Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 13:09:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Thomas E. Wartenberg" <[log in to unmask]>
I have my own quarrels with Cavell. (You can find them in my book
UNLIKELY COUPLES: MOVIE ROMANCE AS SOCIAL CRITICISM.) But let me add a
word in defense of him. He's concerned to counter the then general
assumption that Hollywood films were nothing but ideological products
designed to mislead the masses. He sees them as having a genuinely
philosophical content. THat content in related to his more general
philosophical work on skepticism, which for him means skepticism about the
humanity of the other and which finds its solution in the acknowledgment
of the other. If you don't have a sense of what all of that means, then I
don't think you can really understand what he is doing in PURSUITS.
HOpe this helps a bit.
Thomas E. Wartenberg
Department of Philosophy
Film Studies Program
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, MA 01075
Phone: (413) 538-2273
FAX: (413) 538-2579
e-mail: <[log in to unmask]>
web: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~twartenb/
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