Modernism As a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture [Paperback]

Robert B. Pippin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1991 | ISBN-10: 0631176578 | ISBN-13: 978-0631176572

Since the 19th century European culture has been lagely concerned with the idea of modernity. This book attempts centres on the philosophical contribution to this aspect of culture. It covers the dissatisfactions voiced in the work of Nietzsche, Hegel and Heidegger, as well as the more recent arguments of Adorno, Habermas and Rorty. The author argues against the Nietzschean and Heideggerean claims about a nihilistic end to the modern tradition, and defends Hegel's idea about the nature and potential completion of modernity.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Pippin's "modernism" is the ideology behind empirical science, liberal democracy, and universal reason. Arnold Toynbee first noticed that modernism was in danger in his landmark A Study in History . Lately, it has been flayed by philosophers (Derrida, Foucault) and others who see it as a bourgeois "first world" doctrine. Pippin thinks there is an alternative: Hegel rejected every kind of external constraint on what humans ought to believe (postulating limitations even to empirical science and morality based on Kant's objective universal reason), but he showed us our interdependence and so gave us a basis for community. Pippin claims Hegel's logic is imperfect and imperfectible, and he is skeptical of the time-transcending Absolute Spirit and the notion of objective historical progress serving to undergird human rights. He thus leaves the oppressed to appeal to the communal reasoning of their oppressors. This difficult book will challenge those who believe in objective reason.
- Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, Canada
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

Modernism as a Philosophical Problem,Second Edition presents an interpretation of the negative and critical self-understanding characteristic of culture since romanticism and especially since Nietzsche, and answers the question of why the issue of modernity became a philosophical problem in European tradition.

Pippin defends an original re-narration of the development of modern philosophy, substantially different from that common in orthodox, postmodernist and critical theory discussions, and one much more sensitive to the radicality of the most complete expression and defense of a modernist self-understanding - the classical German Idealist tradition, especially the position defended by Hegel. This interpretation is the basis for the claim that no paradigm shift, ideology critique, or new way of thinking can dispense with or overcome such modernist aspirations. In fact, the author argues, one can still detect the persistence of such aspirations and commitments in some of the harshest modernity critics, in Nietzsche and in Heidegger especially.

This unique and engaging view of modernity is an essential read for students, academics, and researchers studying Modernism, 20th Century Philosophy, Social Theory, and Hegel and German Idealism. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Pub (May 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631176578
• ISBN-13: 978-0631176572
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,380,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rehabilitating Philosophical Modernity, May 13, 2004

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socraticfury "kchen28" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture (Paperback)

If memory serves, Professor Pippin was awarded a MacArthur grant in 2001: $1.5 million over 3 years. Imagine: getting paid half a mil a year to write on things like the problem of human finitude and the possibility of self-determining and self-grounding spontaneous subjectivity (see p.13)!

This book is, quite simply, one of the best of its kind in the English language. Pippin seeks to provide a defense of the philosophical project of modernity, especially against the criticisms of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and their epigones. Pippin's project is thereby very similar to that of Habermas in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, but whereas Habermas seeks to accelerate modernity, as it were, Pippin seeks to return to what he considers its high point, the period dominated by German Idealism and, in particular, by Hegel. He states baldly in the Introduction to the 2nd edition that "the central practical issue at stake in debates about philosophy of the subject or of consciousness or of will, freedom and the possibility of a free life, has not been well posed and so has hardly been deconstructed, archeologically exposed, or destroyed" (xv). Needless to say, this thesis will be anathema to some and controversial to many.

I believe that Pippin delineates the terms of the basic philosophical problem quite well. For the sake of brevity, I will sketch that problem somewhat differently than Pippin himself does. It will lead us, however, to Pippin's argument. Lurking at the bottom of all philosophical disputes is the question of what it means to give an account of something. What are the relevant criteria (the epistemological Q)? But also, what are the necessary conditions for account giving to be possible (the transcendental Q)? And how can that question be answered in such a way that the answer presupposes nothing but itself? The very framing of the last question already sounds Hegelian.

The slight shifts in the framing of problem, from the epistemological to the transcendental to what I can only call the Hegelian question, coincides with the names Pippin uses to mark off the history of philosophy: Descartes, Kant, Hegel. According to Pippin, Kant initiates a profound change within the self-conception of philosophy. What Kant initiates Hegel completes in a more satisfactory manner than Kant himself does. Hegel's superiority to Kant is decided by his historicizing the transcendental unity of apperception. Hegel reconciles the two arguments of Kant's Third Antinomy, as it were.

It is just at this point that I find Pippin most unpersuasive. Pippin in effect sacrifices the Science of Logic upon the altar of history when he says that narrative must replace logic (Pippin's word is "rules")(p.68). But that disagreement cannot blind me to the quality of this book. Pippin writes in a mercifully accessible style, something much to be praised in a student of post-Kantian European philosophy. He is alive to the importance of the issues at stake. He is right to say that the philosophical project of modernity is practical in orientation. He is much too reserved to say in addition that the very possibility of philosophy, and of human wisdom, is at stake.

In short, this book is quite exceptional. For a counterpoint, I would recommend Stanley Rosen's Hermeneutics as Politics. Both Pippin and his teacher Rosen agree that Kant is the decisive figure of modern philosophy. They disagree as to whether Kant's revolution is boon or bane.