The final chapter examines Cavell’s theory of democratic perfectionism. Traditional perfectionist political philosophy views the purpose of the polity as the promotion of human flourishing. Contemporary liberals rejected perfectionism on two grounds. John Rawls believed perfectionism was antidemocratic because it was elitist. Isaiah Berlin claimed perfectionism was illiberal because it posited a singular end to life at the expense of all others. Against these claims, Cavell’s later work recovered an inherently egalitarian variety of perfectionism from the American Transcendentalist tradition. While agreeing with Cavell’s defense of perfectionism against liberal critiques, the chapter raises two limits to perfectionism. The first is that it runs the risk of turning into “debased perfectionism,” where striving for an unattained yet attainable self can lead to status anxiety. Second, Cavell pays insufficient attention to the economic conditions necessary for one to lead a perfectionist life. The chapter concludes by reading Thoreau’s writings on economics against Cavell’s reading of Thoreau. It argues that a greater attention to the economic dimension in perfectionism would address some of the concerns that liberal critics raise about perfectionism elitism.

To demonstrate the centrality of politics in Cavell’s philosophy, this chapter examines Cavell’s treatment of the foundational political theory concept of the social contract. Cavell’s analysis of the social contract appears near the beginning of his magnum opus The Claim of Reason in the context of his interpretation of philosophical criteria. He draws an analogy between our certainty in the validity of criteria when making an epistemological judgment and our obligation to obey the laws of our community. This surprising connection raises two important questions: Where does my capacity as a member of a community to speak on behalf of the community come from? And, how can I as a citizen be party to an agreement that I have no recollection of making? Classical approaches treat the social contract as the answer to an epistemological problem: How do I know what my obligations to the state are? This framing sets up the social contract as a false choice between obedience and rebellion. Cavell argues that the epistemological approach to the social contract generates this ambivalence.

This chapter explores the political themes in Cavell’s philosophy of cinema by reading the film Gaslight in the context of contemporary American politics. This reading will serve two purposes. First, by focusing on a single film, the chapter demonstrates the political dimension of Cavell’s writing on film. Second in the last few years some critics of Trump have argued that he deploys gaslighting (a term developed from this film) to manipulate the American public. Therefore a reading of Gaslight can provide resources This chapter explores the political themes in Cavell’s philosophy of cinema by reading the film Gaslight in the context of contemporary American politics. This reading will serve two purposes. First, by focusing on a single film, the chapter demonstrates the political dimension of Cavell’s writing on film. Second, in the past few years, some critics of Trump have argued that he deploys “gaslighting” (a term developed from this film) to manipulate the American public. Therefore, a reading of Gaslight can provide resources for contemporary political theorists to think through political deception in contemporary American life. Gaslighting is one of the most powerful forms of political manipulation in the post-truth-politics era because it tricks its targets into doubting what they know. This chapter offers an theoretical analysis of gaslighting. It considers how Cavell’s interpretation of gaslighting as a gendered practice relates to Cavell’s understanding of the gendered nature of skepticism. Cavell suggests that to resist gaslighting one must cultivate modes of response to one’s intuition in order to reclaim one’s voice. The chapter concludes by analyzing how this way of responding to gaslighting can help us to make sense of Trump’s gaslighting of America and similar forms of populist propaganda.

This chaper takes the account of democracy developed in chapter three and considers it in the context of his critique of American democracy in the 1960s through a reading of King Lear. Cavell’s distinctive contribution to aesthetics is his claim that tragedy is a site that works through the implications of skepticism as it relates to the other. Cavell’s interpretation of tragedy contributes to three important debates in contemporary political theory. First, King Lear’s tragic abdication exposes the crisis in authority that results from post-sovereign politics. Second, Cavell’s claim that acknowledgement rather than knowledge is the appropriate response to tragedy makes an important intervention into recent debates in political theory over the politics of recognition. Third Cavell’s analysis of tragic downfall underscores important shifts in consciousness that a society must undergo in order to realize justice. Under this reading, the political import of tragedy is as a pedagogy for a politically repressed culture that spurns necessary changes in cultural self-understanding.

The third chapter draws upon the procedures of ordinary language philosophy discussed in Chapter 2 to offer a critique of contemporary democratic theory. A significant point of contention between deliberative and agonistic democratic theorists is over the purpose of political argumentation. While deliberative democrats maintain that the goal of political debate is to reach agreement, many agonistic democratic theorists claim that arguments can foster relations of adversarial respect. This chapter demonstrates how the deliberative versus agonistic democracy debate is operating at cross-purposes. Behind this debate is the skeptical concern that if political argumentation cannot come to an agreement, then the enterprise is either irrational or prone to relativism. Drawing upon Cavell’s insight that human understanding rests upon agreement in forms of life, I examine how democratic discourse involves agreements at two levels: at the level of opinions and at the level of the discourse itself. This chapter clarifies what is at stake in the deliberative-agonistic democratic theory debate. Cavell helps us reimagine democracy by fostering a culture in which minority communities do not have to phrase their grievances within the language of hegemonic cultures.

The introduction argues that Cavell’s democratic perfectionism is uniquely situated to respond to the democratic crisis of post-truth politics. It argues that post-truth politics is a political response to the epistemological problem of skepticism. As a first step in exploring democratic perfectionism, the introduction offers a brief overview of Cavell’s interpretation of skepticism and its salience for politics. Section 2 provides a preliminary sketch of skepticism. Section 3 expands what Cavell means by responsiveness. Section 4 discusses how these two concepts shape democratic perfectionism. Section 5 asks, where is the politics in Cavell’s writings? While Cavell never wrote a text that was explicitly about political philosophy, his thoughts on politics are scattered throughout his writings. An initial obstacle to interpreting his democratic perfectionism is identifying where in his thought to look for those ideas. Section 6 explains how these themes are analyzed throughout the remainder of the book.

When I finished the first draft of this book, a colleague commented that it “reads very 2020,” by which she meant the focus on post-truth politics as a manifestation of skepticism seemed to be responding to the concerns of the political polarization of the Trump era. As I write this conclusion in early 2022, Trump is gone from the White House, but the problems of post-truth politics only seem to be intensifying. As I finished the first draft of the book, post-truth politics focused on the dismissal of “fake news,” denial of climate science, and distrust about the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then post-truth political discourse has expanded to include new fault-lines around vaccine “skeptics” and the denial over Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Whether the intensification of post-truth politics is being driven by social media or increased political polarization or an increased distrust of expertise and elites, it seems we are now firmly in a political era where we, as a polity, cannot even agree on the basic facts around our shared reality.

This chapter analyzes Cavell’s interpretive methods to show how he generates novel insights into traditional political philosophy concepts. It argues that methodologists in political theory answer three crucial questions. What texts should one read? Why should one read those texts? How should one read those texts? I contend that Cavell is neither a textualist nor a contextualist. Instead, he is an intertextualist interested in how texts relate to each other and what effect the text has on the reader. Cavell understands political theory as a practice of responding to political texts. To demonstrate the salience of Cavell’s approach, the chapter identifies three interpretive techniques within his work. First, the technique of creative reading juxtaposes at least two disparate texts to draw out a previously neglected dimension in both. Second, through conceptual analysis of the ordinary use of terms such as “democracy,” Cavell can resolve longstanding debates in political theory. Third, through an attention to the authorial voice, Cavell can identify how a text provokes a change in political attitude in its readers.