Religion & Law

The Chronicle of Higher Education contains a review of Stanley Cavell's autobiography, Little Did I Know. For those unfamiliar with Cavell's work, he has been an influential reader of Wittgenstein for Catholic analytic philosophers. Fergus Kerr, for example, in the Preface of his important study,Theology After Wittgenstein, writes of Cavell, "I owe far more than my references might suggest to the weird and wonderful works of Stanley Cavell, from which I have received endless delight and illumination." (Kerr, vii) An interesting example of Cavell's influence on Kerr can be found in section of Kerr's book dealing with Wittgenstein on topic of skepticism, Kerr writes, quoting Cavell:

 If Descartes 'discovered for philosophy that to confront the threat of or temptation to skepicism is to risk madness', then (Cavell thinks) Wittgenstein's work 'confronts this temptation and finds its victory exactly in never claiming a final philosophical victory over (the temptation to) skepticism'--for that (Cavell maintains) ' would mean a victory over the human. (Kerr, 211, quoting Cavell, This New Yet Unapproachable America, 37)