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The Persistence of Subjectivity: on the Kantian Aftermath

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The Persistence of Subjectivity: on the Kantian Aftermath P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 This page intentionally left blank ii P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 The Persistence of Subjectivity On the Kantian Aftermath The Persistence of Subjectivity examines several approaches to and criti- cisms of the idea at the heart of the self-understanding of the modern Western, or “bourgeois,” form of historical life: the free, reflective, self-determining subject. Since it is a relatively recent historical de- velopment that human beings have come to think of themselves as individual centers of agency and to believe that entitlement to such a self-determining life is absolutely valuable, raising such a question also raises the question of the historical location of philosophical re- flection itself. What might it mean, that is, to take seriously Hegel’s claim that philosophical reflection must always be reflection on the historical actuality of its own age? In discussions of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Leo Strauss, Arendt, Manfred Frank, and John McDowell and in examinations of modern institutional practices and modernist art and literature, Robert Pippin challenges a number of prevalent views about both the nature and the value of “leading one’s own life.” Robert B. Pippin is the Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Dis- tinguished 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 on German idealism, in- cluding Kant’s Theory of Form, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self- Consciousness, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, and, most recently, Henry James and Modern Moral Life. He is winner of the Mellon Distin- guished Achievement Award in the Humanities and was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. i P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 ii P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 The Persistence of Subjectivity On the Kantian Aftermath ROBERT B. PIPPIN University of Chicago iii Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge ,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridg e.org /9780521848589 © Robert B. Pippin 2005 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2005 - ---- eBook (EBL) - --- eBook (EBL) - ---- hardback - --- hardback - ---- paperback - --- paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 Contents Acknowledgments page vii 1 Introduction: “Bourgeois Philosophy” and the Problem of the Subject 1 part i setting 2 The Kantian Aftermath: Reaction and Revolution in Modern German Philosophy 27 part ii theorists 3 Necessary Conditions for the Possibility of What Isn’t: Heidegger on Failed Meaning 57 4 Gadamer’s Hegel: Subjectivity and Reflection 79 5 Negative Ethics: Adorno on the Falseness of Bourgeois Life 98 6 The Unavailability of the Ordinary: Strauss on the Philosophical Fate of Modernity 121 7 Hannah Arendt and the Bourgeois Origins of Totalitarian Evil 146 8 On Not Being a Neo-Structuralist: Remarks on Manfred Frank and Romantic Subjectivity 168 9 Leaving Nature Behind, or Two Cheers for Subjectivism: On John McDowell 186 Postscript: On McDowell’s Response to “Leaving Nature Behind” 206 v P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 vi Contents part iii modern mores 10 The Ethical Status of Civility 223 11 Medical Practice and Social Authority in Modernity 239 part iv expression 12 “The Force of Felt Necessity”: Literature, Ethical Knowledge, and Law 261 13 What Was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of Hegel) 279 14 On “Becoming Who One Is” (and Failing): Proust’s Problematic Selves 307 Bibliography 339 Name Index 353 Subject Index 358 P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 Acknowledgments Earlier versions of these chapters have appeared in the following pub- lications and I am grateful for permission to reprint. In most cases the revisions for this volume have involved brief expansions or qualifications, or most often additions to the footnotes. The postscript to chapter 9 ap- pears here for the first time. Two are reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press: “The Kantian Aftermath: Reaction and Revolution in Modern German Philosophy” will appear soon in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Philosophy, edited by Allen Wood, and “Gadamer’s Hegel: Subjectivity and Reflection” appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, edited by Robert J. Dostal (2002). “Negative Ethics: Adorno on the Falseness of Bourgeois Life” will appear in German in early 2005 in a collection of conference papers edited by Axel Honneth and published by Suhrkamp. “The Unavailability of the Ordinary: Strauss on the Philosophical Fate of Modernity” appeared in Political Theory 31, no. 3 ( June 2003), pub- lished by Sage Publishing. “Hannah Arendt and the Bourgeois Origins of Totalitarian Evil” will appear in a collection of essays, Modernity and the Problem of Evil, edited by Alan Schrift for Indiana University Press. “On Not Being a Neo-Structuralist: Remarks on Manfred Frank and Romantic Subjectivity” appeared in Common Knowledge 6, no. 2 (Fall 1996). “Leav- ing Nature Behind: Or Two Cheers for Subjectivism: On John McDowell” appeared in Reading McDowell: Essays on Mind and World, ed. Nick Smith, with responses by McDowell (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). “The Ethical Status of Civility” appeared in Civility, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000). “Medical Practice and Social Authority in Modernity” appeared in the Journal of Medicine vii P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 viii Acknowledgments and Philosophy 21 (1996). “‘The Felt Necessities of the Time’: Literature, Ethical Knowledge, and Law” first appeared in Italian as “‘Percepire le necessit`a del tempo’: Letteratura, conoscenza morale e diritto,” Ars In- terpretandi 7 (2002). “What Was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of Hegel)” appeared in Critical Inquiry 29, no. 1 (Fall 2002). “On Becom- ing Who One Is: Proust’s Problematic Selves” will appear in Philosophical Romanticism, ed. Nikolas Kompridis, to be published by Routledge Press. Iamespecially grateful to two institutions: the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where I was in residence in 2003–4 and so could complete work on the introduction, the postscript to chapter 9, and the revisions to various chapters; and the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation, whose Distinguished Achievement Award in 2001 supported much of the final editorial work on this volume. Special thanks to Thomas Bartscherer, Bo Earle, Hugh Liebert, and Jonny Thakkar for their assistance in preparing the manuscript and index. P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 The Persistence of Subjectivity On the Kantian Aftermath ix P1: JZP 052184858Xagg.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 11:11 x P1: JYD/... P2: JZP/... 052184858Xc01.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 21:20 1 Introduction “Bourgeois Philosophy” and the Problem of the Subject I Nowadays the term “bourgeois philosophy” no doubt sounds an immedi- ate ironic note. It invokes a still polemical, if also a stale and overused char- acterization of a distinct historical condition, our historical condition, the “modern West.” The phrase suggests that there is a sort of philosophy ap- propriate to a historical epoch and a kind of society, that pursuing some questions makes sense only under certain historical conditions: a certain level of cultural development or prosperity, a certain sort of economic organization, a certain distribution of social power, a certain relation to religion, and so forth. “Bourgeois” is an adjective that is supposed to help direct us to the specific conditions among the possibilities most relevant for understanding why our philosophy looks the way it does, so different from past versions of our own, and perhaps from anyone else’s. Since the term has become a kind of epithet, it also suggests a high-minded defense of a commitment to a value, when that commitment is actually motivated by low-minded interests. If we were to characterize epochs and societies by reference to “highest values,” then the heart of such a bourgeois philosophy would have to be a philosophy of freedom. This would be a philosophy that explains how it is possible (whether it is possible) that individual subjects could uniquely, qua individuals, direct the course of their own lives, why it has become so important that we seek to achieve this state maximally, consistent with a like liberty for all, what that means, why it is just to call on the coercive force of law to ensure such a possibility (the protection of liberty, the “one natural right”), and so forth. The basic philosophical claim underwriting 1 P1: JYD/... P2: JZP/... 052184858Xc01.xml CY536B/Pippin 0521 84858 X February 25, 2005 21:20 2 The Persistence of Subjectivity such an enterprise is the notion of the independent, rational, reflective individual, one who can act in the light of such reflective results. This is the ontological and the value claim that underwrites rights protection, claims of entitlement, and just deserts, and that begins to make pressing new sorts of philosophical problems: the distinct nature of self-knowledge, the problem of personal identity, skepticism about the external world and other minds, and so forth.
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