In a few months Fordham University Press will publish a new collection of essays centered on Stanley Cavell’s engagement with the topic of education. Titled Stanley Cavell and the Education of Grownups, the collection is edited by Naoko Saito (University of Kyoto) and Paul Standish (University of London). To visit the publisher’s webpage for this title, please click here. Here is the description of this forthcoming collection:

What could it mean to speak of philosophy as “the education of grownups”? This book takes Cavell’s enigmatic phrase as a provocation to explore the themes of education that run throughout his work—from his response to Wittgenstein, Austin, and ordinary-language philosophy, to his readings of Thoreau and of the moral perfectionism he identifies with Emerson, to his discussions of literature and film. Hilary Putnam has described Cavell as not only one of the most creative thinkers of today but as one of the few contemporary philosophers to explore philosophy as education. Cavell’s sustained examination of the nature of philosophy cannot be separated from his preoccupation with what it is to teach and to learn. This is the first book to address the importance of education in Cavell’s work and its essays are framed by two new pieces by Cavell himself. Together these texts combine to show what it means to read Cavell, and simultaneously what it means to read philosophically, in itself a part of our education as grownups.

-M.O.

This June, Verso Books will publish the English translation of Alain Badiou’s book on Wittgenstein, titled Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy, which we originally let you know about in this post. To visit the publisher’s webpage for this book, please click here. Below is the publisher’s description of this exciting new title:

The leading continental philosopher takes on the standard bearer of analytical philosophy.

Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the “linguistic turn” in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the “anti-philosophy” of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence—showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning—Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms. in the course of his interrogation of Wittgenstein’s anti-philosophy, Badiou sets out and refines his own definitions of the universal truths that condition philosophy. Bruno Bosteels’ introduction shows that this encounter with Wittgenstein is central to Badiou’s overall project—and that a continuing dialogue with the exemplar of anti-philosophy is crucial for contemporary philosophy.

-M.O.

Forthcoming (June 2010) from Cambridge University Press is Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: A Critical Guide (ed. Arif Ahmed). The table of contents of this new volume can be found below or by clicking here:

1. From referentialism to human action: the Augustinian theory of language–Robert Hanna
2. What’s doing? Activity, naming and Wittgenstein’s response to Augustine–Michael Luntley
3. Measure for measure? Wittgenstein on language-game criteria and the Paris standard metre bar–Dale Jacquette
4. Wittgenstein on family resemblance concepts–Michael Forster
5. Wittgenstein on concepts–Hans-Johann Glock
6. Wittgenstein vs contextualism–Jason Bridges
7. Wittgenstein and the linguistic turn–Richard Rorty
8. Rorty’s Wittgenstein–Paul Horwich
9. Are meaning, understanding, etc. definite states?–John McDowell
10. Another strand in the private language argument–David Stern
11. Deductive inference and aspect perception–Arif Ahmed
12. Remembering intentions–William Child

-MO

New (Jan. 2010) from Broadview Press is a volume titled Wittgenstein and the Practice of Philosophy by Michael Hymers (Dalhousie University). Here is the table of contents for this new volume:

Chapter 1: Philosophy and Science

Chapter 2: Philosophy and Science in the Tractatus

Chapter 3: After the Tractatus

Chapter 4: Language without Essence

Chapter 5: Rules and Private Language

Chapter 6: Scepticism, Knowledge, and Justification

Chapter 7: Objections and Extrapolations

-MO