<Articles>Cavellian Perfectionism without Perfection and the Emersonian Conversation of Justice: Under What Condition is a Return from Alienation Possible?

Abstract

This paper attempts to reconstruct American philosopher Stanley Cavell's moral perfectionism referring to his critique on John Rawls's political philosophy and the idea of an Emersonian conversation of justice. Cavell points out that Rawls's conception of just society lacks the Emersonian conversation of justice especially in his argument on original position. The conversation of justice in Cavell, as in the classical notion of human development in German tradition, takes crisis and overcoming of it as an opportunity for perfection. I will show in the final section that Perfection in this sense is not fully put into practice in Bob, the protagonist of the film Lost in Translation.