Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Thomas Meyer
that settle the issue. No such rules are carrying us either on their own, 'formally', or in
collaboration with other judgments over which we already or otherwise agree, with
'factual rectitude', to the Kantian conclusion about universal agreement. Rather the
strength of Kant's position is shown through his reminders about the folly and
laughability of the view he opposes. If these are Kant's terms of criticism in this setting,
then the criticisms Kant develops seem to follow the pattern we might expect from
aesthetic, or more broadly reflective, judgment itself. Kant appears both to lack rules and
to take himself to be right, and not merely right for him, about the ridiculity of the view he
criticizes. So Kant's argument in the passage Cavell cites turns on a judged difference
between what is foolish and amusing, and what is not (Cavell 90). The message in these
Cavellian discussions of Kant seems to be clarifying itself: Kant takes judgments such
as those of beauty to operate on a model according to which they claim universal validity
without their validity being secured through rules; Kant's very defense of this conception
of our judgments of beauty is itself operating on much the same model of judgment. This
Critique of Judgment therefore provides a model for judgment which may be seen to
apply somewhat more generally than to the particular cases and forms of judgment (of
beauty, teleology, and systematicity) it explicitly claims to fall among its own.
Cavell is quick to notice and remark upon what may be a troubling and objectionable
feature of this model of reflective judgment when it is applied to those especially
contentious questions that generate so much discontent in philosophy. To make the
philosophical issue between two competing positions turn on a feature such as 'folly' or
the 'laughable' seems to incur the risk of sparking philosophical irritation. Cavell regards
these 'differences' as seemingly "psychological", as matters of one's own personal
feelings perhaps, in a way that may aggravate a philosophical audience. This seemingly
psychological flavor of such terms of philosophical criticism and judgment as 'foolish' and
'laughable' actually extends to the terms of philosophical dispute found in
Wittgensteinian philosophy. Cavell uses this point of contact between Kant and
Wittgenstein to begin to draw the analogy that has defined the project of his paper.
"Here we hit upon what is, to my mind, the most sensitive index of misunderstanding and
bitterness between the positivist and the post-positivist components of analytical
philosophy: the positivist grits his teeth when he hears an analysis given out as a logical
one which is so painfully remote from formality, so obviously a question of how you
happen to feel at the moment, so psychological; the philosopher who proceeds from
ordinary language [e.g. Wittgenstein] stares back helplessly, asking 'Don't you feel the
difference? Listen: you must see it.'" (Cavell 90).
Wittgenstein therefore shares with Kant, or at least with one moment in Kant's
defense of his position on beauty, a vulnerability to the charge of passing off
psychological apercus for philosophical gain. My feelings about what deserves my
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