ABSTRACT
When I was invited to write a “Nachwort” to a collection of Stanley Cavell’s writings that was recently published in Germany,1 I opened my essay by saying that Stanley Cavell is one of the great minds of our time, but he is not a founder of movements or a coiner of slogans or a trader in “isms”. I described him as “a writer who always speaks to individuals – and that means, one at a time”. To read Cavell as he should be read is to enter into a conversation with him, one in which your entire sensibility and his are involved, and not only your mind and his mind.
