Paolo Babbiotti

In this chapter, I focus on the first problem of style, that is the one of the writing of the examples by Cavell and Williams. In particular, I do this through the analysis of two case studies, that is, two concrete cases in which these philosophers tried to solve this specific problem of style; and I show how the use of examples is not a marginal or secondary aspect in both authors, but is central to their philosophical stance. In fact, the way in which the two philosophers wrote specific examples was built in open contrast to two philosophical outlooks of the time: the emotivism of Charles Leslie Stevenson and the utilitarianism of J. J. C. Smart. The problem of the examples emerges directly from the first criterion of perfectionist writing, namely the blurred boundaries between literature and philosophy. In order to write examples that adhere to the complexity of moral life, in fact, both Cavell and Williams need a philosophical style somewhere between literature and philosophy. Only a compromise between the two registers allows them to adequately describe the moral issues at stake in philosophical reflection.

In this chapter I take a closer look at the problem of the type of philosophers through a quantitative investigation. In Sect. 1, the investigation focuses on the use of parentheses in Stanley Cavell’s work: through the results of this investigation, I show how the fabric of Cavell’s writing, thanks to the parentheses, is enriched with a multiplicity of voices and tones, without which his philosophy would not be recognizable and would be severely impoverished. In Sect. 2., the investigation instead focuses on the analysis of the authors cited by Williams in two corpora into which his work can be divided: a more academic corpus and a more cultural one. Here, it is shown how in the academic corpus Williams brings cultural elements, and how in the cultural corpus Williams does not renounce the academic guise. In short, he always finds a way to enter into a dialectical relationship with each sphere. Interestingly, both parts of this chapter have a direct relation to one of the most elusive criteria of Emersonian perfectionist writing: namely, the fact that such a work gives us back our repressed thoughts. In the case of Sect. 1, we can see how Cavell uses the parenthetical space to insert voices that he would otherwise have repressed from the philosophical work (voices and tones that generally tend to be repressed by more academic philosophers). In the case of Sect. 2, we can see how Williams inserts cultural references into the academic work that risk being repressed by technicality and specialization; and vice versa, how he approaches the cultural work in the—somewhat unexpected—guise of the academic philosopher, rich in references to the professional philosophy contemporary to him. These two parts (Sects. 1 and 2) provide thus an ending up to the difficulty of the problems of style addressed in this book. Both, in fact, show how crucial it is to combine quantification and interpretation in order to achieve interesting and comprehensive results regarding a philosopher’s style. Moreover, these last two parts show the continuity (along with the various inevitable slippages) in the formation of marked and self-conscious philosophical styles such as those of Cavell and Williams; especially in an intellectual world like that of Anglo-American analytical philosophy, which rarely acknowledged the importance of style in philosophy.

I focus on the types of philosophers Cavell and Williams embodied in their work, that is, as the chapter title goes, “The Outsider and the Maverick”. However, to succeed in this difficult task I follow a rather indirect route. I dwell on two different fictional accounts that both philosophers chose as representatives of their own philosophical style. In Cavell’s case, it is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter; in Williams’s case, it is Denis Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew. I believe that, from this analysis, the differences between the philosophical styles of Cavell and Williams emerge well. Moreover, the problem of what types of philosophers Cavell and Williams represent, precisely because of the way it is discussed, that is, through the analysis of two literary texts such as The Purloined Letter and Rameau’s Nephew, has links with the second and the third criteria of Emersonian perfectionist writing listed above: respectively, metaphorical and allegorical precision and the presence of embodied figures in the philosophical dialogue.

In the book’s four main chapters (“Through the Examples”, “Stylistic Methods”, “The Outsider and the Maverick” and “Two Quantitative Studies”), I investigate three problems of style that emerge from the five criteria of Emersonian perfectionist writing introduced in this chapter. These criteria are: 1. a prose in which the boundaries between literature and philosophy are blurred; 2. metaphorical and allegorical precision; 3. the revival of embodied figures of philosophical dialogue (such as the friend, or, at the opposite extreme, the scoundrel); 4. the restitution of our repressed thoughts; 5. the importance of—or, as Cavell occasionally expresses it, the emphasis on every single word.All these criteria (along with several others) are functional to Emerson’s main aspiration according to Stanley Cavell: the aspiration to represent the human. Emerson’s prose is thus charged with accounting for our human condition. It is the aim of the first chapter of the book, called “Emersonian Perfectionist Writing in Philosophy”, to see if these criteria are instantiated in Stanley Cavell’s and Bernard Williams’s major works: that is, in The Claim of Reason (1979) and in Ethics and the limits of Philosophy (1985).

I decide to start with as general a characterization as possible, trying to understand where my interest lies in analyzing the concept of style. It is necessary to place myself in front of style “as if for the first time”, asking myself a question as simple as it is disorienting: “What do I mean by style?”. Thanks to this general characterization, I realize not only what we can mean by style (that is, “a set of traits that remain constant over the course of an author’s work—traits that a more conscious author might have chosen, or that were instead chosen by something else for them”), but that my interest, as far as the study of style in philosophy is concerned, lies in a closer analysis of the work of those philosophers, such as Cavell and Williams, whom I have called “stylists of philosophy”—philosophers who are very conscious not only as regards the various problems of style, but also as regards the creation of their own personal and idiomatic style.Then I choose a theoretical key to structure the path of my book, that of Emersonian Perfectionism as a question of style. This choice has one main advantage: the discussion of Emersonian Perfectionism is invoked by Cavell himself and in a context where he also brought Williams into the conversation.

In this chapter, I focus on what I have called the stylistic methods of Cavell and Williams. I understand as a stylistic method a systematic use of a writing style for philosophical purposes. In this chapter, the philosophical purpose investigated in Cavell and Williams is maximal: namely, to show that style matters in philosophy. This is why, emphatically, “Stylistic Methods” speaks of the problem of style (and not just of one problem among others). The stylistic methods found and cultivated by Cavell and Williams in their philosophical production constitute an argument in favor of stylistic awareness—against those analytical philosophers who believe that “in philosophy one has to get it right first, and then add the style afterwards” (as Williams writes in “Philosophical as a Humanistic Discipline”). The problem of the stylistic methods thus emerges from the main criterion of Emersonian perfectionist writing: that is, from the fact that every word matters in philosophy. If every word did not count, in fact, one could add style later and lose nothing of relevance within one’s philosophical production. Cavell and Williams both think that style cannot be added afterwards, and that every word counts, and in this chapter we can see why and how.

This book considers the work of two philosophers situated within the anglo-american analytical tradition, Stanley Cavell (1926-2018) and Bernard Williams (1929-2003). It examines the literary strategies that these stylistically-aware authors employ and also the ethical demand which guides their philosophies and gives substance to their philosophical styles. The book thereby aims to demonstrate the importance of style in philosophy and suggest some of the intellectual dynamics a philosopher’s conscious awareness of style can create.

This paper aims to reconstruct two key stages of Richard Wollheim's engagement with the moral psychology of F. H. Bradley—first in his 1959/1969 book on Bradley, and later in his 1993 collection of essays, The Mind and its Depths—and to connect them to Wollheim's own account of a dynamic moral psychology, as detailed in The Thread of Life (1984). Bradley's notion of “the growth of interest” is here reframed as growing up through learning to love and overcoming the pull of hate-related impulses, such as envy. Finally, this paper highlights significant parallels between Wollheim's account and Iris Murdoch's concept of “the change of vision”, particularly as articulated in The Sovereignty of Good, thus situating both philosophers within a shared horizon of ethical transformation.

The English original of Bernard Williams’s Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy was published in 1985. Since its publication, it has provoked a substantial body of philosophical commentary, sympathetic as well as critical. Williams’s introduction to the 1990 French translation of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is an unusual text and an illuminating new source for readers of Williams. Refreshingly, it reflects an effort on Williams’s part to establish a connection with a new set of readers. It is also the work of a philosopher relishing the freedoms that come from not having to connect with the old one. Does his introduction itself benefit from a further introduction? We believe that it does, and for the same reason that the book needed some prefatory words before it could be put into the hands of French readers: because the work is not, or no longer, fully self-explanatory.

The aim of this article is to comment on an episode of The Sopranos in which we are shown two simultaneous failed attempts at education. Tony Soprano’s son and “nephew” seek their own path, their own education, and both end up returning to the world of the two families: the Soprano family and the Mafia family. On this road, they meet people who could lead them out of these worlds, but their affiliation with the family will not be scratched: the two families have too many attractions to be abandoned. The missed education of the two young men mirrors the fall of Tony Soprano, whose tragic fate this episode anticipates.

The aim of my paper will be to provide a commentary on the introduction to the French edition of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985) by Bernard Williams (1929–2003) and to show the Nietzschean legacy that is made explicit there. In this introduction, called “L'éthique, question de style?” and published in 1990, Williams reflects on some of the problems of style that his book poses to French readers, to whom he feels his work is less familiar. Furthermore, Williams recalls some moments of the Royaumont colloquium (which he attended in 1958) and dwells on some peculiarities that distinguish him from analytic philosophy, “French” philosophy, Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Finally, the text closes with a description of the image of the philosopher to whom Williams feels closest—that of Nietzsche—and illustrates the reasons that distance him from other models of philosophical writing.

Abstract:Taking my title from "Lingering in the Woods," one of Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, I present a study of Stanley Cavell's style of writing. While a dominant Anglo-American style of philosophical writing seems to be motivated principally by a desire for argumentation, a Cavellian, lingering style aims at thorough expression and description of the human experience. Traces of this style can be found also in Ludwig Wittgenstein's writing. After reopening the debate that arose from some responses to The Claim of Reason, I conclude with a close reading of Cavell's "Excursus on Wittgenstein's Vision of Language."

The aim of this paper is to say something significant about Stanley Cavell's style. To accomplish this task, we adopt a distant reading approach, quantifying what seems to be an idiosyncratic use of parentheses. After outlining our methodological approach and the choices of texts from Cavell's corpus, we will present the results of our quantitative analysis. Two kinds of results will be presented and interpreted: the result of a comparison between Cavell and other authors (i.e. why Cavell's use of parentheses is exceptional) and the result of a quantitative analysis of Cavell's texts (i.e. how Cavell uses parentheses throughout his books). For both results, we will provide our own interpretation. In the conclusion, we will draw the moral of this parenthetical story, hoping to open future parentheses.

The fact that Bernard Williams' writing is at times compressed, intense, almost epigrammatic, is acknowledged by many different reviewers of his work. Are these just incidental features? Or do they have any philosophical significance? The aim of this article is to study those features of Williams' style as part of a stylistic method that I (and Williams) refer to as compression. In the course of my paper, I will reflect on the idea of compression as a stylistic method for doing more with less in philosophical (and musical) writing; then I will take an excursus on some properties of Nietzsche's aphoristic writing (properties that can be found in Williams' writing as well); finally, I will locate some stylistic affinities between Williams and Nietzsche: from the image they both use to describe their philosophical style to the use of different devices (rhetorical questions, the use of em-dashes, humor…) they both employ—devices that embody a free spirit they revealed in their own writing and towards their own environment.