"A Greatest Miracle": Stanley Cavell, Moral Perfectionism, and the Ascent into the Ordinary

What to make of "the ordinary,""the everyday," and their common "eventfulness"? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to "descent into the ordinary"? Is there a parallel figure of &q...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Vries, Hent de 1958- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2011
In: Modern theology
Year: 2011, Volume: 27, Issue: 3, Pages: 462-477
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:What to make of "the ordinary,""the everyday," and their common "eventfulness"? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to "descent into the ordinary"? Is there a parallel figure of "ascent," again, into the same "ordinary," that we might we want to juxtapose with it and that resembles the motif of "change," even "conversion," that Cavell analyzes at some length in The Claim of Reason and throughout his oeuvre as a whole? And what could be our reasons for doing so? This essay will draw on Cavell's reading of Ibsen's work in the volume Cities of Words to spell out what such an "ascent" might mean.
ISSN:1468-0025
Contains:Enthalten in: Modern theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0025.2011.01688.x