Cavell on Film

This extensive collection offers a substantially complete retrospective of Stanley Cavell's previously uncollected writings on film. Cavell is the only major philosopher in the AngloAmerican tradition who has made film a central concern of his work, and his work offers inspiration and new directions to the field of film studies. The essays and other writings in this volume, presented in the order of their composition, range from major theoretical statements and extended critical studies of individual films or filmmakers to occasional pieces, all of which illuminate Cavell's practice of philosophy as it has developed in the more than three decades since the publication of The World Viewed. All periods of Cavell's career are represented, from the 1970s to the present, and the book includes many previously unpublished essays written since the early 1990s. In his introduction, William Rothman provides a useful and eloquent overview of Cavell's work on film and his aims as a philosopher more generally.

Author Biography: Stanley Cavell is Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. His most recent book is Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life. William Rothman is Professor of Motion Pictures at the University of Miami and the author of several books, including The "I" of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics, Second Edition and (with Marian Keane) Reading Cavell's The World Viewed: A Philosophical Perspective.