A Map – Cavell’s An Emerson Mood

1. A Map – Cavell’s An Emerson Mood Philosopher of Direction Ordinary Language Naturalism/RE Nativism “…I found myself recurring to the most famous address, and I suppose the best, ever given by an American thinker on a scholar’s day, I mean Emerson’s “The American scholar,” delivered at Harvard the year Thoreau graduated there…” (141) “…I am suggesting that our foreignness as philosophers to these writers…may itself be a sign of an impoverished idea of philosophy, or a remoteness from philosophy’s origins, from what is native to it…” (148) “What the ordinary language philosopher is feeling …is that our relation to the world’s existence is somehow closer than the ideas of believing and knowing are made to convey.” (145) “…this American scholar is also calling upon American scholars to give over their imitations of Europe, to stop turning away from their own inspiration…”(148) …I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low...” (142) (from Emerson) Reconstruction “We, who have already failed to obey the heart; and he, who has already succeeded, are to meet at a common origin…“Follow in yourself what I follow in mine and you will be saved,” you merely have to be sure you are following yourself. This frightens and cheers me.” (160) “Philosophical thinking is not something that a normal human being can submit to all the time…Philosophical questions…I should like to speak in this connection of the mood of philosophy… “ (151) Conclusion Mood “It is a matter of taking back to yourself an authority for yourself you have been compelled to invest elsewhere. So the matter of authority is as much one of hearing as it is one of uttering…” (159 – 160) “Will this priority of a certain whim (to departure) over a certain obligation (to remain) not make a person rootless, and nowadays for nothing more the selfish reasons, which you may call religious but which religion is not likely to teach?”(157) . “To speak of Emerson’s essays as the contents of new mezuzahs is to imply that he has written on the lintels …Whim and the knowledge that his genius has called him, for the essays are the fruits by which his prophetic whim is to be known.” (156) “So it is in obedience to Emerson’s genius that he speaks of it wherever he is, showing that it speaks everywhere to him; not to acknowledge it would be not to keep faith with it.’ (156) His difference from other philosophical writing is, I think, that it asks the philosophical mood so purely, so incessantly…”(152) Authority Cavell’s Challenge: #1 Emerson’s Whim Emerson’s Genius Emerson’s Mood