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

by Robert B. Pippin

Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, 2e presents a new interpretation of the negative and critical self-understanding characteristic of much European high culture since romanticism and especially since Nietzsche, and answers the question of why the issue of modernity became a philosophical problem in European tradition.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, European History, Romanticism, Theory

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books and articles on German idealism and later German philosophy, including Kant's Theory of Form; Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness; Modernism as a Philosophical Problem; and Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations. In addition he has published on issues in political philosophy, theories of self-consciousness, the nature of conceptual change, and the problem of freedom. He also wrote a book about literature and philosophy: Henry James and Modern Moral Life. A collection of his essays in German, Die Verwirklichung der Freiheit, appeared in 2005, as did The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath, and his book on Nietzsche, Nietzsche, moraliste français: La conception nietzschéenne d'une psychologie philosophique, appeared in 2006. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy appeared in 2012. He was twice an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, is a winner of the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities, and was recently a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the American Philosophical Society. He is also a member of the German National Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[M]

I have always suspected that I am missing something in the assumptions at work in the various orthodoxies of postmodernism, that "there is some enormous over-correction in the history of Western thought since roughly Marx and Nietzsche, in which all sorts of babies are being thrown out with all kinds of bath water." This book is very useful for anyone wanting to untangle this situation and know just what babies are thrown out. (quote from the author in an interview with Omair Hussain for Nonsite.org: http://nonsite.org/editorial/after-he...)

[Avi]

Pippin's writing style is academic... Not at its worst, but it's quite awful. That's one star lost. Another star lost is because I think he's just quite wrong sometimes. That being said, three stars still for having quite a few insights about Modernism.

Also, not starworthy, but, something that made me very glad while reading this book, was a mention of Stanley Rosen in the context of a quote "Postmodernism is the Enlightenment gone mad." I did some looking up of Rosen, and it seems like I'd find his writing considerably more enjoyable (and that he's also very interested in Modernism). Another thing in it that delighted me was its lambasting of common misreadings of Heart of Darkness.

[Li Wang]

wow

[Van]

This gave me serious anxiety.

[Jessica Zu]

Inspired me to re-read gorgia, plato, longinus, horace, aristotle ... etc even Augustine de Hippo ...

[Jack W]

Really helpful. A clarifying interpretation of what enlightenment modernity is and is not. But Pippin is not a great writer.

[a]

Not sure what to think of this slightly melancholy book about the 'modern condition,' centering around a sort of tragic narrative where the modern demand for reason and autonomy can't be fulfilled but also can't be gone back on. For Pippin it's pretty much just Hegel that keeps us from falling into the morass, but as a sort of life raft that can't be completely commited to.

[Kai]

Probably the best intro ever written