As well as interweaving Cavell’s thinking about the arts – including film, theatre, and painting – with his broader philosophical concerns, Butler’s study also considers his legacy and uses by thinkers such as Michael Fried and William Rothman, exploring Cavell beyond Cavell. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, it approaches Cavell with uncommon freshness and insight. This is an important intervention into Cavell Studies, and studies of the arts more generally.

Catherine Wheatley, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, King's College London, UK

Already an attuned interpreter of contemporary art and its philosophical inheritances, Rex Butler provides here a new series of timely, assured, and rewarding engagements with the some of the works and modes of art that most captivated Stanley Cavell. Ranging from classical to Romantic to modernist, the theatrical to the filmic, photography to painting, Butler articulates the stakes of Cavell’s interest in art’s capacity for philosophical illumination, how such commitments intersect with his preoccupations more broadly with ordinary language philosophy, skepticism, and moral perfectionism, and—perhaps most crucially—offers yet more reasons why Cavell’s thinking about art should matter to us in the present day and the days to come. Extended analyses of William Rothman and Michael Fried provide further occasion for situating Cavell’s achievements and legacy in the context of salutary contributions by illustrious and accomplished friends.

David LaRocca, Cornell University, USA, editor of The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema