The Claim of Reason as a Study of the Human Voice

Abstract : Cavell’s goal in The Claim of Reason has been to “bring the human voice back into philosophy.” For Cavell, the stakes of ordinary language philosophy (particularly Wittgenstein and Austin’s work; see Toril Moi, Avner Baz) are to make it understood that language is spoken; pronounced by a human voice within a form of life. In The Claim of Reason, his aim is to shift the question of the common/shared use of language—central to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations—toward the less-explored question of the definition of the subject as voice, and the re-introduction of the voice into philosophy as a redefinition of subjectivity in language.