This chaper takes the account of democracy developed in chapter three and considers it in the context of his critique of American democracy in the 1960s through a reading of King Lear. Cavell’s distinctive contribution to aesthetics is his claim that tragedy is a site that works through the implications of skepticism as it relates to the other. Cavell’s interpretation of tragedy contributes to three important debates in contemporary political theory. First, King Lear’s tragic abdication exposes the crisis in authority that results from post-sovereign politics. Second, Cavell’s claim that acknowledgement rather than knowledge is the appropriate response to tragedy makes an important intervention into recent debates in political theory over the politics of recognition. Third Cavell’s analysis of tragic downfall underscores important shifts in consciousness that a society must undergo in order to realize justice. Under this reading, the political import of tragedy is as a pedagogy for a politically repressed culture that spurns necessary changes in cultural self-understanding.

Can there be something like a “Wittgensteinian” literary criticism? If so, what could it possibly be, given that Wittgenstein sought to make us give up the craving for generality? Through an analysis of “The Avoidance of Love,” Stanley Cavell’s epochal 1969 essay on King Lear, Toril Moi shows that a reader inspired by Wittgenstein does not have to set out to apply a given theory, or to answer certain “Wittgensteinian” questions. Rather it entails a wish to acknowledge the concerns of the text, and respond to them. For Wittgensteinian critics, the text is not an object to be “approached” but action and expression. The critic sets out to answer questions that matter to her, and stakes herself in her own perceptions and judgments in the act of reading. “The problem of the critic, as of the artist,” Cavell writes, “is not to discount his subjectivity, but to include it; not to overcome it in agreement, but to master it in exemplary ways.” To do this requires training. This chapter sets out the implications of all these claims, argues against formalist views of literature and reading, and insists on the fundamental role of human judgment, and acknowledgment in the work of criticism.

This chapter focuses on the development of customary international law and unpacks the requirement of publicity for state practice. It introduces the different levels of publicity and covertness, and closely examines the role of acknowledgement, justifications, and public knowledge within the requirement of publicity in the light of various approaches to the development of (customary) international law. The chapter illustrates how the requirement of publicity can be unpacked into two main parts, where the first relates to how a state communicates its understanding of its practice in relation to international law, and the second relates to how the act itself and — if available — the justifications provided for it, are known and reacted to by other states and international actors.