January 27, 2000
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—Stanley Cavell, John J. McCloy ’16 Professor of American Institutions and International Relations at Amherst College, will deliver two lectures at Amherst College in February. The first, "Night and Day: Heidegger and Thoreau" takes place on the 10th, and "Passionate and Performative Utterance: Extending Austin’s How to Do Things With Words" on the 17th. Both events are at 4:30 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room at Converse Hall, and are free and open to the public.
Cavell, Walter A. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Emeritus, at Harvard University, is one of our leading philosophers. His work brings together the analytical tradition in philosophy (especially the work of Austin and Wittgenstein), the Continental tradition (Heidegger and Nietzsche, for example), American philosophy (especially Emerson and Thoreau), the arts (Shakespeare, film and opera) and psychoanalysis. His influence has been felt in theories of film, literature, music and politics, and also in ordinary language philosophy and American studies.
Cavell’s most recent book is Contesting Tears: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman, a study of several Hollywood movies of the 30’s and 40’s. He is also the author of Must We Mean What We Say?, The Claim of Reason and The Senses of Walden, among many other books, and numerous scholarly and popular articles. A past president of the American Philosophical Association, Cavell has also received a MacArthur Fellowship.
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