The Ordinary: between the form of life and the mythological given

Abstract

If there is one notion that holds together the various themes and thinkers present in Cavell's work, it is the notion of "the ordinary. Understanding what it is about results in a better appreciation of the originality of Cavell's idiosyncratic thinking. We will try to do so from the Wittgensteinian notion of the “form of life”. Hopefully, this will give us the opportunity to contemplate the fears and anxieties of philosophy that lie behind its long quarrel with the ordinary. In the present work we will take some steps in that direction based partly on what the sensitive, but erroneous, reception of Cavell's work by Rorty can teach us about what is not the ordinary.