The Bequest of Language: Aspects of Inheritance in Stanley Cavell

This dissertation is a systematic examination of the notion of inheritance in the work of Stanley Cavell. My main objective is to show that the notion of inheritance is central to Cavell's work; a second more general objective is show that the notion of inheritance is an important philosophical concept. I begin by showing how Cavell's examination of language in The Claim of Reason allows us to understand our acquisition of language, as infants, as a form of inheritance. One of the main points I make in the first chapter is that this particular form of inheritance takes on the form of imposition. It is important to notice that the idea of language as inheritance is one that remains present throughout Cavell's work. In the following chapters I show how this view of language as inheritance shapes Cavell's thoughts on culture, art, philosophy, and moral perfectionism. In the second chapter I argue that Cavell's idea of culture also relies on an understanding of inheritance as imposition; the main idea is that culture relies on our agreement in criteria that produce meaning through the imposition that is the inheritance of language itself. The third chapter focuses on Cavell's early thoughts on modernism and yields a different take on inheritance---namely, the idea that inheritance can also take on the form of a request for acknowledgment. In the fourth chapter I focus on Cavell's attention to the inheritance of philosophy in North America through figures like Emerson and Poe. My main claim at this point is that the inheritance that is philosophy relies mostly on forms of transmission that are ambiguous, like parody, resistance, and mourning. Finally, in the last chapter I attempt to present a clear picture of what Cavell calls moral perfectionism. I highlight that Cavell's idea of morality is dependent on his view of language as inheritance, but with the caveat that in this "second" inheritance of criteria and meaning, inheritance doesn't take on the form of imposition found in our initiation into language, but rather becomes a play between request and acknowledgment.