Cavell From Epistemology To Romance

From Epistemology to Romance: Cavell on Skepticism
Author(s): Richard Rorty

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Jun., 1981), pp. 759-774
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
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FROM EPISTEMOLOGYTO ROMANCE:

CAVELLON SKEPTICISM
RICHARD RORTY
(Parts
first,
is two books in one.
The Claim of Reason
cavell's
Stanley
1 -3) was
some
drafted
the sec
ago, whereas
years
twenty
The
ond (Part 4) was written quite recently. Most of the first book is
about epistemology, and this is the book with which I want to take
issue. So I shall spend most ofmy space on it, saying only a little about
the second.
This
is unfortunate,
more than I disagree with the first.
ductory
Moore's
hand,
book
even
studied in the standard intro
in epistemology
and all that) helps
human
about
situation,
romance.
to
temology
from the shame we have
courses
epistemology
second
But one always has more to say in
Parts 1-2 suggest that the material

course
the
in agreement.
than
disagreement
I admire
since
(Descartes'
wax,
tree,
Berkeley's
us see something
the
about
important
us
to
It
human finitude.
tries
take
from epis
us philosophy
It promises
to relieve
professors
felt
merely
ever
since we
to suspect
began
clouds
of
dust
around
up
kicked
that
our
our
stu
dents, thus enabling us to win their gratitude for leading them back
into the light. Austin, Bouwsma, Wittgenstein, Wisdom, Malcolm,
Ryle, and others all suggested that we might just shrug off the claims
which
and Berkeley
Descartes
and Moore
possible for us to teach epistemology

ideas.
Now
seriously
and Austin
tells
Cavell
that
They
we
unless
take
these
claims
(in particular)
"that
can
do
for us.
We
the human
creature's
basis
he
mustn't,
too easily, for then we may miss
it
very
1
The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein,
(Oxford: Clarendon
1979).
Press,
in the world
Review ofMetaphysics
33 (June 1981): 759-74.
Skepticism,
Copyright ?
tells
us,
"the truth of
its relation to the world as such, is not that of knowing,

what we think of as knowing" (p. 241).
edy
made
indeed we shan't get the full benefit of what Wittgenstein
shrug off skepticism

skepticism":
us
on us.
made
as just the history of some bad
Morality
as a whole,
anyway not
and Trag
1981 by theReview ofMeta
physics
760
RICHARD RORTY
us not
wants
Cavell
What
to miss
is, to be
as
sure,
as
important
he thinks it. But does he have to drag us back through Berkeley

us
to get
Descartes
to see
it? Why
aren't
and
and Thoreau
"Rousseau
and Kierkegaard and Tolstoy and Wittgenstein"

(to cite one of Ca
vell's lists of heroes) enough? Why "the external world" again?
seems
sometimes
Cavell
as follows:
to argue
or Thoreau
or Kierkegaard
is as important as Rousseau
Wittgenstein
or Tolstoy,
for getting us to see these things. Wittgenstein
spent a lot
raised
who
claimed
to
of time discussing
doubt the
by people
problems
external world.
So we had better take such doubts seriously.
This seems tome like arguing that we should take Napoleon seriously
because of the amount of time Tolstoy spent on him inWar and
Frederick
Peace.
as well,
almost
Russian.
would
the Great
especially
external
Analogously,
as just
world
general
phenomenon:
have
if he had
been
served
purposes
Tolstoy's
an Austrian
than
rather
I think we
should view skepticism

about
the
a
a handy
more
of
much
local, English,
example
to convert
what
calls "the attempt
the
Cavell
human condition, the condition of humanity," into an intellectual diffi

stayed in Central Europe he would
culty' (p. 493). Had Wittgenstein
met
have
philosophy
who
professors
more
worried
written
ably
tention
pretty
same
to the
much
tin, Moore,
more.
These
fessors.
is not Cavell's
writers,
Perhaps
unlike
cures
It is not
a minor
the sort
something
we
off
Shrugging
to a reading
of Aus
wouldn't
read
them
any
just
are just philosophy
pro
only
matter
sensibilia,
but this is the perfunctory
hero.
one
for freeing
from
or Lewis's
about
termi
gratitude
due a doctor
on by a colleague's
ailment,
brought
malpractice.
or
one feels toward
the romantic
the
hero,
psychoan
one from monsters.
does seem
Cavell,
however,
saves
alyst, who
as a romantic
view Austin
more
books,
Wittgenstein,
to Austin
feel grateful
may
worries
about unsensed
nating judgments,
who
would
world
I. Lewis.
One
Moore's
our at
and directed
things.2
however,
Wittgenstein,
the problem
of the external
or C.
same
the
tran
the
But he would prob
scendental standpoint and less about skepticism.

have
about
than
hero.
professors.
He
even
Thus
views
he
Lewis
speaks
and Moore
of the
to
as
"genuine
ness of philosophical inspiration in the teaching of C. I. Lewis." One

of his epigraphs is a tribute by I. A. Richards to Moore's "intensity."
2
Husserl"
See
treatment
of Wittgenstein
Jacques Bouveresse's
in Le Mythe
de l'Int?riorit?
(Paris: Editions Minuit,
as "the anti
1978).
CAVELLON SKEPTICISM 761

He dedicates The Claim of Reason in part to Austin and in part to
Thompson Clarke who, Cavell says, showed him that "the dictates of
. . . were
ordinary
language
of the enterprise
as they were
as supportive
of traditional
(p. xii).
epistemology"
erally, Cavell says that one of his motives
destructive
More
gen
is to
life that
philosophical
keep lines open to the events within American
we can call the reception
of ordinary
(sometimes
language philosophy
here primarily
and represented
called then Oxford
by
philosophy,
In
some work of J. L. Austin's)
together with that of Wittgenstein's
as if certain paths
for philosophy,
by those
opened
vestigations,
are always
in danger of falling into obscurity
(p. xiv).
events,
he
For,
says,
and of Austin has yet to

ofWittgenstein
it can seem that the reception
effect on this [our American]
have its public or historical
philosophical
is
I do not say that this is a bad thing, Wittgenstein's
culture.
writing
. . . and if
not of a character
that lends itself to professionalization
it was not to be as philosophy.
Austin wished
for professionalization,
Philo
is surprising.
Nor do I say that this lack of a certain reception
of
works
the
modernist
like
the
past
major
sophical
Investigations,
That is, such works
esoteric.
century at least, is, logically speaking,
into insiders and outsiders
seek to split their audiences
(and split each
is
member
of it). . . . If I say that the basis of the present publication
I mean
to suggest
that his
is still to be received,
that Wittgenstein
and always to be re
and of course not his alone, is essentially
work,
(p.
ceived, as thoughts must be that would refuse professionalization
xvi).
But if one is not concerned about being professional, why worry

"American
about
to current
trends
tellectuals
life"?
philosophical
in fashionable
and more.
paths
for philosophy,
latter
phrase
departments.
philosophy
can only
refer
in
Among
is in fact being read, and used
generally, Wittgenstein
more
The
certain
It is only within
departments
philosophy
are vieux jeu.
mat
Such parochial
that he, and "Oxford philosophy,"
nor
to
that "certain
conclude
lead him
ters should not concern Cavell,
opened
by these
are always
events,
in danger
of
falling into obscurity." Cavell says he wants to "understand philoso

phy not as a set of problems but as a set of texts," and believes that
...
to the subject of philosophy
"the contribution of a philosopher
is not
to be understood
as a contribution
to, or of, a set o? given
prob
lems" (pp. 3-4).

So one would have expected him to conclude that
would
be better served by forgetting the academic phil
Wittgenstein
osophical scene within which Cavell himself first read the Investiga
tions
than
Cavell's
by
recapturing
ambiguous
its mood.
attitude
towards
the
"events"
of which
he
RICHARD RORTY
762
of an equally
ambiguous
in
Sometimes
culture.
place
losophy's
means
sense
criticism
"the
in which
it
attitude
is part
speaks
he uses
a culture
sense
"professional"
academic
phi
a
in
large
"philosophy"
of itself"
(p.
produces
(p. 125). Sometimes he uses it in
175) or "the education of grownups"

a narrow
towards
in which
it is plausible
to say
that
epis
temological skepticism is central to philosophy, and inwhich fashions

in philosophy departments matter to philosophy. He plays back and
two
forth
between
these
which
treat
"philosophy"
senses
and
in such
"skepticism"
passages
as near
as
the
following,
synonyms:
sl problem
for us, show us in what
has to make
But the philosopher
so much as be a problem.
ad
And though intellectual
sense it might
vance often depends upon someone's
ability to do just that, the conclu
takes us to goes beyond anything we should ex
sion the philosopher
which seem to proceed as his does.
from
investigations
pect
the
that fact has itself, I think, proved
To some philosophers
to others it has only demon
while
of philosophy;
power and subtlety
If one has felt both of these ways
its intellectual
strated
frivolity.
then one may come to sense that this very conflict
about skepticism,
or concealing,
some critical fact about the
itself may be displaying,
to articu
side has been able, or willing,
mind, and one which neither
late (p. 159).
. . . the methods
far from trivializing
the im
of ordinary
language,
its
without
to
of
(as
not,
many
detractors,
perhaps,
pulse
philosophy
some reason, have found it to do) show how complex and serious an
remain in
which must
ambition the criticism of philosophy,
inevitably
ternal to philosophizing
itself, ought to be (p. 166).
In the latter passage, "the impulse to philosophy" is implicitly identi

fied with the impulse to raise the sort of problems (of epistemological
skepticism) in which the "ordinary language philosophers" special
ized. Nobody, after all, has thought that the criticism of culture was
frivolous. But they have thought that philosophers were frivolously
neglecting the duty to offer such criticism by getting hung up on "the
external
world."
One would
have
thought
that,
once we were
lucky
enough
to get
and Nietzsche who resist professionaliza

writers likeWittgenstein
some
we
criticism
of philosophy which didn't remain
tion,
might get
internal to philosophy.
(As Montaigne, Spinoza, and Feuerbach gave
us criticism of religion which was not internal.) But Cavell switches
with insouciance from the narrow and professional identification of
"philosophy" with epistemology to a large sense inwhich one cannot
escape philosophy by criticizing it, simply because any criticism of
culture is to be called "philosophy." To resolve this ambiguity, Ca
vell would
have
to convince
us
that
skepticism
in the narrow
sense,
763
CAVELLON SKEPTICISM
sense
the
in ritual
used
between
interchanges
and Moore,
(Green and Bain, Bradley

for an understanding
of skepticism
Austin
in some
professors
philosophy
and Ayer),
is important
sense.
deep and romantic
He would have to show us that "skepticism"

to try
Then
leads grownups
impulse which
to try to criticize
themselves.
sense
broad
with
the narrow,
to educate
he would
sense.
"technical,"
is a good name for the

cultures
themselves,
to connect
have
this
My main
complaint
about his book is that Cavell doesn't argue for such a connection, but
takes
it for granted.
as important
Austin
tal quaestio
He
doesn't
thinkers.
Rather,
could
juris?how
help
us
see people
like Moore
and
he answers
the transcenden
appearances
they,
perhaps
to the
con
trary, be important??while
begging the quaestio facti. He is "pro
seems
it
to
in
me,
fessional,"
just the sense that he criticizes others
for being. He takes for granted that the "philosophical problems"
with which we infect freshmen by assigning Descartes and Berkeley
are
something
the freshman
needs?not
really
just
so that he can un
derstand history, but so that he can be in touch with himself, with his
own
humanity.
II
Perhaps I can make this complaint clearer by distinguishing be

tween two intellectual phenomena which I think Cavell wrongly con
flates:
created by what
(a) The "professional"
philosopher's
skepticism
Reid called "the theory of ideas" (the theory which analyzes perception
in terms of immediately,
known givens).
certainly,
(b) The Kantian,
use have any relation
Romantic,
to the way
the words
worry about whether
the world actually
is in itself.
we
two phenomena have all sorts of historical connections, but

are
they
dialectically independent. Suppose one pooh-pooh's the the
ory of ideas in good Austinian fashion. Unlike Austin, one may still
feel something like panic at the thought that there is no way to hold
the world in one hand and our descriptions of it in the other and com
These
pare
the
two?to
get,
as Cavell
says,
Both (a) and (b) seem distinct

scribed by Cavell as
"outside
language-games."
from a third phenomenon,
de
764
RICHARD RORTY
I have called "seeing ourselves
outside
the
(c) that experience
world as a whole,"
looking in at it, as we now look at some objects from
a position
I have found to be funda
This experience
among others.
in classical epistemology
mental
It
(and, indeed, moral philosophy).
sometimes
itself to me as a sense of powerlessness
to know the
presents
or to act upon it; I think it is also working
in the existen
world,
sense of the precariousness
tialist's (or, say, Santayana's)
and arbitrari
ness of existence,
the utter contingency
in the fact that things are as
are
they
All of existence
is squeezed
rolls it toward his overwhelming
into the philosopher's

tomato when
...
question
(p. 236).
he
The tomato in question is the one about which H. H. Price, in the

says "there is much that I can doubt."
opening pages of Perception,
The differences in tone between that work, Part 1 of Fichte's Voca
tion ofMan, andNausea might normally be accounted by saying that
Price was presupposing (a), whereas Fichte was expressing (b) and
Sartre
most
(c).
writers
Price
doesn't
on the subjects
find
nor
his
questions
overwhelming,
he discusses,
most
of the writers
do
in what
Cavell calls "the English tradition" (p. xiii). Cavell, however, lumps
these writers together with Kant, and (a) together with (b), in such
as the
passages
following:
avoided
and
skepticism
only apparently,
through distraction
sense; Berkeley
good English
through God; Descartes
through God
and a special faculty of intellectual
such a
"perception"; Kant, denying
to the ex
faulty, avoided it through world-creating
categories; Hume,
tent that he did, through
"natural belief"; Moore,
furious
through
common sense.
And all who have followed the argument
respond to it
as a discovery
one catastrophic
in its implications,
about our world,
as completely
as we be
what we all, until now, believed
overturning
lieved anything
(pp. 222-23).
Locke
The "argument" in question is the usual textbook, Pricean, one in

which we are driven to admit that we don't see a whole tomato, but
only. . . .Cavell is either being obscurely ironic, or is just wrong, in
saying that "all who have followed the argument respond to it as a
catastrophic discovery." Most of them, including Locke and Hume,
thought of the skeptical consequences of the theory of ideas in the
same way as the developers
of a revolutionary
of the "anomalies"
which
(in Kuhn's
sense)
as
them
and
view
unfortunate,
They
annoying
strophic, and providing employment

"apparently"
and
"to the extent
that,"
scientific
the
but
for epigoni.
that
Locke
think
theory
generates.
theory
no
means
cata
by
(If Cavell means by

and Hume
should,
765
CAVELLON SKEPTICISM
then he is not making
by rights, have been overwhelmed,

wants
to make.)
visibility
relieve
The
of the rest
the
who
only people
of the tomato
tedium
classroom
the point he
about the in
go all existential
on epistemology
lecturers
who
encoun
such lecturers
When
are
by hype.
ter an unstable freshman who actually does feel the tomato to have
catastrophic implications, they hasten to join his more robust class
mates in assuring him that it is all "just philosophy."
In an attempt to establish connections between (a), (b), and (c),
Cavell connects a particular notion of knowledge which he takes to be
characteristic of "the Cartesian project" with the attempt to escape
from
human
finitude
which
he
cause
to be "the
takes
of skepticism."
He says that
as a whole,
as that is
the project of assessing
the validity of knowledge
con
the
Cartesian
is
based
prosecuted
upon a particular
by
tradition,
of knowl
(and thus leads to a particular problem
cept of knowledge
with little sense of satis
edge), viz., the concept I have characterized,
as
a
as
of
of the world's
faction,
concept
knowledge
revelatory
and I contrasted
that with a concept of knowledge
such as
existence;
a concept of knowledge
as the identification
or recognition
of
Austin's,
224).
things (p.
This
seems
contrast
to me
real
but not to serve Ca

important,
as what Kant
between
knowledge
and
vell's
It is the contrast
purposes.
told us we couldn't
have?knowledge
in
formulated
those things'
selves,
as they
rather
of things
own
language,
are
in them
than
ours?
and knowledge as justified true belief, where "justification" is the or

dinary sort given by the language-game we in fact play. Kant made
and
Romantic,
epistemology
thereby
made
room
The theory of ideas as Reid knew it, before it went

was
not
Newton
for moral
faith.
transcendental,
of the Galileo
just an incidental
spin-off
one which
did not pan out well.
It was
romantic.
world-picture,
By contrast, Cavell can connect (b) with (c), Kant with Sartre.
He can view the Kantian hope for an impossible kind of knowledge, a
unmediated
knowledge
fication,
our
[not just
our world's]
ideas
by our
language-games,
or words?knowledge
existence"?as
our patterns
of justi
of the world's
"revelatory
produced
by the Sartrean
sense
that only such an impossible sort of knowledge would overcome our

terror at the sheer contingency of things. But I do not see how he
can
connect
Pricean
puzzles
about
getting
from
perceptions
to non
perceptions with either Kantian longing or Sartrean terror.

Cavell seems to think he has made this latter connection by not
ing that, in his phrase, epistemological skepticism has to be about a
766
RICHARD RORTY
a goldfinch but "the physical object as such,"
"generic object"?not
not
whether
about
disappointed
common-sensical
man
but
justifications
we
for
up
epistemology,
mon sense.
of these
have
answers.
to generalize
one's
questions
sister
To
set
our way
is
and
answers,
the
fresh
out of com
This is a very nice point, but it does not do the job Cavell
it to do?it
wants
To
humanoid
form."
"any passing
a
or
a
whether
it's
goldcrest,
goldfinch
are common-sensical
or pleased,
there
sister
one's
does
not
take
us across
the
channel
from Berkeley
to Kant, from (a) to (b), from perceptual error to romance. All it

shows is that we can only get the freshman from the silly stuff about
tomatoes to the heavy stuff about things-in-themselves
by dropping
a
and inculcating
the "problem
of perception,"
sense-data,
skipping
contrast
"for us" and "in itself" which
between
about
per
problems
ception do not illustrate. As long as we stick to breaking the tomato

up into sensibilia, there will be, as Austin said, "the bit where you
say it and the bit where you take it back," the bit where you decon
struct the tomato and the bit where you reconstruct it. It is only
when we drop the silly Lockean question about whether the redness
is "out
or "in us" and get
there"
to the romantic
Kantian
question
"Is
there anything beyond the coherence of our judgments to which we

can be faithful?" that the student is hooked. There is no logical con
nection
between
"for us"
vs.
"in
the
itself"
"in the mind-outside

contrast.3
"For
the mind"
us" means,
contrast
and
roughly,
the
"inside
to run
have once again started
however,
Recently,
philosophers
in
his
Des
Bernard
For
these two contrasts
Williams,
example,
together.
Descartes'
tries to rehabilitate
cartes: The Project
project
of Pure Enquiry,
of reality," a notion which Wil
conception
through a notion of "the absolute
and
in our intuition about the nature of knowledge
liams thinks involved
This
is possible.
of whether
which raises the skeptical question
knowledge
a "determinate
between
formulates
it, is ambiguous
pic
notion, as Williams
of thought"
is like independent
ture of what
the world
(p. 65) (the sort of
of the world
have) and a description
thing which Kant told us we wouldn't
are
to
not
relative
and
not
which
ours,
peculiarly
peculiarly
"using concepts
our experience"
The latter phrase
isWilliams's
(unsuc
attempt
(p. 244).
An
cessful on my view) to update Locke's notion of "resembling
objects."
vs. objective"
use of the "subjective
dis
other example
is Thomas Nagel's
a "personal"
the difference
between
and an
to cover
both
tinction
of a situation
features
account of, e.g., the morally
relevant
"impersonal"
inarticulable
and the difference
between
the linguistically
phenomenological
in ordi
of the experience
character
and a characterization
of an experience
14:
Mortal
terms.
(Cf.
nary public
Questions,
"Subjective
chap.
Nagel's
on my view, misleadingly
and Nagel,
Both Williams
yoke to
Objective")
the contrast between
the veridical
(the "objective" as the "intersub
gether
CAVELLON SKEPTICISM 767

our
our form of life, our standards

our conventions,
and probably
is an uncashed
uncash
"In the mind"
saw very clearly.
as Reid
Kant's
world
phenomenal
language-games,
of legitimation."
able metaphor,
tomato
is not Price's
sense
makes
It is a change
scale.
for generic
objects
can leave Ayer
on to the
and hasten
serious
across
thinkers
Cavell says (in unfortunately

interested in
professionalized
a tradition,
in English,
anyway an idea, of philosophizing

as that tradition
is represented
of
ing departments
philosophy.
But,
he
a way
of subject,
shows
he doesn't want
to
just what
in the care of Austin
and Price
and
one
show?that
Ryle,
on a grand
(b) rather than (a). Cavell's point that skepticism only
of expounding
the water.
terms) that he is
opposed to the tradition

in the best English-speak
says,
I have made no effort to sophisticate

amateur ef
my early, tentative
and the Continental
I
forts to link the English
because
traditions,
want
them to show that to realign these traditions,
after their long
at any rate to write witnessing
mutual
the loss in that sepa
shunning,
of mine from the earliest of the
ration, has been a formative
aspiration
work I refer to here (p. xiii).
the
Nevertheless,
of these
strategy
of linking the traditions
is the reverse
builders
our
who
start
to deromanticize
some
from
side.
by showing
that "the object
way
we
Anglo-Americans
try
tradition by showing that it has

to romanticize
tries
As
Cavell's
of that used by most bridge
Usually
the Continental
Cavell
arguments.
that it does not.
good
is clear.
attempts
he
our own
the so-called
says,
senses
the
alone"
by
tradition
"discovery"
(p. 222) is a
a
"an invention,
of dia
stage effect, produced
by intruding
production
a
construction
called
the
senses"
lectic,
historical-philosophical
(p.
is gone,
unknowable
224). To show that this invention is not just a suitable subject for
Rube Goldberg or Ronald Searle (which is how Austin thought of it),
he has got
or at least
to show
that
as interesting
the motives
as,
for its fabrication
the motives
for various
are the
bits
same
as,
of Continen
tal apparatus.
I take it that Cavell's strategy

Sartrean
scribed
sense
of
contingency?and
and Sartre,
by Heidegger
is to find these motives

to
construe
to escape
in (c)?the
the
de
attempt,
our humanity,
our fini
as the "merely apparent")

(the "subjective"
jective") and the non-veridical
with the quite different
contrast between
the communicable
(what our con
fail to catch).
(what they may, or must,
cepts catch) and the incommunicable
768
RICHARD RORTY
as an attempt
tude,
nary
language
to evade
sense.
this
as an
philosophy"
He wants
to construe
"to reclaim
effort
the
"ordi
human
self
from its denial and neglect by modern philosophy" (p. 154) and he
thinks of the history of this topic as suitably titled "Philosophy and
the Rejection of the Human" (p. 207). I think that Cavell is dead
in analyzing
right
the Cartesian
as an expression
project
of this need
his
to transcend our condition, but I think that he over-sophisticates
a
It seems
sufficient diagnosis of Cartesianism to say (with
point.
Maritain,
Burtt,
Gilson,
Randall,
Malcolm,
and
others)
that
Carte
sianism asks for impossible certainty, that itsmethodological solipsism

is an impossible demand to do it all by oneself. This Luciferian at
to cut oneself
tempt
only
natural
one's
what
inventing
(clear
games"
ples, primitive
Cavell,
off from God, or one's fellow-humans,

been taken as sufficient
light has usually
calls
Cavell
and distinct
"absolute
ideas,
. . . outside
simples
indubitable
sense-data,
by using
motive
for
language
first princi
terms, and so on) (p. 226).
however,
things
that
"the quest
is an inad
for certainty"
equate diagnosis of the Cartesian project. He criticizes the Deweyan

dismissal of this project "not taking the problem of the existence of
objects seriously" and says that "it is too late to tell a philosopher to
forego the quest for certainty when it is the sheer existence of objects
?of
haps
seems
at all?that
anything
he just means
that
anybody
to be at stake"
who
has
(pp. 224-25).
somehow
Per
to con
managed
nect textbook skepticism about the external world with the experi
ence of "seeing oneself outside the world as a whole" will not be
responsive
tesian
that
to the usual
illness.
somebody
This
who
treatment
Gilson-Dewey-Malcolm
is doubtless
is wholeheartedly
true.
But that seems

psychotic,
rather
of the Car
like saying
than merely
What
neurotically confused, will not be helped by psychoanalysis.
we need to understand is how it ispossible to get this far out, how one
could connect (a) with (c), how anybody could think that textbook
"English" epistemology is intimately connected with a sense of the
My complaint about Cavell's treatment
contingency of everything.
of skepticism may be summed up by saying that his book never makes
this possibility clear for someone for whom it is not yet an actuality.
It is fairly easy to connect (b)with (c): the realization that the world is
available to us only under a description hooks up with the realization
that it exists without a self-description, that it has no language of its
own which
because
one
we might
is relative
sense
no sense"
Its existence
"makes
day learn.
to descriptions
and existence
is not.
But,
769
CAVELLON SKEPTICISM
just as I do not know how to hook up (a)with (b), I do not know how
to hook (a) up with (c) either. Thus (c) seems to me not to serve as a
useful link between (a) and (b).
Ill
So much
discussion
for my complaints,
of "external
world"
which
have
centered
in parts
skepticism
around
1 and
Cavell's
2.
I hope,
however, that dissatisfaction with the argument of these Parts will

not prevent readers from forging ahead through parts 3 and 4.
These
parts
seem
to me,
in all sorts
of ways,
far better
than what
pre
cedes.
Part 3 is still a reworking

to some
(as were,
extent,
parts
from some years back
of material
1 and 2).
Mercifully,
Cavell
however,
now drops the topic of skepticism and the attempt to recapture

importance
four short
of "ordinary
language
philosophy."
on what
is wrong
with what
essays
This
part
various
people
said about the nature of moral philosophy?Stevenson,

early
"Two Concepts
of Rules"),
and Prior.
the
consists
These
Rawls
essays
of
have
(in his
remind
us
that moral reflection cannot be identified with appeals to principle,

that morality
is not
a name
for whatever
influences
choice,
that
it provides one possibil

morality must leave itself open to repudiation;
. . . Other ways
or encompassing
conflict.
of settling
ity of settling
conflict are provided by politics,
love
and
rebel
religion,
forgiveness,
is a valuable way because
the others
lion, and withdrawal.
Morality
...
are so often inaccessible
or brutal; but it is not everything
(p.
269).
Part 3, all by itself, is one of the best books on moral philosophy

which
has
Sovereignty
must
appeared
in recent
years.
It ranks
with
Iris Murdoch's
of Good as a criticism of the notion that moral philosophy
be a search
for yet more
"absolute
simples"?self-evident
prin
ciples, basic values. Like Murdoch, Cavell criticizes the Bentham

Kant-Sidgwick notion that rational action is action on principle, and
the corollary that moral reflection is the search for a discovery of the
rules by which each of us, simply as human, is committed to living.
He
says:
rule or principle
could function in a moral context the way regula
It is as essential
to the form
tory or defining rules function in games.
of life called morality
that rules so conceived be absent as it is essential
. . .
to the form of life we call playing a game that they be present.
No
770
RICHARD RORTY
...
a suggestion
about why philosophers
to
emerges
appeal
about morality,
and about how rules are then con
rules in theorizing
to explain why such an action as
ceived.
The appeal is an attempt
is binding upon us. But if you need an explanation
for that,
promising
if there is a sense that something more than personal
commitment
is
For rules are
then the appeal to rules comes too late.
necessary,
themselves
(p. 307).
binding only subject to our commitment
He thus helps us see the quest for "foundations ofmoral obligation" as

Both
parallel to the Cartesian quest for "foundations of knowledge."
are
to get
attempts
among
people
we
whom
as we
"natural"
we
do because
have
live, who
in a certain
talk
way.
that we are mortals, who think and
Both help us avoid acknowledging

talk
some
to find
language-games,
in touch with reality or goodness which is independent
way of getting
of the actual
outside
read
the books
we
have
read,
talked
with the people we have talked with.

They encourage us to think
that philosophy will do for us what we once religion might do?take
us right outside language, history, and finitude and put us in the pres
ence of the atemporal. They lead the philosopher to think himself so
little dependent upon his community that what he says will "work on
at random,
like a ray"
people
on the
comments
Cavell's
losophers
are much
more
(p. 326).
form of life of Anglo-Saxon
moral
phi
more
and
thus
much
clearer
and
external,
useful, than his comments in parts 1 and 2 on that of Anglo-Saxon

In the case of the moral philosophers he sees why
epistemologists.
they want to do what they do, diagnoses it quickly and surely, and
then lets go of it. In the case of the epistemologist, he insisted on
regarding
to suffer,
their
plight
as a sickness
as a necessary
stage
which
in reaching
we
somehow
intellectual
above,
(the
to confuse
temporary,
seventeenth-century
historically
of ideas,
theory
all bound
His
maturity.
insistence on the pathos and ubiquity of epistemology

argued
frenzies
are
led him, I have

little
conditioned,
ordinary
language
In part 3, by con
philosophy) with aspects of the human condition.
trast, he no longer avoids history. He briskly and brilliantly explains
(pp. 259 ff.) the connection between Galilean models of scientific ex
planation and the philosophical claim that science is "rational" in a
way that moral reflection is not. He concludes:
as
If you begin by being struck with peculiarity
of ethical arguments
and
struck
with
how
other
different
perhaps unsettleable,
questions
from science which
its ca
illustrate
are, then you will pick examples
or
then
and
will
for
have
the
you
agreement,
idea,
pacity
illusion, that
not (p. 263).
science is rational and morality
you know that, and why,
771
CAVELLON SKEPTICISM
Applying lessons learned from Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolu

tions, Cavell in these pages does a great deal to help rid us of the dis
tinctions
between
jective,"
the warp
"fact"
and
"science"
and "value,"
life
of intellectual
"non-science,"
"objective"
and "emotion" which
"reason"
in recent
and
"sub
have
been
centuries.
Part 4 is rather perversely called "Skepticism and the Problem of

Others," but is coextensive with chapter 13, which is more helpfully
A more banal
and Avoidance."
titled "Between Acknowledgement
and informative title would have been "The Relations between Love
and Knowledge."
This
else
has
he
written.
thing
five
later
years
Love"?he
or about
philosophers,
philosophy,
such
some
tells us, later than any

is, Cavell
or twenty
In particular,
it is some twenty
in parts
of the material
1-3.
In this later
in Connecticut"
of "Leopards
and "The Avoidance
comes
into his own.
Now
he is free of worry
about
manner?that
are
than
material
what
special and deep.
makes
of
rival
or skepticism,
epistemology,
or
He just reflects on the fact that there
things.
In this part Cavell is concerned with a "problem of other minds"

which does not even pretend to hook up with the "professional" prob
lem of how, given that the logical construction of the Other's body
uses
up
the
sensory
qualia
I receive,
I have
a right
to construct
mind for him as well. Wittgenstein

taught us that this problem re
one
first describes oneself to oneself in osten
sults from thinking that
sively-learned
selves.
Mental,
So one might
the Lockean
inner
language
of the
ideas
them
expect Cavell to repeat that ifwe drop Locke
the theory of ideas we shall no longer speculate

about private
inner
of
and so on.
the
the
guages,
other,
possible
emptiness
and
lan
In
stead, Cavell shrugs all that off and goes straight to a deep reading of
such
speculations:
The wish underlying
this fantasy [of a private
language] covers a wish
a
that underlies
wish
for
the
connection
between
my
skepticism,
claims of knowledge
and the objects upon which the claims are to fall
to occur without my intervention,
As the
apart from my agreements.
In the case of knowing myself,
wish stands, it is unappeasable.
such
I must disappear
self-defeat would be doubly exquisite:
in order that
. . .
search for myself
be successful
(pp. 351-52).
This reading uproots the "problem of other minds" from the soil in
which it is usually taken to have sprouted?empiricism
and phenome
across
now
nalism?and
it
the
It
is
Channel.
the sort of
transplants
problem you have after reading the Phenomenology
of Spirit, or the
772
RICHARD RORTY
This is a
Critique of Practical Reason, or Being and Nothingness.
to
if
want
to
do
find
to
you
say about
good thing
something interesting
It ignores the question of whether the "professional,"
Other Minds.
"English," epistemological question has anything to do with romantic
Kantian questions, whether (a) has anything to do with (b).
of later over earlier Cavell?of
of the advantages
part 4 over
this question.
For now he is no
that he does
1-2?is
ignore
parts
with
what
the
do.
about
concerned
up
"professionals"
hooking
longer
One
This permits him, at last, to explain what he was hinting at in earlier

about
passages
the human
"reclaiming
self"
and modern
philosophy's
"rejection of the human." What he has inmind is summed up in such

as the
passages
following:
to which the claim of

that there are possibilities
skeptic insinuates
or:
its
the
shuts
whose
claim
of certainty
shuts.
eyes;
eyes
certainty
It is the voice, or an imitation of the voice, of intellectual
conscience.
It is the voice of human con
"They are shut."
Wittgenstein
replies,
. . . In the face of the
science.
limited
skeptic's picture of intellectual
a picture of human finitude
ness, Wittgenstein
proposes
(p. 431).
The
Where
novels,
else can we find out about human finitude?

plays,
epistemology
and works
courses,
"English" philosophy
of "Continental"
or in the
rather
philosophy
on science
of reflection
sort
in
Presumably
in
than
in which
specializes:
in it human
science fiction cannot house tragedy because
limitations
can from the beginning
This idea helps me explain my
be by-passed.
in intuition from those philosophers
who take it that a scien
difference
or fiction, is sufficient
to suggest
for ex
tific speculation,
scepticism;
a
a
I
I
in
vat
know
brain
for
that
all
be
the
may
(p.
speculation
ample,
457).
The human self which philosophy has been avoiding is the one de
scribed in all the vocabularies which are of no use for predicting and
are useless
which
for science,
vocabularies
controlling
people?the
as
"Litera
when
it
is
conceived
and for philosophy
quasi-science.
is no universal
reli
and Sartre,
that there
ture" tells us, as do Hegel
gious,
or scientific,
about,
or dealing
or philosophical
with,
our
to use
vocabulary
fellow-humans,
but
that we
in talking
cannot
help
thinking that there must be:

and comedy are all but
Tragedy
true descriptions
endless
among
Pre-Kantian,
pre-Romantic,
filled with this possibility?that

of me tells who I am (p. 388).
philosophy,
was
filled
with
one
assurance
that that possibility had been actualized. The self-knowledge which

was prevented by this kind of philosophy (a kind which survives in
773
CAVELLON SKEPTICISM
Anglo-Saxon philosophy departments,
elsewhere) is the knowledge that
though pretty much
extinct
an initial sanity requires recogniz

respect to the external world,
cannot
whereas with respect to others a
I
live
that
my skepticism,
ing
I do (p. 451).
final sanity requires
that I can.
recognizing
with
This makes "final sanity" consist in getting out from under the im
pulse which led to "professional" philosophy, in escaping the tempta
tion
"to convert
the human
the
condition,
condition
of humanity,
into
an intellectual difficulty" (p. 493). In one of the best remarks in part

4?a part which, though it has its arid stretches, is studded with
splendid
sentences?Cavell
says
is the mark of tragedy.

This
Not finitude, but the denial of finitude,
It was to free
denial of finitude has also been taken as the mark of sin.
under
of that libel of sinfulness
that Blake and Nietzsche
humanity
to deny the distinction
the finite and the infi
between
took, as it were,
nite in thinking of the human (p. 455).
I doubt that the aim of "modern" writing has been better stated than
in this final phrase.
IV
Reason
important
I hope that my account of the various parts of The Claim of

has made clear that its second half (parts 3 and 4) makes it
book,
a prospective
and why
reader
not be daunted
should
by
parts 1 and 2, nor by Cavell's (occasionally) heavy-handed style. One

way of describing its importance is to say that it helps us realize what
did for us. Unlike Austin and Ryle, he did not just help
Wittgenstein
us
of ideas.
shrug off the theory
our
moral
of
worth
epistemology
form of life. Philosophy
came
our
might
also
courses,
professors
writers
of the century
we
which
habits
He
raised
the question
of the
discipline,
of our
of our
are lucky that one of the great
among us, and left behind

never
have
formulated
a description
of
for ourselves.
suffered from, and constantly complained about, the

Wittgenstein
company he had to keep in the course of this endeavor. But he kept
at it, and produced writings which even the determined efforts of a
host
of commentators
will
not
be able
to construe
as offering
"philo
sophical theories" or "solutions to philosophical problems." Cavell is

one of the few interpreters Wittgenstein
so far has had who (at least
RICHARD RORTY
774
in part 4 of his book) is free from the temptation so to construe him.4

He is also one of the few who puts him in suitable company?that
of
Rousseau
and
Nietzsche,
the friends of finitude,
Thoreau,
Kierkegaard
and
Tolstoy,
Blake
and
the friends of man.5
Princeton
University.
4
of these happy few is James C. Edwards.
See his forthcom
Another
and
the
Moral
Ethics
Without
Life (Univer
Philosophy:
Wittgenstein
ing
and Edwards's
taken to
of Florida,
Cavell's
1981).
books,
sity Presses
a
has recently
turned
that Wittgenstein
commentary
suggest
gether,
corner.
5 am
I
grateful
this review.
to John Cooper
for helpful
comment
on the first draft of

Cavell From Epistemology To Romance

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From Epistemology to Romance: Cavell on Skepticism

Author(s): Richard Rorty

FROM EPISTEMOLOGYTO ROMANCE:

is two books in one.

The Claim of Reason

more than I disagree with the first.

studied in the standard intro

But one always has more to say in

Parts 1-2 suggest that the material

possible for us to teach epistemology

too easily, for then we may miss

33 (June 1981): 759-74.

its relation to the world as such, is not that of knowing,

indeed we shan't get the full benefit of what Wittgenstein

shrug off skepticism

as just the history of some bad

1981 by theReview ofMeta

he thinks it. But does he have to drag us back through Berkeley

and Kierkegaard and Tolstoy and Wittgenstein"

should view skepticism

human condition, the condition of humanity," into an intellectual diffi

but this is the perfunctory

But he would prob

scendental standpoint and less about skepticism.

ness of philosophical inspiration in the teaching of C. I. Lewis." One

CAVELLON SKEPTICISM 761

erally, Cavell says that one of his motives

and of Austin has yet to

But if one is not concerned about being professional, why worry

is in fact being read, and used

falling into obscurity." Cavell says he wants to "understand philoso

to, or of, a set o? given

lems" (pp. 3-4).

(p. 125). Sometimes he uses it in

175) or "the education of grownups"

temological skepticism is central to philosophy, and inwhich fashions

In the latter passage, "the impulse to philosophy" is implicitly identi

and Nietzsche who resist professionaliza

(Green and Bain, Bradley

He would have to show us that "skepticism"

is a good name for the

Perhaps I can make this complaint clearer by distinguishing be

two phenomena have all sorts of historical connections, but

Both (a) and (b) seem distinct

from a third phenomenon,

into the philosopher's

The tomato in question is the one about which H. H. Price, in the

The "argument" in question is the usual textbook, Pricean, one in

strophic, and providing employment

"to the extent

(If Cavell means by

by rights, have been overwhelmed,

but not to serve Ca

and knowledge as justified true belief, where "justification" is the or

The theory of ideas as Reid knew it, before it went

that only such an impossible sort of knowledge would overcome our

perceptions with either Kantian longing or Sartrean terror.

to Kant, from (a) to (b), from perceptual error to romance. All it

ception do not illustrate. As long as we stick to breaking the tomato

or "in us" and get

there anything beyond the coherence of our judgments to which we

"in the mind-outside

CAVELLON SKEPTICISM 767