Introduction

I decide to start with as general a characterization as possible, trying to understand where my interest lies in analyzing the concept of style. It is necessary to place myself in front of style “as if for the first time”, asking myself a question as simple as it is disorienting: “What do I mean by style?”. Thanks to this general characterization, I realize not only what we can mean by style (that is, “a set of traits that remain constant over the course of an author’s work—traits that a more conscious author might have chosen, or that were instead chosen by something else for them”), but that my interest, as far as the study of style in philosophy is concerned, lies in a closer analysis of the work of those philosophers, such as Cavell and Williams, whom I have called “stylists of philosophy”—philosophers who are very conscious not only as regards the various problems of style, but also as regards the creation of their own personal and idiomatic style. Then I choose a theoretical key to structure the path of my book, that of Emersonian Perfectionism as a question of style. This choice has one main advantage: the discussion of Emersonian Perfectionism is invoked by Cavell himself and in a context where he also brought Williams into the conversation.