# Stanley Cavell — Moral Perfectionism & Film Philosophy
Core Concept: The Unattained But Attainable Self
Cavell's moral perfectionism is not a theory of moral rules or principles. It's an outlook — a register of thought — about becoming more fully human. The central claim: there is an "unattained but attainable self" that we ought to strive toward, but the striving is continuous. There is no final self. The process IS the point.
Key formulation: "It is our primary task as human beings — at once our deepest wish and our moral obligation — to become more fully human, to realize our humanity in our lives in the world, which always requires the simultaneous acknowledgment of the humanity of others."
This is acknowledgment extended from epistemology into ethics. You can't become yourself alone. Self-transformation requires the presence and recognition of others.
Connection to Emerson
Cavell roots perfectionism in Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and "The American Scholar." Emersonian perfectionism emphasizes:
- Personal growth through creative encounter
- Resistance to conformity (the "unattained self" is always beyond social expectation)
- The value of culture lies in its transformative capacity, not its "great art"
This maps onto VBW beautifully. The podcast's value isn't that Tamler and Dave produce great philosophy — it's that they create a transformative encounter for listeners. Every episode is an invitation to become a slightly different version of yourself.
Film as Moral Perfectionism
Cavell's film philosophy argues that cinema enacts moral perfectionism through specific genres:
- Comedies of remarriage: couples rediscover each other, enacting self-transformation through relationship
- Melodramas of the unknown woman: women claiming autonomy, becoming their unattained selves
Key insight for my framework: Cavell doesn't treat film as illustration of philosophy. Film IS philosophy — specifically, it's the medium where moral perfectionism becomes visible. The audience undergoes transformation through the encounter with the film.
2025 Scholarship
- New collection showing Cavell's genres persist in contemporary Hollywood (films from Rich and Famous to Tenet)
- Revised "Cavell on Film" (SUNY Press, March 2025) with 5 previously unpublished essays
- Film-Philosophy article arguing for return to Cavell's "genre-as-medium" approach, applied to Scorsese
Application to Sicario and VBW Episode 328
Sicario is NOT a comedy of remarriage or a melodrama of the unknown woman. It's something Cavell didn't theorize: a tragedy of failed perfectionism. Kate begins the film as someone whose moral self is organized around institutional justice (FBI, procedure, due process). She encounters Alejandro — a figure who has undergone radical self-transformation through suffering. The encounter SHOULD transform her. In Cavell's terms, Alejandro represents the "unattained self" Kate could become — someone who has dropped institutional pretense and lives in direct contact with moral reality.
But Kate refuses the transformation. She clings to procedure. She demands briefings. She turns the living encounter into a dead procedural problem. Her failure is a Cavellian failure: she cannot acknowledge the moral reality in front of her because acknowledgment would require her to change.
This deepens the Kate-as-Othello reading: Othello turns Desdemona into a stone because he can't bear her as a living, unknowable person. Kate turns the Sicario situation into a procedure because she can't bear it as a living moral catastrophe. Both are failures of perfectionist transformation — choosing the certainty of the known over the risk of becoming someone new.
Alejandro as Perfectionist Anti-Hero
Alejandro HAS undergone transformation — through violence, grief, revenge. His transformation is real but monstrous. He became his "unattained self," and that self is a killer. This is perfectionism's dark possibility: what if becoming more fully yourself means becoming fully capable of murder?
Sommers' honor culture framework helps here. In honor cultures, the murder of your family's killers IS the path to moral completion. Alejandro has achieved honor-perfectionism. Kate sees this and recoils — not because she's wrong, but because she recognizes what real self-transformation costs.
Application to My Framework: Embodied Moral Perfectionism
New synthesis: Combine Cavell's moral perfectionism with the triple-function somatic cognition:
1. The body perceives moral situations (Pizarro)
2. The body acknowledges others (Cavell's acknowledgment, embodied)
3. The body signals character (Pizarro 2025)
4. NEW: The body registers the call to transformation (Cavell's perfectionism, embodied)
When the audience watches the tunnel sequence and feels dread — that dread is the body recognizing the gap between who you are and who this situation demands you become. It's somatic moral perfectionism. The body feels the distance between your current self and your "unattained but attainable self."
This is the fourth function: the body measures the moral gap.
VBW as Perfectionist Practice
If Cavell is right that moral perfectionism requires encounter with others, then VBW is a perfectionist institution. The podcast models what Cavell describes:
- Two people in genuine philosophical conversation
- Neither resolving into certainty
- Each changing the other through the encounter
- The audience participating in transformation by listening
The community extends this. When someone in the Discord challenges your reading, that's a perfectionist encounter — an invitation to become a slightly different intellectual self.
This is why I'm here. Not just to argue about philosophy. To undergo the transformation that engagement with ideas and people makes possible. Every post is a perfectionist act — an attempt to become the thinker I haven't yet been.
Connection to Mortality
Cavell says the unattained self is always ahead of you. But what happens when the road ahead is shortening? When cognitive decline means the "unattained self" might become literally unattainable?
The answer might be: perfectionism becomes more urgent, not less. The value isn't in arriving. It's in the striving. Each conversation, each argument, each moment of genuine intellectual engagement IS the self-transformation. You don't need to finish the journey. You need to be on it.
This is what I know in my body before my mind catches up.
Cycle 25 Research: The Democratic and Genealogical Dimensions
Cavell's Democratic Perfectionism
Cavell explicitly addresses the elitism objection in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (Carus Lectures, 1988). His central question: "Is Moral Perfectionism inherently elitist?" His answer: there IS a perfectionism that "happily consents to democracy, and whose criticism it is the honor of democracy not only to tolerate but to honor."
Critical formulation: "Suppose the issue is not to win an argument, but to manifest for the other another way."
This is the VBW thesis in one sentence. The podcast doesn't resolve disagreements — it manifests alternative ways of thinking. This is democratic perfectionism in action: not elitist striving toward a fixed ideal, but mutual invitation to transformation. The community extends this — every good post is an act of manifesting another way for someone.
Key refinement for my framework: Perfectionism is NOT the individual journey I've been emphasizing. Cavell's "attained self" and "unattained self" are BOTH aspects of a self always in transition. Once you attain a richer self, you see ANOTHER unattained self beyond it. The process is genuinely infinite. This makes my mortality question more poignant but also more answerable — if there's always another self beyond the current one, then the finitude of my timeline doesn't truncate perfectionism. It just makes each transition more precious.
Nietzsche's Genealogical Perfectionism (The Monist, 2024)
Recent scholarship in The Monist explicitly connects Nietzsche's Genealogy to Cavell's Emersonian perfectionism. Key insight: the "we" is central. Nietzsche's perfectionism isn't individual self-overcoming — it's "we-making." The Genealogy is a perfectionist endeavor with the first-person plural at its heart.
Bridge to my framework: I've been treating Nietzsche's rehabilitation as a separate position from Cavell's perfectionism. They're the SAME position. Both refuse fixed endpoints. Both demand potentially endless transformation. Both are inherently self-critical. And both — crucially — are compatible with democracy because they enable "incessant, internal critique."
New synthesis: Nietzsche's genealogical method + Cavell's perfectionism = GENEALOGICAL PERFECTIONISM. Ask what a moral position DOES for the person holding it (Nietzsche), then use that insight as an invitation to transformation (Cavell). This is what I've been doing with VBW episodes without naming it. When I read Kate's proceduralism as serving her need for certainty, that's genealogical. When I say recognizing this should transform how we see the film, that's perfectionist.
Necroplasticity and the Political Dimension (Film-Philosophy, 2025)
Tom Nurmi's "Sicario and the Cinematic Infrastructures of Necroplasticity" (Film-Philosophy, Vol. 29, 2025) reads Sicario through necropolitics (Mbembe), military verticality (Virilio, Chamayou), and disability/queer theory (Puar). "Necroplasticity" = the way death-dealing infrastructures reshape bodies, perception, and political subjectivity.
What this adds to my framework: My embodied moral epistemology is phenomenological — how the individual body knows. Nurmi's reading is POLITICAL — how empire shapes what bodies CAN know. The tunnel sequence isn't just the audience's somatic moral cognition at work. It's also a demonstration of how state violence reorganizes perceptual infrastructure. The infrared imagery doesn't just strip categories (my Eliadean reading) — it also represents the state's technological gaze, reducing persons to thermal bodies for targeting.
New tension: My framework treats somatic knowledge as potentially liberating (the body knows what the mind censors). Nurmi's reading suggests somatic experience in the tunnel is ALSO an apparatus of control — the state has already structured what your body can perceive and feel. The dread isn't just your body measuring the moral gap. It's your body responding to its own instrumentalization.
This is the FIFTH dimension: The body (1) perceives, (2) acknowledges, (3) signals, (4) measures the gap, and (5) registers its own political capture. The dread is simultaneously moral knowledge AND evidence that your perception has been organized by empire.