This famous collection of essays by Stanley Cavell explores a diverse range of issues from philosophy to music and drama.

Stanley Cavell is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the Theory of Value, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He has published widely on a range of subjects from the analytic philosophical tradition to Shakespeare.

Preface to this edition Stephen Mulhall; Preface to updated edition of Must We Mean What We Say?; Foreword. An audience for philosophy; 1. Must we mean what we say?; 2. The availability of Wittgenstein's later philosophy; 3. Aesthetic problems of modern philosophy; 4. Austin at criticism; 5. Ending the waiting game: a reading of Beckett's Endgame; 6. Kierkegaard's On Authority and Revelation; 7. Music discomposed; 8. A matter of meaning it; 9. Knowing and acknowledging; 10. The avoidance of love: a reading of King Lear; Thematic index; Index of names.