An outstanding achievement. This book has been profoundly influential in contemporary Hegel scholarship, outlining a new and exciting strategy for defending the Hegelian project against its many critics.

Pippin's main interpretive contribution is to take seriously Hegel's claim that his philosophy is properly conceived of as a completion of the Kantian Critical project: the attempt to defend substantive metaphysical conclusions without dogmatism. In so doing, Pippin seeks to put to rest the age old accusation that Hegel's philosophy marks a return the pre-Kantian (or "pre-Critical") metaphysics which Kant justifiably criticizes in the Critique of Pure Reason.

In the course of developing this interpretive line, Pippin backs off strong claims for the necessity of dialectical transitions and develops a somewhat 'deflationary' interpretation of the so-called "absolute knowledge" which is supposedly legitimated at the end of the dialectic. Instead of understanding the result of the dialectical argument as a Table of Categories (a la Kant), Pippin argues that what gets "absolutized" is the dialectical method itself. I.e., Pippin argues that the dialectic of the Phenomenology defends an account of the necessary conditions for the possibility of account giving, not an account of the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. In so doing, Pippin also reinterprets the significance of Hegel's famous End of History claim: what has come to an end is not the history of different models of experience or reality, but the history of how it is that we seek to these models.

Pippin's book is composed of three sections: the first traces the development of Hegel's philosophy out of trends and difficulties implicit within the Kantian and post-Kantian German Idealist tradition; the second develops a sophisticated interpretation of Hegel's most influential work, The Phenomenology of Spirit; and the third shows how the philosophical approach which Hegel develop in the Phenomenology informs his mature science (e.g., the Encyclopedia and the Science of Logic).

Pippin's book proceeds at a high level of philosophical sophistication and demands a lot from the "lay reader"; but its rewards are equal to the labors it demands. It is of relevance to anyone interested in German Idealism, phenomenology, the history of European philosophy, questions about the limits of reason, the philosophy of the subject, or the modern/post-modern debate.

An interesting characteristic of North American academia is its strange reluctance to accept a political role. Thus, the discomfort evident when trying to explain the obvious political heritage and tone of continental philosophers such as Heidegger, Sartre, or Derrida. Somehow, we imagine that the academic world is not to be "sullied" by such pedestrian concerns as politics. Consequently, Americans and Canadians both have misunderstood how profoundly political post-modernism is in its most basic tenets.

Here, from Stanley Rosen, comes a timely reminder of this, and a hard-headed and tactical one at that.

While some may take exception (I did) to the unnecessarily strident tone of argument employed here, there is no doubt that Stanley Rosen's analysis of post-modern hermeneutics from a politico-historical perspective is nothing short of brilliant. This is not a philosophical text for those who prefer to evade debate, or shrink away from conflict.

However, aside from the often unnecessary "bran" in many of his arguments, there is an incredibly studied, deeply knowledgeable mind at work here. His obvious mastery of material outweighs the often reactionary aspects of his writing. He appreciates the political nature of post-modernism, and clarifies it (and would probably like to convince us of certain of his own preferences regarding it). However, this is not the main thrust of the book.

And, if you want to read a philosophical essay so insightful and cogent it will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, you must read his chapter "Platonic Reconstruction". It is worth the cost of the entire book.

More Wanderings: http://www.broken-hill.net/wanderings/wander.html

Rosen displays uncanny ability here to touch the most vital issues in the conversations of so-called postmodern thinkers--"so-called" because he envisages them as continuing the work of enlightenment. That Derrida, Foucault, and others have critiqued western philosophy's dead ends is no accident, argues Rosen, because enlightenment thinkers such as Kant were themselves dealing with these problems. The dilemma of the relation between freedom and knowledge, for example, has led some--not necessarily Rosen--to the conclusion that reality is nothing more than what is politically entrenched. What Rosen wants to advocate, though, is that theory can glimpse a reality lying behind multiplicity of interpetation--"theoria" means "to get a look at." Finally, this book excels at explicating modern philosophical conversations, whether between Foucault and Habermas, Derrida and the Talmud, Kojeve and Strauss, or Rorty and Lyotard.