W. in the Blue Book: 'Instead of "craving for generality" I could also have said "the contemptuous attitude towards the particular case." … For why should what [two particular cases] have in common be more interesting to us than what distinguishes them? Or rather, I should not have said "why should it be more interesting to us?"—it isn't; and this characterizes our way of thinking.'

It's possible to have too much regard for the particular case. But I would rather make that mistake than the other. Attention to the particular case is your attention. It draws on your interest, if you let it.

How do you tell what a particular case is? That it's a particular case? 'Everything is' might be true, but says little. Only some cases stand out, strike us, stop us. What stops us—us in particular? You in particular?

Investigators have cases they've worked—files on those cases. M. and I investigated many phenomena in something like that way. Places, especially. 'Where are we?', 'what's here?', 'what is this place?', 'what do people do here?': those are questions about particular cases. (And they do draw on knowledge which goes beyond those cases).

That 'contemptuous attitude' can be carried over to what I've said about one's own attention, one's own interest. 'Who cares about your interest in a thing?' The response is to (be able to) ask genuinely: 'do you not care about yours?'.

Attention to the particular case, drawing on your interest in it, funds your interest. Grounds it. Your capacity for taking an interest.

Snow flows down all the walks.

'Overreliance on the official view of the world'

'… one must begin primarily from the idea that we have a great deal to say in life…'

Forsake belief in philosophy: become professional.

'Kant' —thus she refutes thee.

Moore's great show of probity; of precaution concerning nearly unnoticeable points of the utmost importance.

One of Cavell's earliest remarks about Wittgenstein's writing, as writing, is often cited for what it says about confessions, in connection with details like Wittgenstein's frequent reference to inclinations, things he wants to say, etc. I think its context is less often appreciated:

'In its defense of truth against sophistry, philosophy has employed the same literary genres as theology in defense of the faith: against intellectual competition, Dogmatics; against Dogmatics, the Confession; in both, the Dialogue. Inaccessible to the dogmatics of philosophical criticism, Wittgenstein chose confession and recast his dialogue. It contains what serious confessions must…'

There is a footnote, acknowledging Northrop Frye (as well as Rieff, Harnack, and Barth on dogma in the church):

'The significance of the fact that writing of all kinds (not just "literature") is dependent, in structure and tone and effect, on a quite definite (though extensive) set of literary forms or genres is nowhere to my knowledge so fully made out as in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism…'

In distinguishing Wittgenstein's writing from more conventional work in the tradition, Cavell sketches a little system of genres and situates Wittgenstein within it. Why say philosophy's system mirrors theology's? And why parallel philosophical truth to religious faith? (I have to say I hear an echo of Nietzsche there, as one sometimes does in Cavell, but as usual with Nietzsche he is not inclined to go further than an allusion.) Earlier Cavell had characterized the philosopher's conclusions, in this case skeptical conclusions, as not believable (citing Hume leaving his study), as not creating 'the stability of conviction expressed in propositions which are subject (grammatically) to belief'. Nor, accordingly, I assume, the conclusions of a philosopher opposing the skeptic, for related reasons (even though they purport, like Moore's do, to articulate the views of common sense, and are thus presumptively believable, and enjoy some external funding from some unacknowledged source). Or, putting it differently: as not being something you (anyone) can believe in, while nevertheless being so reportedly important ('the world exists'!) that any faltering of belief, or apparent faltering of belief, is enough to cause despair.

So much for truth and faith, maybe. As for theology, that would seem to bear on Cavell's siting Wittgenstein's writing in only a part of philosophy's system of genres, omitting Dogmatics: 'In confessing you do not explain or justify, but describe how it is with you. And confession, unlike dogma, is not to be believed but tested, and accepted or rejected. Nor is it the occasion for accusation, except of yourself, and by implication those who find themselves in you. There is exhortation… not to belief, but to self-scrutiny. And that is why there is virtually nothing in the Investigations which we should ordinarily call reasoning; Wittgenstein asserts nothing which could be proved, for what he asserts is either obvious… or else concerned with what conviction, whether by proof or evidence or authority, would consist in'. It's remarks like these especially that are cited by others working on Wittgenstein. But I think those citations usually touch lightly, if at all, on the problems only gestured at here by Cavell's juxtaposition of dogmatics with philosophy and the ideas of conviction, proof, evidence, and authority. Dogma is to be believed; defenses of it are supposed to produce, or shore up, conviction (or at least show up challenges to it, for the benefit of those with conviction). In the case of theology, it has traditionally issued from institutions like the church claiming unique authority over dogma, or it has been grounded in claims referred back to uniquely authoritative texts, to scripture (or, I suppose some would say, it has been authorized, by communities or by individuals, say prophets or other spiritual leaders). Listing 'proof or evidence or authority' among philosophy's means for producing conviction highlights philosophy's similarity to theology (and thus, to any practice with a tendency toward dogmatism) just insofar as, given those options, we would have to say, to the extent philosophy has produced any conviction, it has not often been through proof or evidence (since it pretends to be above evidence as such, and since any available models of proof tend to cast its own efforts in a shabby light), and so must have been through something like authority. Of course, it can also just be admitted that philosophy hasn't produced much conviction. Or, say, that it has trouble believing in its own authorities, in its traditions, in itself.

'What kind of medium a screen is'