Stanley Cavell was one of the most influential American philosophers of the past several decades. Yet because he is often read in connection with Wittgenstein, there has been little consideration of his work against the background of the larger German philosophical tradition. Stanley Cavell and the Potencies of the Voice brings Cavell into dialogue with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on the question of how we make ourselves intelligible, opening up a new way of looking at central themes in Cavell's philosophy.