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Ordinary Language Philosophy & Literary Studies Online

Cavell’s Perfectionism And The Bildungsroman

Stanley Cavell’s idea of perfectionism offers a distinctive way to read the Bildungsroman, the genre concerned with education, formation and a person’s movement towards a more adequate life. In this context, perfectionism does not mean flawless achievement or the pursuit of an unreachable ideal. It names an ongoing process of moral and intellectual self-transformation, often prompted by dissatisfaction with inherited roles and limited forms of self-knowledge.

Cavell develops this account through Emerson, Thoreau, Wittgenstein and the literary traditions of romance and comedy. His approach connects literary interpretation with ordinary language philosophy: a character’s development is registered in changing ways of speaking, listening, judging and acknowledging others. The Bildungsroman therefore becomes a record of how a person might learn to inhabit a life more fully without ever reaching a final state of completion.

Perfectionism As Moral Education

For Cavell, moral perfectionism is a mode of ethical education rather than a doctrine of moral perfection. The central question is not whether a protagonist follows a universal rule, but whether they can become capable of recognising what their situation demands. This recognition may involve a new relation to work, friendship, love, family or political responsibility.

Such development usually begins with a sense that the available social world is inadequate. The protagonist feels confined by class, gender, custom or family expectation, yet dissatisfaction alone does not produce maturity. A more demanding education occurs when the character learns to examine their own evasions and discovers that freedom requires responsibility for how they respond to others.

The Bildungsroman And The Next Self

Traditional Bildungsromane often present development as a movement from immaturity towards social integration. Cavell complicates that pattern. The destination is not simply successful entry into respectable adulthood, and the “education” of the protagonist may expose the limitations of the society into which they are expected to fit.

His perfectionism is oriented towards what might be called the next self: a possible version of oneself that is not fully visible in the present. This future self is not a fixed identity waiting to be uncovered. It emerges through encounters that challenge a character’s assumptions. A conversation, refusal, journey or change in companionship can become a test of whether the protagonist is willing to revise their understanding.

This helps explain why the genre often includes interruption and disappointment. Development is uneven, and the protagonist may regress, repeat mistakes or mistake social success for genuine growth. Cavell’s reading encourages attention to these failures as part of the moral drama rather than treating them as merely structural obstacles.

Acknowledgment And The Limits Of Self-Knowledge

A key Cavellian term is acknowledgment. To acknowledge another person is more demanding than possessing correct information about them. It involves accepting their reality and allowing that recognition to alter one’s conduct. In literary narratives, the failure to acknowledge often appears as silence, avoidance, irony or an attempt to control another person’s story.

This distinction is especially important in novels about education. A protagonist may acquire cultural knowledge while remaining emotionally evasive. They may become articulate without becoming honest. Cavell’s framework asks whether learning has changed the character’s capacity to hear another voice and to accept the consequences of what they now know.

The ordinary language dimension matters here. Words such as “responsibility”, “independence”, “home” and “freedom” acquire meaning within particular relationships and circumstances. Close reading can therefore track moments when a familiar word becomes strange, or when a character’s use of language reveals that their moral vocabulary has changed.

Australian Contexts For Reading Formation

Cavell’s perfectionism is useful in Australian literary study because it opens questions about education, mobility and belonging within a society shaped by migration, regional distance and uneven access to cultural institutions. A novel set between Melbourne and a rural town, for example, may represent development through movement between social worlds rather than through a simple rise in status.

Australian readers may also recognise the pressure placed on young adults to combine independence with economic pragmatism. Rising rents in Sydney and Melbourne, casualised university employment and the expectation that students work while studying can give the Bildungsroman’s coming-of-age narrative a distinctly contemporary force. The protagonist’s “development” may involve learning to negotiate insecure housing, family obligations and institutional demands rather than entering a stable profession.

The framework also invites attention to whose education is being represented. Australian novels may challenge inherited stories of national maturity by foregrounding First Nations sovereignty, migrant experience or the tensions between metropolitan and regional life. Any account of personal development must therefore consider the social and historical conditions that make some forms of self-making easier than others.

Reading Form, Voice And Companionship

A Cavellian reading does not treat plot as a neutral sequence of events. It asks how narrative voice stages a character’s changing relation to knowledge. A first-person narrator may become more trustworthy through self-correction, while an apparently confident voice may expose its limitations through gaps, repetitions and displaced blame.

Companionship is equally significant. The protagonist’s education often depends on another person who serves as a guide, rival, critic or friend. This figure should not be reduced to a teaching device. Their presence tests whether the protagonist can accept an address that cannot be absorbed into their existing self-image.

The genre’s ending deserves particular care. A final marriage, career choice or return home may suggest completion, but Cavell’s perfectionism makes closure provisional. The question is whether the ending establishes a practice of continued responsiveness. A life can be better oriented without becoming finished.

A Practical Research Path

Students and scholars approaching Cavell’s perfectionism in the Bildungsroman can combine philosophical context with detailed attention to language and narrative form. Useful approaches include:

In Australian universities, this method can support an essay, honours project or seminar discussion without treating philosophy as a decorative theoretical supplement. It also suits the practical realities of study: a researcher may begin with a library e-book in Brisbane, compare editions held in Adelaide or Perth, and refine a bibliography through databases available under a university subscription. The local scholarly market, including university presses, literary festivals and journals, provides further opportunities to connect Cavell’s arguments with Australian fiction and criticism.

Cavell’s perfectionism gives the Bildungsroman a demanding ethical vocabulary. It shows that becoming educated is not equivalent to collecting knowledge, gaining status or entering adulthood on conventional terms. Development takes place when a person learns to recognise another’s claim, revises the language through which they understand their life and accepts that self-formation remains unfinished.

Explore the site’s Cavell and Wittgenstein resources, consult the curated bibliographies, and use the archive to trace how ordinary language philosophy continues to shape literary studies. A careful reading of one novel can become the beginning of a wider inquiry into education, acknowledgment and the possibilities of a more responsive life.