Stanley Cavell (1926–2018) was Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Emeritus, at Harvard University. His numerous books include The Claim of Reason, Cities of Words, and Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow.

• Overture 1. Philosophy and the Arrogation of Voice 2. Counter-Philosophy and the Pawn of Voice The Metaphysical Voice Worlds of Philosophical Difference Pictures of Destruction Derrida's Austin and the Stake of Positivism Exclusion of the Theory of Excuses: On the Tragic Exclusion of the Theory of the Non-Serious Skepticism and the Serious Two Pictures of Communication: Assigning What (Thing) Is Transmitted? Austin Moves Two Pictures of Language in Relation to (the) World Three Pictures of My Attachment to My Words: Signing Opera and the Lease of Voice Bibliography Acknowledgments Subject Index Name Index

The autobiographical note of Cavell’s philosophy, here as in his other writings, evokes an atmosphere of fragility and danger… Whether in the discussion of the haunting of Hamlet, or in the analysis of inheritance in the film Gaslight in which ‘something is resounding,’ or even in the reflections on the ‘necessarily forged’ signatures of ghosts, Cavell presents an understated but powerful analysis of a world and a self haunted by voices… Cavell’s work extends philosophy into other domains… His autobiographical exercises exemplify ‘humane criticism’ applied to philosophy, remaining true to the technical demands of the discipline and paying heed to the claims of the experience that sustains it.