In Quest of the Ordinary

Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism

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by Stanley Cavell

University of Chicago Press

Due/Published October 1994, 200 pages, paper

ISBN 0226098184

These lectures by one of the most influential and original philosophers of the twentieth century constitute a sustained argument for the philosophical basis of romanticism, particularly in its American rendering. Through his examination of such authors as Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, Stanley Cavell shows that romanticism and American transcendentalism represent a serious philosophical response to the challenge of skepticism that underlies the writings of Wittgenstein and Austin on ordinary language.