Stanley Cavell (born September 1, 1926) of Brookline, Massachusetts is an American philosopher. He is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. September 1 is the 244th day of the year (245th in leap years). ... 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Seal of Brookline, MA Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ...

Cavell is a philosopher trained in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, who usually engages in dialogue with the continental tradition. He has come to be well known for his inclusion of film and literary study into philosophical inquiry. Analytic philosophy is the dominant philosophical movement of English-speaking countries. ... ... Film refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed. ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ...

He is perhaps best known for his book The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979) which forms the centerpiece of his work, and which has its origins in his Ph.D. dissertation. Cavell is known as a reader of the German-speaking philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, and for his work on the American Transcendentalists, especially Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He has been associated with an approach to Wittgenstein sometimes known as the New Wittgenstein. Meaning is determined by use, in the context of a language-game {later} Meaning is determined by use, in the context of a language-game {later} Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (IPA: ) (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking works to modern philosophy... Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ... Transcendentalism was the name of a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy which emerged in New England in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. ... Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was a noted American author and philosopher who is most famous for Walden, his essay on civil disobedience, and his call for the preservation of wilderness. ... Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a famous American essayist and one of Americas most influential thinkers and writers. ... The New Wittgenstein is a set of affiliated interpretations of the work of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. ...

His other works include:

• Must We Mean What We Say? (1969)
• The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (1971)
• The Senses of Walden (1972)
• Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (1981)
• Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes (1984)
• Disowning Knowledge: In Six Plays of Shakespeare (1987)
• In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Scepticism and Romanticism (1988)
• This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein (1988)
• Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (1990)
• A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises (1994)
• Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson, Austin, Derrida (1995)
• Contesting Tears: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman (1996)
• Emerson's Transcendental Etudes (2003)
• Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life (2004)
• Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow (2005)

A recent work is Cities of Words where he traces the history of "moral perfectionism," or what he understands as a mode of philosophical moral thinking embodied in literature spanning the tradition of western philosophy. As he uses Emerson to open the genre for definition in an earlier work, this book suggests ways we might want to examine philosophy as well as film as being preoccupied with features of perfectionism. This article is about a book by Henry Thoreau. ... Perfectionism is defined as a meticulous pursuit to reach excellence. ...