•  539
    The New Wittgenstein (edited book)
    with Rupert J. Read
    Routledge. 2000.
    This text offers major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein's thinking. It is a collection of essays that presents a significantly different portrait of Wittgenstein. The essays clarify Wittgenstein's modes of philosophical criticism and shed light on the relation between his thought and different philosophical traditions and areas of human concern. With essays by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond, Peter Winch and Hilary Putnam, we see the emergence of a new way of understanding Wittgenstein's…Read more
  •  264
    Moral Contexts (review)
    Hypatia 20 (4): 220-223. 2000.
  •  235
    The happy truth: J. L. Austin's how to do things with words
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (1). 2002.
    This article aims to disrupt received views about the significance of J. L. Austin's contribution to philosophy of language. Its focus is Austin's 1955 lectures How To Do Things With Words . Commentators on the lectures in both philosophical and literary-theoretical circles, despite conspicuous differences, tend to agree in attributing to Austin an assumption about the relation between literal meaning and truth, which is in fact his central critical target. The goal of the article is to correct …Read more
  •  134
    Minding What Already Matters
    Philosophical Topics 38 (1): 17-49. 2010.
    This article offers a critique of moral individualism. I introduce the topic of moral individualism by discussing how its characteristic assumptions play an organizing role in contemporary conversations about how animals should be treated. I counter that moral individualism fails to do justice not only to our ethical relationships with animals but also to our ethical relationships with human beings. My main argument draws on elements of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of psychology, and in prese…Read more
  •  124
    Beyond moral judgment
    Harvard University Press. 2007.
    Wider possibilities for moral thought -- Objectivity revisited: a lesson from the work of J.L. Austin -- Ethics, inheriting from Wittgenstein -- Moral thought beyond moral judgment: the case of literature -- Reclaiming moral judgment: the case of feminist thought -- Moralism as a central moral problem.
  •  116
    Dogs and Concepts
    Philosophy 87 (2): 215-237. 2012.
    This article is a contribution to discussions about the prospects for a viable conceptualism, i.e., a viable view that represents our modes of awareness as conceptual all the way down. The article challenges the assumption, made by friends as well as foes of conceptualism, that a conceptualist stance necessarily commits us to denying animals minds. Its main argument starts from the conceptualist doctrine defended in the writings of John McDowell. Although critics are wrong to represent McDowell …Read more
  •  107
    A Brilliant Perspective: Diamondian Ethics
    Philosophical Investigations 34 (4): 331-352. 2011.
    The aims of this paper are twofold: (i) to bring out how Cora Diamond's essays on ethics represent a shift in perspective when considered against the backdrop of dominant trends in contemporary moral philosophy and thereby (ii) to shed light on and indicate strategies for combating sources of philosophical resistance to her ethical project
  •  95
    A question of silence: Feminist theory and women's voices
    Philosophy 76 (3): 371-395. 2001.
    This paper examines some recent trends in feminist epistemology. It argues that theories that make a priori claims to the effect that the structure of our body of knowledge must encode a masculine bias are both philosophically problematic and politically counterproductive, and it recommends a feminist methodology free from such general theoretical claims as best suited for the promotion of productive feminist thought and action
  •  70
    Essays by leading scholars that take as their point of departure Cora Diamond 's work on the unity of Wittgenstein's thought and her writings on moral philosophy..
  •  65
    Ethics and the Logic of Life
    SATS 10 (2): 5-34. 2009.
  •  64
    Reading Cavell (edited book)
    Routledge. 2006.
    Alongside Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam and Jacques Derrida, Stanley Cavell is arguably one of the best-known philosophers in the world. In this state-of-the-art collection, Alice Crary explores the work of this original and interesting figure who has already been the subject of a number of books, conferences and Phd theses. A philosopher whose work encompasses a broad range of interests, such as Wittgenstein, scepticism in philosophy, the philosophy of art and film, Shakespeare, and philosophy o…Read more
  •  62
    W.G. Sebald and the Ethics of Narrative
    Constellations 19 (3): 494-508. 2012.
  •  61
    A Radical Perfectionist: Revisiting Cavell in the Light of Kant
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 48 (3): 87-98. 2014.
    Stanley Cavell is widely regarded as a major philosophical figure, and he is generally recognized to have devoted a great deal of his writing to ethical themes. Nevertheless, it is not an exaggeration to say that his work has not for the most part been received within Anglo-American analytic ethics. There is an impressively large body of commentary on Cavell’s contribution to moral philosophy, but most of it gets generated and discussed outside analytic circles. Paul Guyer’s remarks here on the …Read more
  •  57
    Objectivity
    In James Conant & Sebastian Sunday (eds.), Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning, Cambridge University Press. pp. 47-61. 2019.
    A core philosophical use of the term “objectivity” is to talk about a central metaphysical ideal. The term is employed to pick out aspects of the world that are there in the sense that any thinker who fails to register them can be said to be missing something. If we speak in this connection of a guiding concept of objectivity, we can ask what can be said about the nature of the things that fall under it. We might then speak in this further connection of different possible conceptions of objectiv…Read more
  •  55
    How Philosophy and Sociology Need Each Other
    with Steven Lukes
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 40 (1): 81-99. 2019.
  •  49
    Wittgenstein Goes to Frankfurt
    Nordic Wittgenstein Review 7 (1): 7-41. 2018.
    This article aims to shed light on some core challenges of liberating social criticism. Its centerpiece is an intuitively attractive account of the nature and difficulty of critical social thought that nevertheless goes missing in many philosophical conversations about critique. This omission at bottom reflects the fact that the account presupposes a philosophically contentious conception of rationality. Yet the relevant conception of rationality does in fact inform influential philosophical tre…Read more
  •  43
    Putnam and Propaganda
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 38 (2): 385-398. 2017.
  •  40
    Dogs and Concepts – ERRATUM
    Philosophy 87 (3): 471-. 2012.
  •  32
    The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (edited book)
    with Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen
    Oxford University Press. 2023.
    Deeply rooted structures of racism, ableism, misogyny, ageism, and transphobia hurt great numbers of people, exposing them to intolerance, economic exclusion, and physical harm around the globe. Billions of land animals suffer and die annually in concentrated feeding operations and slaughterhouses. Our planet and all who live here are in perilous straights as the climate changes. In the face of such grievous problems, people who want to find positive ways to respond often grapple with difficult …Read more
  •  30
    Ethics as Part of Human Natural History
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 30 (2): 391-407. 2009.
  •  28
    Neutrality, Critique, and Social Visibility
    Philosophical Topics 49 (1): 187-194. 2021.
    This piece continues an exchange between David Beaver and Jason Stanley, on the one hand, and Alice Crary, on the other, to which Beaver’s and Stanley’s “Neutrality” (immediately above) is a contribution. All three authors agree that the critique of ideology, propaganda, and oppressive structures should not be conceived as eliminating socially-situated perspectives and subjectively-mediated sensibilities from an allegedly neutral discursive space. Their exchange began with Crary’s 2018 article, …Read more
  •  28
    What Do Feminists Want in an Epistemology?
    Women in Philosophy Journal 1 22-40. 2001.