on a
reader's culture, memory, and powers of comparison; its method is
radically different from the perfected ordiniary language philosophy
of the first three parts. Yet the earlier parts actually require a dis-
cussion like this, actually require us to follow the skeptic "outside of
language games," since according to them any convincing refutation
of the skeptic must offer a convincing account of what he is trying
to say and why he is trying to say it.
What kind of philosophical writing is this? What would it be like
to agree or disagree with it?
I begin by following out two central thoughts of Cavell's. One is
the so-called allegory of words-the suggestion that "to know an-
other mind is to interpret a physiognomy," that in knowing another
I must "see the creature according to my reading, and treat it ac-
cording to my seeing" (356). The other is the suggestion that re-
marks about the soul or mind, both general and special-even re-
marks about the inner lives of particular individuals-should be
treated as mythological. I try to characterize the method inspired by
these thoughts-call it Cavell's comparative mythology-by watch-
ing it in action.
Then I want to share two worries about the way these themes have
been worked out.
(1) How seriously should we take the idea that it is a physi-
ognomy-a human countenance, what is visible of a human body-
that receives my interpretation? To what extent will seeing a crea-
ture according to an interpretation be a matter of how we see that
creature, how the creature can be got to strike us visually? In general,
what is the place of our senses in the allegory of words? (This has
consequences for Cavell's insistence on the natural expressiveness of
the human body, his suggestion that what stands between two
minds is always a mind-my refusal to know you, or your refusal to
be known by me.) I'll argue that the allegory of words applies in a
particularly strong form to a special class of states of ours-call

* Abstract of a paper to be presented in an APA symposium on The Claim of R

son by Stanley Cavell. Barry Stroud will be co-symposiast; see this JOURNAL, this
issue, 731-744. Stanley Cavell will respond; his response is not available at this
time.

0022-362X/80/7711/0745$00.50 ? 1980 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

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746 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

them moods. But that (strong) form clearly won't do for the rest of
our inner lives-what form of it will?
(2) Over and over, the content of the demand that we treat some-
one according to our seeing turns out in Cavell's hands to be radically
indefinite-as if it were up to us to decide what would satisfy the
demand in each case. This indefiniteness has its roots in Cavell's
view of the relations between souls and God, between psychology
and theology-especially in the claim that our need to be known by
the other is descended from our old need to be known by God. I'll
sketch a naturalistic account of our need to be known by others-
one which makes it a need God never could have satisfied and hold it
up against Cavell's theologistic account.
DAVID HILLS
University of Pennsylvania

AVICENNA ON THE SUBJECT MATTER OF LOGIC *

I THINK it is true to say that modern logicians have no great

interest in the ancient debate about whether logic was a part
or an instrument of philosophy. They are of the opinion that
the debate, at least in the form it took in the ancient schools of
Greek philosophy, raised a question the solution of which was largely
a matter of convention. Avicenna would readily agree, and for the
same reason; in one place at least he characterized the question as
nothing more than a quibble about the meaning of words. But in
botlh ancient and medieval discussions the question was often linked
with another concerning the subject matter of logic. If, as the
Platonists and the Stoics maintained, logic is a part of philosophy
and the various parts of philosophy are studies of various portions
or aspects of being, then what portion or aspect of being should be
assigned to logic? This was not a verbal question. And since
Avicenna decided to come down on the side of the Academy and
not on the side of his "friends" the Peripatetics who maintained
that logic was only an instrument, it is not surprising that he should
take the trouble in his Kitdb al-Shifd' to expound his views on
these two interrelated questions.
* To be presented in an APA symposium on Avicenna, December 30, 1980.
Calvin Normore and Arthur Hyman will comment; their papers are not available
at this time.
This research was carried out during tenure of grants from the National En-
dowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. Grateful
acknowledgment is made for this support.

0022-362X/80/7711/0746$01.90 ?D 1980 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

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