Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations, (Modern European Philosophy Series) [Hardcover]

Robert B. Pippin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 052156025X | ISBN-13: 978-0521560252 | Publication Date: January 28, 1997

Robert Pippin disputes many traditional characterizations of the distinctiveness of modern philosophy. In their place he defends claims about agency, freedom, ethical life and modernity itself, all of which are central to the German idealist philosophical tradition, and in particular, to the writings of Hegel. Having considered the Hegelian version of these issues the author explores other accounts as found in Habermas, Strauss, Blumenberg, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...Pippen's project is pioneering a new way of reading the history of philosophy..." www.wordtrade.com

"There is much food for thought in this collection of essays. Pippin has a rich sense of Hegel's contribution to contemporary issues, and draws creatively on Hegel's dialogue with." Review of Metaphysics

Book Description

Professor Pippin disputes many traditional characterizations of the distinctiveness of modern philosophy. In their place he defends claims about agency, freedom, ethical life and modernity itself, all of which are central to the German idealist philosophical tradition, and in particular, to the writings of Hegel. Having considered the Hegelian version of these issues the author explores other accounts as found in Habermas, Strauss, Blumenberg, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 466 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052156025X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521560252
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,401,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How Leo Strauss' Nietzschean Doctrine of Natural Right Should Be Understood, January 3, 2010

By 

Jeffrey Neuzil (rockford illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (Modern European Philosophy) (Paperback)

"Idealism as Modernism" is a very good work on German Idealist philosophy. It begins--much like Stanley Rosen's "Hermenutics as Politics"--with an analysis of Kantian "spontaniety"--which poses the mystery or riddle of how are mind can have world, or, to put it in a Heideggerian trope, how the human mind can project world. There are two essays in this work that touch on the philosophical work of Leo Strauss, and these are among the best works I have read on Strauss; Pippin rightly chides Shadia Drury for not tackling with sufficient vigor Strauss' work in relation to the concept of "nature": however, Dr. Pippin's analysis itself lacks specificity in relation to nature in Strauss--what is "nature" in Strauss?
I believe that, for Strauss, nature is "Natural Right," and natural right is related to a rank ordering of human types, with the philosopher at the top of the (Nietzsche/Plato) ladder: the most comprehensive of human types because he in a way embodies all human types.
But in modernity, with its equalitarian fetishism, we cannot begin to make such a taxonomy because no scientist or philosopher of mind has the courage to assert an order of rank that can be given biological specificity: there are more than enough great theorists of mind--Steven Pinker, for example--who, I am convinced, could do just that, but careers are on the line, and the democratic, equalitarian shout is the loudest of all these days.
It is just like in the 1960s when E. O. wilson introduced sociobiology and was castigated for slaying egalitarian idols. He persisted and sociobiology was eventually supplemented by Bio-politics. There has been much that has been salutary in the "German Revolution"--it "purified Idealism"and made great masses much less aggressive and bellicose: a man or women who sits in his apartment and views erotic movies of an evening is not as "dangerous" as the founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was; but does not the "purification" of idealism (I use Strauss' language here from the "City and Man") serve the purpose of conserving the priviliges of the few and the sorrows of the many; maybe not if their content and do not expect great things from politics. But not in the opposite case--for in that case they are imprisoned in a world of images and burgiose transactions that did not issue from their "free" choice, nor from the considered judgement of their political leaders, because those leaders are simply not leaders, nor are they allowed to be--they are followers tethered to the acadamy as never before.
What would become of an American statesman, say a senator, who proposed abolishing the (in my opinion unconstiitutional) monopolization of the media? What would happen to a man or woman who seriously proposed campaign reform which removed the shamelessly voluminous amount of political action committee money from politics and limited contributions to an equal stipened for each candidate and alloted each equal media time and allowed citizens to formulate and conduct the debates for, at least, presidential elections and congressional elections? He would be burned out of office.
But without such how much "freedom" do the American people really have: this is exactly the core issue of German Idealist philosophy--what can be expected from the enlightenment, now that all that has taken place is granted? Dani Roderik of harvard University asked this question in a chapter of one of his books, "Globalization For whom?" And this I have extensively commented upon on the friends of Dani Rorik forum, but I noticed that no academic was willing to surrender his gold or silver chains, so none even dared to comment upon my lengthy essay: Why? Because I had the audacity to suggest that IMF, WTO, and The World Bank have been captured by monied interests, by trade regionalists who dominate our political process; Rodrik's rigorous researches suggest this possibility, for those researches prove that, for example, the WTO has not pursued its mandate of alleviating poverty and has instead sought to fortify the Temple of Mammon: I call a spade a spade, and you will not find a more serious (in my better days before I encountered a battering ram of totalitarian democratic efforts to malign and crucify me for making these suggestions) student of the social order, not despite, but because, I am a student of the work of Dr. Leo Strauss and Dr. Joseph Cropsey and their intellectual descendents.
All of these issues are in one way or another central to Dr. Pippin's fine book, because that book seeks to pose the Kantian questions of enlightenment modernity: what can I know? What can I hope? and what ought I to do? As a society, as Burke argued, these questions are an inheritance, and no society that abandons them can long survive the onslaught of tyranny, even if only "soft" despotism--at this stage. It would amaze some people--and did--that not any question or issue can be raised in the university today; I make reference again to the dead air my serious and considered essay on these questions received; people not in academia think that all questions are being raised there and debated there, and that this is good for their country to the degree that government must rely on the university today; what instead is the case is that a narrow dogmatism or corrosive scepticism has infected these institutions, and, to the degree that they are tied to government today, they are not contributing to progress but retarding it.
What would German Idealists do about this:Philosophize and act--a Great tradition from Kant to Fichte to Schelling to Hegel to Nietzsche to Heidegger exists, a tradition that is by no means so well understood that it could not again serve as a counterpoint or counterpose to the dogmatism and scepticism of our universities today. However, this has little to do with MBA's and the locust of capitalism, and these forces are the strongest today, so philosophy has nearly perished as a discipline, except as it is practiced by a narrow and hidebound elite--themselves liberally enlightened, the rest of society condemned to darkness! For having raised these issues once again, Dr. Pippin's book is more important than just a narrow academic treatise by a self-proclaimed specialist in modern German philosophy, it is philosophy itself.
I believe that Dr. Pippin and the University of Chicago are more than capable of providing a biological taxonomy of human types, in part because I believe that they were responsible for making those human types (see my review of Arno J. Mayer "Swords into Plowshares:From Zionism to Israel"). Even if the University's intention was not to alter the worldwide distribution of intelligence, that may nevertheless have been the consequence of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the decision to use those weapons either rested with affiliates of that University or it did not;the University operates on a German ideal of the unity of the sciences and humanities--an ideal defended in antiquity by Aristotle in his ethics and politics, and, revived or invented, in modernity by Martin Heidegger and reflected in his rectoral address upon ascending to the position of rector of Freiberg University; after resigning that position, I contend and will seek to vindicate that Heidegger gave direction and unity to the studies taking place in Germany and in the United States.
In this context I will only mention a dissertation on the "metaphorics" of physics in Heidegger and its revelation that Max Born and Martin Heidegger had discussions on quantum physics. That further discussions may have taken place across the Pacific and the Atlantic during world war two is ominous, considering that the University of Chicago was creating, at Einstein's behest, a monstrously destructive weapon that has changed politics forever: It is my stupendously shocking contention that Germany may have gotten the weapon first, but as a result of researches carried on here and in Japan during the war. Classical languages may have been the means for communicating Manhattan Project secrets.
The possibility of the "cunning of reason" has not been considered by a credulous democracy which Leo Strauss said is destined, always and everywhere, to a short life: for the establishment of "seminaries of intolerance" or "voluntary associations" for the subversion of liberal democracy are as legitimate within its walls as their opposites. The Germans have now made the country in their image; it is left for the loyal democrats of the old regime to decide whether that image is fitting for a great nation; must every duplicity, must every craven subversion, must every despiritualizing-specialization, and every voloptuallizing-debasement be accepted. This is a shameful surrender because the country is supposed to allow for its defining character to be realized by the "political" process; but that process has been precisely de-politicized, and, in its place, the Temple of Mammon stands, the bloodiest red blood of the commonwealth consecrated it: Who, what persons, what institutions, what governments, what men have made my country all but a selling of things with Roma growing by day and night?; what barbaric mentality places signs and symbols everywhere that make fun of the poor and destitute by offering to buy "Ugly Houses" and pay cash for "gold" when most who see such signs, it is known, have neither house nor gold?--the same people who subverted my nation; what nation allows the exorbitantly wealthy to build houses, say on the way to Chicago, that are monolithic and that house no one, because they are a gloating reminder that you will be made poor if you do not worship at Thomas Hobbes' alter which supplanted Acquinas' and Augustine's?
In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" Dr. King asked his fellow clergymen why the beautifully spired churches in the south housed such spiritual emptiness... Read more ›