Stanley Cavell: Cities of Words - Essay Example

The two theories deal with aspects related to the opposition of thought with respect to nature and humanity. It has helped to open up doors to Western philosophy and literature with a view to explaining moral thinking that persists in the surroundings of the same. This book is an understanding of understanding; it is a simple tool by which comprehension with respect to philosophy can be unearthed and understood by an individual. Two renowned philosophers, world over, that have made immense contribution to this field of moral perfectionism are John Rawls and Immanuel Kant.

Both these great minds of the philosophical aspect of life have helped to span and comprehend the surroundings and environment that people survive in, with respect to viewpoints and ways of life. Rawls’ beliefs lay within grasping hold of political thought and philosophy, in terms of understanding liberty, justice, freedom and equality in the presence of the eyes of law, whereas the beliefs of Kant were on the basis of more pragmatic and rational issues that a person deals with in his everyday life.

A stark comparison can be observed between the two; beginning with their personal ideas of what philosophy actually is. Rawls’ contribution to political and moral philosophy includes a modern day citation in every field of law and jurisprudence. His works added greatly to helping courts on the basis of ethics and justice. He dealt with understanding and writing about certain terms like reflective equilibrium, overlapping consensus, public reason and the original position. All these experiments and ideas conducted by him were concluded and initiated by a thought process stemming out from the need for understanding moral principles.

The original position was a belief with respect to the idea of a perfect society within which a man could reside without having fear of doing wrong; the reflective equilibrium suggested a state of balance among principles to be followed in life in order to respect the existence of other people. These terms were popularised in Rawls’ Theory of Justice. In Political Liberalism, he wrote about the overlapping consensus which helped to understand the relationship of philosophy with political ties and agreements, and how religion and ideology affected the same.

Public reason is concerned with accepting and knowing about how to make decisions on the political frontier for the general public. ‘Justice as Fairness’ was the main idea behind the backing of Rawls’ moral perfectionism, thus. In Cities of Words, Cavell reveals the way that, in the light of Aristotle’s claim that it is language that makes human beings “fit for, and fated for, political association,” Emersonian moral perfectionism proposes “confrontation and conversation as the means of determining whether we can live together, accept one another into the aspirations of our lives.

(Cavell, Stanley) This view point can be observed from the work of Rawls as well as Kant, because it talks about both political confrontation, that formed a portion of Rawls’ domain and about Kant’s works as is discussed later, with respect to philosophy pertaining to a human being’s life and times. Kant on the other hand, is well known world over for coining