Upcoming meetings
During Lent Term 2024, we will meet online on Wednesdays, 1:00-2:30 to discuss Stanley Cavell’s 1979 book The Claim of Reason. (We also plan to hold one or more trial hybrid sessions later in term.) The planned schedule is as follows:
Session 1, Wednesday 29 January
1986 Tanner Lectures, ‘The Uncanniness of the Ordinary’ https://stage.tannerlectures.umc.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/100/2024/05/cavell88.pdf
Session 2, Wednesday 5 February
The Claim of Reason, Part One: Wittgenstein and the Concept of Human Knowledge, Ch I – Criteria and Judgment, pp. 3-36
Session 3, Wednesday 12 February
Part One, Ch II – Criteria and Skepticism, pp. 37-48
Session 4, Wednesday 19 February
Part One, Ch V – Natural and Conventional (first half), pp. 86-111
Optional further reading: pp. 111-25
Session 5, Wednesday 26 February
Part Two: Skepticism and the Existence of the World, Ch VI – The Quest of Traditional Epistemology: Opening, pp. 129-67
Focus for discussion: The Reasonableness of Doubt, pp. 130-45
Session 6, Wednesday 5 March
Part Two, Ch VII – Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language, pp. 168-90
Session 7, Wednesday 12 March
Part Three: Knowledge and the Concept of Morality, Ch IX – Knowledge and the Basis of Morality, pp. 247-73
Session 8, Wednesday 19 March
Part Four: Skepticism and the Problem of others, Ch XIII – Between Acknowledgement and Avoidance, pp. 329-61 (soul and body)
Session 9, Wednesday 26 March
Ch XIII, pp. 361-89 (seeing others through metaphor)
Session 10, Wednesday 2 April
Ch XIII, pp. 389-416 (tragic otherness)
Session 11, Wednesday 9 April
Ch XIII, pp. 416-40 (human and nonhuman)
Session 12, Wednesday 16 April
Ch XIII, pp. 440-63 (being known)
Session 13, Wednesday 23 April
Ch XIII, pp. 463-96 (conclusion)
For access to texts, Zoom invitations and updates through our mailing list, please contact us@verstehencolloquium.org.