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
Guest speaker event, Monday 3 March, 5:15-6:45
Paolo Babbiotti (University of Turin) will join us to discuss his book Cavell, Williams and the Question of Style in Philosophy
Room DD48, Queen’s College, Cambridge and by Zoom
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.