Cavell at the New School: art, other minds and scepticism

When a thinker is given a two-day symposium eight years after his death, it is a sign that the thought is still doing work.

The philosophy department of the New School for Social Research is holding a conference devoted to Stanley Cavell on 30 and 31 October 2026. The event is the 2026-27 instalment of the department's Arendt/Schürmann Symposium series.

The venue: Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, New York. No registration required.

The focus: what joins art to scepticism#

The announcement draws the scope clearly: Cavell's writings on aesthetics — and, in particular, the part played in his reading of art by scepticism about other minds.

That focus goes straight to the most original connection in his thought.

Classical scepticism questions the external world: do I know that the table in front of me really exists? Cavell's interest lay elsewhere: how do I know that another person is in pain?

His answer moved the argument off its foundations. This is not a problem of knowledge. Scepticism is not a puzzle to be solved but a part of the human condition.

The concept he developed from this is acknowledgment. Not "knowing" another's pain but responding to it. The real trouble is not a deficiency of knowledge but indifference.

Why aesthetics?#

What made Cavell singular was that he looked for this thought outside the texts of philosophy.

He was among the first major analytic philosophers to take film seriously. In Pursuits of Happiness he reads the Hollywood comedies of the 1930s and 1940s — the genre he called the comedy of remarriage — as works of moral philosophy. In these films couples separate and come together again; for Cavell that is the drama of mutual recognition and of choosing to live together a second time.

He wrote on Shakespeare, reading King Lear as the tragedy of a refusal to acknowledge. Lear's error is not ignorance but his refusal to accept love.

Trained in music, and once intent on becoming a composer, he wrote about music too. And he taught readers to see Emerson and Thoreau afresh, as founders of American philosophy whom nobody had taken seriously.

The conference's specified topics reflect that range: Stanley Cavell, film, scepticism, ordinary language philosophy, Wittgenstein, music, aesthetics.

The speakers#

The programme is a map of Cavell studies as they stand.

Alice Crary (The New School) — known for her defence of a "wider rationality" in moral philosophy; working from Wittgenstein and Cavell, she argues that moral perception is a cognitive achievement.

Jay Bernstein (The New School) — a figure known for his work on Adorno and aesthetic theory, bringing critical theory together with the Cavellian tradition.

Zed Adams (The New School) · Francey Russell (Barnard College) · Byron Davies (University of Murcia) · Benjamin Goff (King's College London) · Vincent Joshua Adams (University of Chicago) · Paola Marrati

That the New School is the host is fitting. The institution comes out of the "University in Exile" tradition, which opened its doors to thinkers fleeing Europe; Hannah Arendt and Reiner Schürmann both taught there. The symposium series takes its name from the two of them.

Why read Cavell now?#

A few days ago this column marked 1 September as Cavell's birthday. The point we stressed there underlies this conference as well: Cavell was one of those thinkers who open philosophy's boundary with something from outside it.

That stance has a currency of its own today.

The question raised in our file on artificial intelligence and consciousness, published today — how can we know whether a being is conscious — is precisely Cavell's problem of other minds.

And his answer transfers directly to the present debate. Perhaps the question is not whether we know. Perhaps the question is whether we respond.

Practical details#

• Dates: 30-31 October 2026 (Friday and Saturday)
• Venue: Wollman Hall, 5th floor, 65 W 11th Street, New York
• Organised by: the philosophy department, The New School for Social Research
• Series: Arendt/Schürmann Symposium 2026-27
• Registration: not required

Details of the programme are on the conference page.