Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (OPUS) [Paperback]

Very well written - I commend Robert Solomon on a job very well done.

This book is part seven of a larger study of the history of Western Civilisation but in a way it deals with the core issue of Western thought -the individual identity and its relationship to the world. It plots the rise and fall of the Transcendental Self starting with its Renaissance birth as described by Rousseau . From there the book progresses in a logical and roughly chronological manner to a very informative discussion of Kantian ethics and the Self as well as German Idealism. ( great reading for scholars interested in Germanic development in the last 300 years.) He devotes about ten short but information packed pages to the apex of the Transcendental Self as represented in Hegelian Thought. His attention to "der List der Vernunft" - the cunning of reason - as Hegels' reaction to the despair and Dostoevsky-like bitterness of post Napoleonic Europe is very well laid out. In a world no longer willing to accept the Will of God argument as a explanation of the brutality of mankind Hegel gives the world a grim consolation. Behind it all there is a rational process, a teleological argument - its is the Cunning of Reason. It is a wasteful but purposeful process that manifests in the Hegelian Dialectic.

But this process also ultimately have expanded the idea of the Transcendental Self beyond the indivudual of Schelling and Fichte. This individual is no longer important - the dialectic development deals in the Cunning of Reason not with individuals but only with nations/peoples. At this point it would have been apt of the author to point to the obvious - the development of the nation state (think of National Socialism and Communism in the twentieth century)as a type of reactionary effort to rediscover the Transcendental Self albeit in Hegelian form.

In such a way Hegel sows the seed for the collapse of the Transcendental self as exemplified in the thoughts of Schopenhauer, the British Empiricists and of course Nietsche. His chapter on Nietsche is a high point and my favourite. His handling of Feuerbach Marx and Kierkegaard is concise but sufficient in their attempt at dealing with the loss of a Absolute.

The book them moves eloquently to the next evolutionary phase - that of the Self rediscovering the self ( the individual ) Stripped of its Absolutes ,the magnitude of the Hegelian dialectic as seen of nation level gets personal. Husserl and his desperate search for a logical method to discover the Absolute fails in it epistemological fantasies. In the end Husserl declares - Der Traum is ausgetraumt -the dream is finished (loose translation) He then progresses to Freud and Wittgenstein as classical examples of the Hegelian outer world becoming a equally vast and cunning inner world where man is not always master of his own house.

The book then reaches another peak with the discussion on Heidegger and Hermeneutics. His explanation of Dasein is the clearest that I have read but his handling of Gadamers' refinements of Hermeneutical thought is not adequate enough for me.

The final Death of the Self is brilliantly concluded in the discussions of the French existentialists and Structuralism (mainly Derrida) His critique of Derrida is insightful and makes one desire more from the author

The ending paragraph sums it all up:" Between the Self as Absolute Spirit and the Self as nothing at all there seems to be very little difference."