Stanley Cavell - Essay Example

One of the most significant elements of Cavell's analysis is his effort to question the nature of knowledge in the light of how knowledge could provide a rational basis for morality. In part III, chapter IX, Cavell declares: Dialectically, this problem [the problem of morality] is reflected in a fact about "moral arguments" -- the "methods" (to use Sidgwick's term) by which we undertake to arrive at a knowledge, or "rational conviction", as to what ought to be done -- which has insistently and constantly occupied the attention of moral philosophers, viz.

, that such arguments are always, and dishearteningly, liable to break down, or end in stalemate, and the question which prompted the argument either left without answer or with incompatible answers which any further argument would seem helpless to resolve (247). This seems to suggest that Cavell views the acquisition of knowledge and the debate about moral reasoning to exclusively belong to the concerns of philosophers. Cavell thus, in a Wittgensteinian fashion, seems to be despairing of the hopes for settling moral arguments.

But, upon closer examination, Cavell is offering quite an insightful method for resolving moral disputes. Herein, Cavell’s resolution rests on seeing that some moral disputes will never arrive at a point of mutual agreement, and so individuals would have to “agree to disagree” amicably. Also, he stresses the importance of a resolution wherein both individuals come to understand the other individual’s point of view, despite their unending moral disagreements. It is in this regard that Cavell advocates the idea of moral perfectionism, and the idea of democracy from within.

For, self-knowledge is, for Cavell, fundamental for moral discourse. It is important to note that Cavell, quite consciously, echoes Greek dramatists and culture in his ethical analysis. It seems, then, that Cavell, in referring to both knowledge and morality, is referring to three main figures in ancient philosophy: Socrates himself, Plato and Aristotle. These ethical schools of thought viewed knowledge and morality as intimately connected. Plato, for instance, advocates that the road towards the true life of the spirit is a path of purification where man exerts effort to reach genuine wisdom.

The soul is purified as it reaches ever-higher degrees of knowledge; it is healed of its sensible affections and made virtuous. In essence, morality, like any other element of human life and knowledge, is a skill and a body of knowledge. What prevents people from being noble, in Plato's view (expressed by Socrates in the traditional Platonic view), is a lack of knowledge. When people are fully and deeply aware of why it is good to be good, why just behavior is appropriate, they will behave appropriately.

Part of this is enlightened self-interest: Both Plato and Aristotle were eudaemonic philosophers, who believed that morality's goal was to create and promote a eudaemonia, narrowly defined as “well-being” or “happiness” but meaning much more broadly a good and overarching spirit of things. Plato and Aristotle's idea of the eudaemonia varied, of course, but both shared the belief that once ethical issues were fully understood, people would realize that it would be against their own enlightened self-