The Persistence of Subjectivity
On the Kantian Aftermath

This book discusses approaches to the self-understanding and legitimation of the modern, 'bourgeois' life.

Robert B. Pippin (Author)

9780521848589, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 May 2005

380 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.73 kg

'… Pippin is one of the most original and imaginative philosophers now at work. … I can think of no other philosopher writing today who is so consistently illuminating on such a wide range of topics. We can learn a lot from Pippin.' Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

The Persistence of Subjectivity examines several approaches to, and critiques of, the core notion in the self-understanding and legitimation of the modern, 'bourgeois' form of life: the free, reflective, self-determining subject. Since it is a relatively recent historical development that human beings think of themselves as individual centers of agency, and that one's entitlement to such a self-determining life is absolutely valuable, the issue at stake also involves the question of the historical location of philosophy. What might it mean to take seriously Hegel's claim that philosophical reflection is always reflection on the historical 'actuality' of its own age? Discussing Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Leo Strauss, Manfred Frank, and John McDowell, Robert Pippin attempts to understand how subjectivity arises in contemporary institutional practices such as medicine, as well as in other contexts such as modernism in the visual arts and in the novels of Marcel Proust.

1. Introduction: 'bourgeois philosophy' and the problem of the subject
Part I: 2. The Kantian aftermath: reaction and revolution in modern German philosophy
Part II: 3. Necessary conditions for the possibility of what isn't: Heidegger on failed meaning
4. Gadamer's Hegel: subjectivity and reflection
5. Negative ethics: Adorno on the falseness of bourgeois life
6. The unavailability of the ordinary: Strauss on the philosophical fate of modernity
7. Hannah Arendt and the bourgeois origins of totalitarian evil
8. On not being a neo-structuralist: remarks on Manfred Frank and romantic subjectivity
9. Leaving nature behind: or, two cheers for subjectivism: on John McDowell
Part III: 10. The ethical status of civility
11. Medical practice and Social authority in modernity
Part IV. Expression: 12. The force of felt necessity: literature, ethical knowledge, and the law
13. What was abstract art? (from the point of view of Hegel)
14. On becoming who one is: Proust's problematic selves.

Subject Areas: History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP], Literary theory [DSA], Theory of art [ABA]