A Radical Perfectionist: Revisiting Cavell in the Light of Kant

1. Introduction

Stanley Cavell is widely regarded as a major philosophical figure, and he is generally recognized to have devoted a great deal of his writing to ethical themes. Nevertheless, it is not an exaggeration to say that his work has not for the most part been received within Anglo-American analytic ethics. There is an impressively large body of commentary on Cavell’s contribution to moral philosophy, but most of it gets generated and discussed outside analytic circles. Paul Guyer’s remarks here on the major strand of Cavell’s ethical thought that Cavell places under the heading of “moral perfectionism” are for this reason very welcome.¹ Guyer’s main thesis is that Cavell’s perfectionist posture is more Kantian than Cavell and others have realized. Given that Kantian approaches currently enjoy a central position in analytic moral philosophy, this is rightly regarded as a bold proposal to situate Cavell inside an intellectual tradition in which he has yet to find a stable home.

I am going to ask whether Cavell can, in fact, be thus neatly domesticated within mainstream ethics or whether there are more substantive reasons for his outsider status. My interest in this question does not stem from any overwhelming disagreement with Guyer’s specific claims. Guyer has made a thoughtful and compelling case for convergences between Cavell and Kant. There is, however, good reason to think that the convergences in question coexist with some deep divergences and, further, that the divergences mark Cavell out as, in certain respects, a quite unKantian thinker. Bearing these things in mind, I want here to touch on some of the more striking ways in which Cavell departs from Kant and to make a few suggestions about the moral importance of these moments in Cavell’s work. I will proceed by first touching on elements of Cavell’s ethical project that do not figure in Guyer’s reflections and suggesting that these Cavellian gestures belong to a strain of Cavell’s thought that is difficult to locate not only in relation to Kant but also in relation to Anglo-American ethics more generally. After briefly revisiting Guyer’s remarks on Cavell and Kant, I will provide support for my non-Kantian take on Cavellian perfectionism by discussing what Cavell himself describes as his perfectionist reading of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll House. By way of closing, I will make a suggestion about the moral interest of Cavellian perfectionism as I understand it by discussing what, by my lights, counts as a Cavellian perfectionist moment in the thought of a prominent contemporary feminist social critic.

2. Guyer on Cavell and Kant

A brief synopsis of Guyer’s claims about Cavell and Kant will suffice as background for the things that I want to say. Guyer starts his case for alignment between these two thinkers with the following reflections on Cavellian perfectionism. He notes that, for Cavell, talk of “perfectionism” refers to the idea that the task of moral improving or perfecting is one that is in principle always ongoing (“Examples of Perfectionism,” 6). How, Guyer asks, should we conceive the normative end toward which the Cavellian perfectionist thus continually strives? Guyer approaches his answer to this question by touching on passages in which Cavell says that it is characteristic of the perfectionist to see us as ever aspiring to make ourselves intelligible to ourselves and to others.² Guyer does not think we should take such passages at face value, and, in commenting on them, he offers what he presents as a very modest correction to Cavell. Guyer says he agrees that making ourselves intelligible is a crucial part of moral thought, adding that “other normative ethical theories presuppose that we must be able to understand [our actions]” (ibid., 7–8). At the same time, Guyer takes it as a given that achieving this kind of understanding is separate from, even if necessary for, “successful moral reasoning” that determines “whether we are aiming at what we ought to be aiming at” in our actions (ibid.). He thus represents himself as being charitable in...