Table Of ContentModernaissP mha i losophical
Problem
Ont hDei ssatoifsfa ctions
EuroHighp eCaunl ture
Second Edition
Robert B. Pippin
l3
BLACl<WELL
Publishers
Fomry m other,
Rita Doris Cote Pippi,n
C yri©g Rhotb eBr.Pt i pp9i9In1 ,,9 9I9
op
Ther igohfRt o beBr.Pt i ptpobi eni dentifitehadeu tasho oftr hw iosrh kab se eans seirnt ed
accorwdiattnhhceC e o pyrDiegshitag,nnP dsa teAnc1tt9s 8 8.
Firpsutb lished in 1991
Secoenddi tipounb lished 1999
24 61 098 7 5 3 l
BlackPwuebllliI snhce.r s
35M0a.i n Street
MaldMeans,s ach0u2s1e4t8t s
USA
BlackwellL tPdu blishers
10C8o wlReoya d
OxfoOrXd4l .JF
UK
Alrli grhetsse Erxvceedfp.ott rh q eu otaotifso hnop rats sfaogtreh pseu rpoofs ecsr iticism and
revienwop, a orftt hpiusb limcaaybti eor nep roducsetdoi,rna e dr etsryisetoveram l,
transmiinat ntfyeo drmo ,rb ya nmye anesl,e ctmreocnhiacnp,ih coatlo,c orpeycionrogdr, i ng
otherwwiitshteoh,pue rt i poerr miosfts hipeou nb lisher.
Exciepnlt hU en itSetdao tAfem se ritchbaio,soi kss o sludb jteotch cteo ndittihioastnth anlolt ,
byw aoyft raodroe lh erwibsele e,nr te,sh oilrdoe,ud ot r,o lhcrcwiirsceuw liatthleohdue t
publipsrhiceoorrn' ssie nan ntfy o romfb indoircn ogvo elrht ehrat nh ianwt h iicithps u blished
anwdi thaos uitm icloanrdi itinocnl utdhciionsng d ibteiiionmngp oosnet dhs eu bsequent
purchaser.
library of Congress Cata/Qgingi-nPu- b/ication Data
PippRionb,eB r.1t,9 -48
Moderniassmap hilosporpohbiolcnela mhld:e i ssatisoffEau crtioophneisagc nhu lt/Ru orbee rt
B. Pi-p2pneiddn ..
p. cm.
Inclbuidbelsi ogrreafpehraiencnidacn led se x.
ISB0N- 631-2(h1a4r1d3:ba-a c5lkp ka.p e-IrS)B.0N - 631-2(p1b4k1a.4l:p-k a3.p er)
l.PhiloMsoodpeh1my9 ,ct ehn tu2r.Cy i.v iliMzoadtie1om9n 1c,he ntury.
3.E urope-InltiIef9 letcl-hee nctutru4ya.P.l h iloMsoodpeh2my0 ,tc he ntury.
5.C iviliMzoadtie-2om0ntc,he ntu6r.Ey u.r ·oI pnetelllie2fc0et1c uhea nlt uIr.Ty i.t le.
B803.P15979 9
19Q-dc21 99-17513
CII'
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CcIaPt aelr ecfoortrdh biosoi kas v aiflraoblmlhB eer iIti. sihb rary.
ogu
Typ esient1 10/2o n1 2p tB askerville
byK olaImn formSaetirovPniv cLtet.sdP o,n dicIhncdriray ,
PrinitnGe rdeB arti tbayMi PnGB ooVkisc,t SoqruiaBaro ed,m Cionrn,w all
Thibso oikps r inotnae cdi dp-afpreere.
Contents
Acknowledgments to the Second Edition vu
Acknowledgments to the First Edition Vlll
Introduction to the Second Edition xi
Introduction: The Modernity Problem l
I Sensing the .end
1
2 German Homesickness
8
2 Modernity and Modernism 16
I Modernity as a Historical Cau:gury
16
2 The Legi,timaq Problem
22
3 The "Culture efR upture"
29
4 Paradoxes and Problems
38
3 Idealism and Modernity 45
I The Kantian Enlightenment
45
2 The limits <if Transcendental Idealism
50
3 Hegel's Expen'ment
60
4 Hegelian Teleology
73
4 "Nihilism stands at the door": Nietzsche 78
I Ni.etzsche's Compwint
78
2 Modernity as "Twilight" Zone
85
3 Origins and Perspectives
91
4 The "Pathos efDis tance"
91
5 "The Age of Consummate Meaninglessness": Heidegger 114
I Failed Autonomy
114
2 Modernity as a "Metap1!Jsu:al" Problem
118
3 The "Vollendung" efM etap1!Jsu:s
127
4 The Tum, Turning Away, and Overturning
134
vi Contents
New chapter for the second edition
6 The Death of God and Modem Melancholy 144
l Nietzsche's "Insane" Prophet 144
2 Mourning or Melancholy? 149
3 Nietzschean Health 151
4 Nietzschean Therapy 154
7 Unending Modernity 160
l Modern Options
160
2 The Dialectic qf Modernity 163
3 Postmoderniry? 168
4 Modernity as Dialectic
176
Notes 180
Bibliography 218
Index 230
Acknowled ents to the
gm
Second Edition
Aside from a number of minor editorial changes and typographical correc
tions, this edition difef rs from the first in the inclusion of a new Introduction
and a new chapter (chapter 6) on Nietzsche. In the former, I attempt to
restate the book's thesis in a way that takes account of and very briefly
responds to some challenging criticisms of that thesis. I am indebted es
pecially to several discussions and correspondence with Fred Olafson and
Terry Pinkard over the last several years, and to a recent exchange with
Richard Rorty, for making much clearer what issues have to be addressed in
defense of the thesis and how complex those issues are. In the latter, I try to
extend and de en the issue of a Nietzschean "diagnosis" of the unusual
ep
melancholy of modem high culture. I am grateful to Jonathan Lear for
many discussions of this issue during a jointly taught seminar on this theme,
to the graduate students who made this such an adventurous and rewarding
seminar, and to my Chicago colleagues Eric Santncr and Homi Bhabha for
many helpful discussions about this and larger issues raised by the book. I
was fortunate enough to have been invited to present a German version of
an earlier draft of this chapter at several conferences and colloquia in
Germany and Europe, and I am especially grateful for those discussions.
My thanks to Gerhart von Graevenitz and Axel Honneth (who invited me
to, and will edit the proceedings of, the conference, Konzepte dcr Modemc,
where the paper was first presented); to David Wellbury for his questions
and suggestions at that conference; to Rudi r Bubner, Hans-Friderich
ge
Fulda, Glenn Most, and the discussants at the University of Heidelberg; to
Volker Gerhardt and the Philosophy D artment at the Humboldt Uni
ep
versity in Berlin, for inviting me to give a "Master Course" on this topic in
Nietzsche, and to the students in that seminar for many hours of helpful
conversation; to Professor Gerhard Garn and the discussants at the Institut
for Philosophic at the Tcchnische Universitat at Darmstadt, and to the
discussants at the Institute for Philosophy at Charles University in Prague.
My thanks to the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the 'Theory and
Practice of Democracy for nerous editorial assistance.
ge
Acknowledgments to the
First Edition
Much of the work on this project owes a great deal to several institutions:
to the University of California, San Diego, for a sabbatical and other forms
of research assistance; to the University of California for a "President's
Research Fellowship in the Humanities," which made possible a year of
reading and writing free from administrative and teaching responsibilities;
and to the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a very
generous Research Fellowship.
I am also much indebted to several individuals, especially to Stephan
Chambers, my editor at Blackwell Publishers. Conversations with Mr
Chambers were instrumental in conceiving the general form of the book,
and I much appreciate his support and encouragement. My thanks too to
Ms Annita Christie at Blackwells for much patience and efficiency in the
last couple of years. For their kind support of various fellowship and grant
applications, I am grateful to Allen Wood, H. S. Harris, Henry Allison,
Fred Olafson, Stanley Rosen, Richard Kennington, Jerry Weinberger,
Charles Griswold, and Drew Hyland. I have benefited a great deal from
correspondence with Stanley Rosen about the issues discussed below, and
from comments on individual chapters by Charles Griswold and Drew
Hyland. I owe a very substantial debt to several people who generously
read and commented on earlier versions of the entire manuscript. These
include Jay Bernstein and an anonymous reader, both of whom made
several suggestions that led to quite substantial revisions in the last
three chapters, and Andrew Feenberg, with whom I have often discussed
these topics during very pleasant lunches in LaJ olla (where, overlooking the
Pacific, entertaining the idea of a "crisis" in modernity requires intense
and sustained concentration).
Special thanks too, to my son, Andrew Pippin, who kindly agreed to
various domestic arrangements that made my work day much easier, and
to my wife,joan, without whose support and understanding this work, and
much else, would have been impossible.
And worse I may be yet. The worst i.s not,
So long as we can s191, "1nis i.s the worst. "
Shakespeare, King Lear
Introduction to the second edition
Modernism as a Philosophical Problmz was originally written during a contro
versial phase in a long, internal European debate about Western Enlight
enment culture. At the time, that phase was widely referred to as
"postmodernism." I argued in Modernism as a Philcsophical Problmz that
such a widespread interest in such an epochal consciousness could partly
(in its most intellectual and philosophical manifestations) be understood as
a reanimation of relatively familiar, especially Nietzschean and Heidegger
ean, dissatisfactions with the affirmative, normative claims essential to
European modernization. It was all differently expressed this time, in
post-war French philosophy, appropriated in Anglophone literary criti
cism, anthropology and media criticism, and given a very strong cultural
emphasis, but still, I claimed, it was a phenomenon that should be under
stood as largely repetitive. A culture of melancholy, profound skepticism and
intense self-criticism had become official high culture and the dominant
academic one in the European West, and, it appeared, had again begun to
repeat itself in new forms, forms now hostile, paradoxically, even to the
ideas of high culture, criticism, skepticism or enlightenment on which such
enterprises �eemed to depend. 1bat is, some aspect of this sort of mood
(the experience of modernization as a kind of spiritual failure, of modernity
as loss) has been quite prominent in much European high culture of the
late eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are familiar
examples: Faust's failed bargain (o r the "failure of science" and especially
scientific power and knowledge, "for life"), Holderlin's elegiac sense of
modernity's profound loss, Hegel's claim in Gl,auben und Wissen that the
religion of modern times is: "God is dead," Balzac's, Stendhal's, Flaubert's
pictures of our new but not at all better bourgeois, competitive, phony,
low-minded world, constant prey to romantic fantasies of recovery and
restoration, Henry James's international theme and its ever fading (dying)
traditional Europe, its acquisitive, money-obsessed, new-age Americans,
Proust on the passing of (and exposure of) the Guermantes' world for the
Verdurin's, Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor speculations, Joyce's and
Eliot's ironic use of ancient myth, Rilke's elegiac metaphysics of absence,
Xll lntroductwn ltJ the second edition
Husserl on the "crisis" of the European sciences, Heidegger on the forget
ting of Being, and the nightmare worlds of Beckett and Kafka, dominated
by mere pretensions to presence and authority. And we would now have to
add the new post-war world of absolute textuality, the end of metaph ics,
ys
failed si ifiers, the death of the subject, negative dialectics, the end of art,
gn
the death of the novel, the impossibility of poetry, absolute contingency,
anti-humanism, and on and on. Everywhere the fi res and images had
gu
been and are again the images of death and loss and failure, and the
language is the language of anxiety, unease, and mourning, or even, to
anticipate the added chapter below, of melancholia, a depressivc's attach
ment to a loss that has not been worked through, perhaps cannot be; for
which there is no "mourning work," (Trauerarbeit). In sum, the widespread
nineteenth-century suspicions (at least on the European continent) that
(ar ably) the two greatest accomplishments of world civilization, modem
gu
natural science and technology, and a progressive, liberal democratic
culture, were also slowly and inexorably enervating and spiritually destroy
ing that very culture, have been revived and restated in new complex
critical methodologies, many of which now seemed to promise some final,
decisive confrontation with the original aspirations of modem European
culture (hence the promise of a postmodern epoch).
Although only eight years have passed since that first edition was pub
lished, it seems obvious enough that the renewed attention to the prophetic
elements in Nietzsche and Heidegger, and to the apocal tic "end of mod
yp
ernity" tone associated with Lyotard and Vattimo, ·and the "death of man"
anti-humanism inspired by Foucault, and even the great public attention
once lavished on the culture wars and on the so-called "sixties politics" of
literature departments, have all subsided somewhat. But the emphasis now
on new methodologies and research programs ("new historicism," "cultural
studies," "post-colonialism") has not altered the nature or depth of the tone
noted in the book's subtitle nor made any less relevant the problem noted
there: a great, persistent dissatisfaction within European high culture with its
own ideals and results. At many universities, those charged with teaching the
humanities and history still often teach against or around what had been the
standard modem canon, and all in a still suspicious, wary tone, if now inspired
more by political suspicions about the role of power in aesthetic and philoso
phical representations and expression (and the roles of gender and race in the
exercise of such power) than by theoretical doubts about identity thinking or
textuality and textual integrity. 1
The self-understanding of the modem culture founded on the scientific
world-view and the political ideals of individual rights protection, a mod-
