Stanley Cavell (b. 1926) is an American post-analytic philosopher whose work crosses into aesthetics, literary criticism, psychoanalysis and film studies. After first teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, Cavell taught from 1963 to 1997 at Harvard University, where he became the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value. Chief among his philosophical works are Must We Mean What We Say? (1969), The Claim of Reason (1979) and Philosophical Passages (1995). Cavell has written a number of books on the New England Transcendentalists and the possibility of a distinctively “American” philosophy, including The Senses of Walden (1972), In Quest of the Ordinary (1988) and Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (1990). He has also written three books on photography and film: The World Viewed (1971), Pursuits of Happiness (1981) and Contesting Tears (1996). More recently, Cavell has produced autobiographical reflection: A Pitch of Philosophy (1994). In retirement, he continues to write and publish prolifically, with Cities of Words (2004) and Philosophy the Day After (2005). Cavell has been extremely influential in American philosophical circles, with such thinkers as Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty and Stephen Mulhall acknowledging his impact. He has also influenced a number of writers on the arts, most notably the art critic and historian Michael Fried and the film theorist William Rothman.