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Cities of Words
Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life
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by Stanley Cavell
Harvard University Press
Due/Published
October 2005, 480 pages,
paper
ISBN
0674018184
New in paper (F05) Since Socrates and his circle first tried to frame the Just City in words, discussion of a perfect communal life--a life of justice, reflection, and mutual respect--has had to come to terms with the distance between that idea and reality. Measuring this distance step by practical step is the philosophical project that Stanley Cavell has pursued on his exploratory path. Situated at the intersection of two of his longstanding interests--Emersonian philosophy and the Hollywood comedy of remarriage--Cavell's new work marks a significant advance in this project. The book--which presents a course of lectures Cavell presented several times toward the end of his teaching career at Harvard--links masterpieces of moral philosophy and classic Hollywood comedies to fashion a new way of looking at our lives and learning to live with ourselves. This book offers philosophy in the key of life. Beginning with a rereading of Emerson's "Self-Reliance," Cavell traces the idea of perfectionism through works by Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, and Rawls, and by such artists as Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, and Shakespeare. Cities of Words shows that this ever-evolving idea, brought to dramatic life in movies such as It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth, The Philadelphia Story, and The Lady Eve, has the power to reorient the perception of Western philosophy. Contents Preface
Introduction 1. Emerson
2. The Philadelphia Story
3. Locke
4. Adam's Rib
5. John Stuart Mill
6. Gaslight
7. Kant
8. It Happened One Night
9. Rawls
10. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
11. Nietzsche
12. Now, Voyager
13. Ibsen
14. Stella Dallas
15. Freud
16. The Lady Eve
17. Plato
18. His Girl Friday
19. Aristotle
20. The Awful Truth
21. Henry James and Max Ophuls
22. G. B. Shaw: Pygmalion and Pygmalion
23. Shakespeare and Rohmer: Two Tales of Winter
Themes of Moral Perfectionism Bibliography
Acknowledgments
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