In this most recent collection of his writing, Cavell provides extraordinary careful and sustained readings of Emerson's "Fate", Derrida's response to J. L. Austin in "Signature Event Context", and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations .

Stanley Cavell is Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. In addition to lecturing at many American universities, he has delivered acclaimed lectures in Israel, Austria, France, and England. His books include: Must We Mean What We Say? (1969), The World Viewed (1971, 1979), The Senses of Walden (1972, 1981), The Claim of Reason (1979), Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (1981), Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare (1987), In Quest of the Ordinary (1988), This New Yet Unapproachable America (1989), and Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (1990).