In 1969 Stanley Cavell's Must We Mean What We Say? revolutionized philosophy of ordinary language, aesthetics, ethics, tragedy, literature, music, art criticism, and modernism. This volume of new essays offers a multi-faceted exploration of Cavell's first and most important book, fifty years after its publication. The key subjects which animate Cavell's book are explored in detail: ordinary language, aesthetics, modernism, skepticism, forms of life, philosophy and literature, tragedy and the self, the questions of voice and audience, jazz and sound, Wittgenstein, Austin, Beckett, Kierkegaard,...

This is the first book to explore the hold of TV series on our lives from a philosophical and ethical perspective. Sandra Laugier argues that this vital and ubiquitous expression of popular culture throughout the world is transformative in its effects on the activity of philosophy in everyday life. Drawing on Stanley Cavell's work on film and ordinary experience, Laugier contends that we are deeply affected by the formative role played by the TV series we watch, and by the ways they become interconnected with our daily lives. The philosophical thinking embodied in series empowers...

TV-Philosophy in Action is inspired by philosopher and series-devotee Sandra Laugier's monthly columns published in the French journal Liberation. It is her contribution to the collective reflection on TV series produced by critics, theorists, and the vast mass of individual watchers who evaluate and discuss these programmes every day. The book brings together a selection of articles from Liberation, as well as longer pieces, to demonstrate 'TV-Philosophy in action': Laugier's response as a philosopher-viewer to a range of particularly salient TV shows from the last 20 years, and their...

This collection of new work on the philosophical importance of television starts from a model for reading films proposed by Stanley Cavell, whereby film in its entirety-actors and production included-brings its own intelligence to its realization. In turn, this intelligence educates us as viewers, leading us to recognize and appreciate our individual cinephilic tastes, and to know ourselves and each other better. This reading is even more valid for TV series. Yet, in spite of the progress of film-philosophy, there has been a paucity of concurrent analysis of the ethical stakes, the modes of...