Two Quantitative Studies

In this chapter I take a closer look at the problem of the type of philosophers through a quantitative investigation. In Sect. 1, the investigation focuses on the use of parentheses in Stanley Cavell’s work: through the results of this investigation, I show how the fabric of Cavell’s writing, thanks to the parentheses, is enriched with a multiplicity of voices and tones, without which his philosophy would not be recognizable and would be severely impoverished. In Sect. 2., the investigation instead focuses on the analysis of the authors cited by Williams in two corpora into which his work can be divided: a more academic corpus and a more cultural one. Here, it is shown how in the academic corpus Williams brings cultural elements, and how in the cultural corpus Williams does not renounce the academic guise. In short, he always finds a way to enter into a dialectical relationship with each sphere. Interestingly, both parts of this chapter have a direct relation to one of the most elusive criteria of Emersonian perfectionist writing: namely, the fact that such a work gives us back our repressed thoughts. In the case of Sect. 1, we can see how Cavell uses the parenthetical space to insert voices that he would otherwise have repressed from the philosophical work (voices and tones that generally tend to be repressed by more academic philosophers). In the case of Sect. 2, we can see how Williams inserts cultural references into the academic work that risk being repressed by technicality and specialization; and vice versa, how he approaches the cultural work in the—somewhat unexpected—guise of the academic philosopher, rich in references to the professional philosophy contemporary to him. These two parts (Sects. 1 and 2) provide thus an ending up to the difficulty of the problems of style addressed in this book. Both, in fact, show how crucial it is to combine quantification and interpretation in order to achieve interesting and comprehensive results regarding a philosopher’s style. Moreover, these last two parts show the continuity (along with the various inevitable slippages) in the formation of marked and self-conscious philosophical styles such as those of Cavell and Williams; especially in an intellectual world like that of Anglo-American analytical philosophy, which rarely acknowledged the importance of style in philosophy.