Robert B. Pippin
Author of Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture
About the Author
Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Henry James and Modern Moral Life. After the Beautiful, several books on modern German philosophy, and five books on film and philosophy, most recently, Filmed Thought: show more Cinema as Reflective Form, also published by the University of Chicago Press. show less
Image credit: Photo courtesy the University of Chicago Experts Exchange (link)
Series
Works by Robert B. Pippin
Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture (1991) 100 copies
Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy) (2010) 47 copies, 1 review
Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy (2010) 42 copies
Od Hegla do westerna 1 copy
Associated Works
The Philosopher's Handbook: Essential Readings from Plato to Kant (2000) — Introduction — 234 copies, 1 review
Literary imagination, ancient and modern : essays in honor of David Grene (1999) — Contributor — 9 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Pippin, Robert B.
- Legal name
- Pippin, Robert Buford
- Birthdate
- 1948-09-14
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Pennsylvania State University (MA|1972|Ph.D|1974)
Trinity College (BA|1970) - Occupations
- philosopher
professor - Organizations
- University of Chicago
University of California, San Diego - Awards and honors
- German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2016)
American Philosophical Society (2008)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007)
Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2003) - Short biography
- Robert B. Pippin is an American philosopher best known for his work on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He has also researched Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marcel Proust, Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Henry James and the philosophy of film.
Robert Pippin is one of the best-known researchers in the field of German idealism, especially Kant and Hegel. His research interests lie in the history of philosophy, epistemology and ethics. In recent years he has also paid intensive attention to research into theories of modernity.
Pippin has a range of interdisciplinary interests, particularly the relationship between philosophy and literature. He has written a book on Henry James and articles on Proust, modern art and contemporary film. Among other things, he dealt with the fatalism in American film noir and the importance of the western directors Howard Hawks and John Ford for political philosophy. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Portsmouth, Virginia, USA
- Places of residence
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Quite a conundrum with this one, since it won't be much use to you if you haven't read Hegel, but if you've read Hegel you've probably read it with the exact opposite assumptions to those claims with which Pippin convincingly claims you should be reading. In short: Hegel should be read as a Kantian. The Phenomenology of Spirit shows that self-consciousness is needed for any form of knowledge, and discusses a variety of forms of self-consciousness, most of which fail in the goal of providing show more us with the opportunity to know anything. Only one doesn't: modern, absolute knowledge. This is, in a sense, what is then laid out in the Science of Logic, which is not about crazy metaphysical monism of the mind, nor a mere category theory (that is, a theory of the concepts *we* use). It's something in between: both an account of the concepts we use, and a defense of the claim that they are also really determinate of the possibility of knowledge.
That's all pretty convincing, actually. The obvious flaw in the book is it's failure to look beyond Hegel at all: it's all well and good to claim that 'modern' Absolute Knowledge provides us with knowledge, but that's not actually a defense of modernity. That would require a defense of capitalism, amongst other unfortunate social features, or, alternatively, a critique of those features. But Pippin's dismissive attitude towards later Hegelians (e.g., the Frankfurt School) makes it impossible for him to take this next step. His book does, however, allow for the possibility of taking it. show less
Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy) by Robert B. Pippin
Hegel makes the key and disarming arguments that "self-consciousness is desire itself" and that it achieves its "satisfaction" only in another self-consciousness in the most famous chapter of his most important philosophical work, the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel on Self-Consciousness offers a ground-breaking new understanding of these revolutionary assertions, tracing their origins to Kant's philosophy and establishing their continuing significance for modern thought.
This is like the book I've been hoping for so long! Except not quite.
Pippin's awesome. Zero bullshit.
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 27
- Also by
- 8
- Members
- 780
- Popularity
- #32,629
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 86
- Languages
- 2