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• Reflections on Robert B. Pippin's Philosophy by Other Means
• Charles Altieri

Robert Pippin's book is terrific in many ways.¹ He not only makes Hegel's aesthetic theorizing lucid; he makes it extremely attractive, especially in his account of how artists double the sensuous world so that an artwork embodies the presence of the spirit's labor. And he proposes a forceful case that Hegelian thinking can honor the contributions art makes to philosophy, given that a major challenge for philosophy is to capture "its own time reflected in thought." Hence G. W. F. Hegel treats works of literature "not as examples of an ideal or moral commitment or the expression of general norms, but as criterial aspects of just what it could be to espouse or avow such a value or, more important, … for such a value to lose its grip on its adherents" (p. 222, emphasis added).

The opening of his second essay, on J. M. Coetzee, elaborates this claim by making two assertions—"that fiction can be a distinctive form of thought, even a form of knowledge," and "that such knowledge is relevant to, has a bearing on, the sort of knowledge that philosophy, or at least some version of philosophy tries to achieve" (p. 240). Modern literature, in particular, offers this knowledge largely because it is obsessed with problems of self-reflection that are also basic to the age's philosophical concerns. Hegel shows that in modernity, self-consciousness must establish new imaginative relations between subjectivity and what seem objective conditions in order to address the inherent tensions and senses [End Page 234] of contradiction inevitable when persons face historical change on this large a scale. And Pippin's essays on literature show how significant, and how disturbing, the need for understanding these efforts at shaping identity can become.

I

I want first to register the kinds of observations Pippin's approach can develop for particular works of art. Then we will have a framework for clarifying and assessing his arguments, in ways that his dealing with art, especially modern writing, may help us dialectically stage how his views can be sublated. Pippin performs a minor, yet brilliant, example of sublation in his essay on Immanuel Kant's hatred of tragedy. Kant's aversion is based on his belief that we "cannot make ethical sense" (p. 35) of how tragedy contradicts anything reason can assert. (And in denying the power of moral reasoning, tragedy also denies the presence of the divine in human life.) This observation then becomes a difficult dilemma for philosophy: either we dismiss tragedy or we expand what counts as philosophy. But Pippin finds in philosophy the expansion he needs by deploying Friedrich Nietzsche's argument against Kant: what we "need in our response to tragedy is not understanding but strength" (p. 36).

The issue of tragedy deepens in Pippin's first essay on literature, about Henry James's What Maisie Knew, but largely because of what Pippin does not address. Pippin emphasizes how James thinks Maisie demonstrates to herself and to others that she can ultimately understand her position regarding her dangerously charming parents and caregivers. In Maisie's final choice to leave with her caregiver nurse, Mrs. Wix, she takes responsibility for her relationship to her entire social circle and demonstrates to its members her capacity to free herself from them. She thereby satisfies Hegel's demand that self-knowledge can reasonably be claimed only when one acts on that knowledge; and is capable, when challenged, of standing behind what she has determined. For she then accomplishes two feats. Her action presents self-knowledge not as a report of an inner state but as "a reflexive stance taken up for reasons in a social world" (p. 171). And it does so in a context of "social contestations" rather than settling for a limited projection of herself to herself (p. 164). However, I claim later that while James is certainly impressed by Maisie, her knowledge does not prevent the tragic consequence of dooming her to a life where her multiple virtues are not [End Page 235] likely to be realized. At times, literary texts show how self-knowledge...

中文翻译：

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通过其他方式反思罗伯特·B·皮平的哲学

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• 通过其他方式反思罗伯特·B·皮平的哲学
• 查尔斯·阿尔铁里

罗伯特·皮平的书在很多方面都很棒。¹他不仅使黑格尔的美学理论清晰明了；他使它极具吸引力，尤其是在他对艺术家如何将感性世界加倍以使艺术品体现精神劳动的存在的描述中。他提出了一个强有力的案例，即黑格尔思想可以尊重艺术对哲学的贡献，因为哲学的一个主要挑战是捕捉“反映在思想中的它自己的时代”。因此，GWF 黑格尔将文学作品“不是作为理想或道德承诺的例子或一般规范的表达，而是作为它可能是什么的标准方面拥护或宣扬这样的价值观，或者更重要的是，……让这样的价值观失去对其拥护者的控制”（第 222 页，着重强调）。

他关于 JM Coetzee 的第二篇文章的开头通过两个断言阐述了这一主张——“小说可以是一种独特的思想形式，甚至是一种知识形式”，以及“这种知识与，哲学或至少某种哲学版本试图获得的那种知识”（第 240 页）。尤其是现代文学，在很大程度上提供了这种知识，因为它沉迷于自我反省的问题，而这些问题也是这个时代哲学关注的基础。黑格尔表明，在现代性中，自我意识必须在主观性和看似客观的条件之间建立新的想象关系，以解决内在的紧张和感觉[完页 234]面对如此大规模的历史变革，矛盾不可避免。皮平关于文学的文章表明，理解这些塑造身份的努力的必要性是多么重要，多么令人不安。

我

我想首先记录下皮平的方法可以针对特定艺术作品发展出的各种观察结果。然后我们将有一个框架来澄清和评估他的论点，以他处理艺术，尤其是现代写作的方式，可以帮助我们辩证地展示他的观点如何被扬弃。皮平在他关于伊曼纽尔·康德对悲剧的仇恨的文章中做了一个次要但精彩的扬弃例子。康德的反感是基于他的信念，即我们“无法理解悲剧与理性所能断言的任何事情的矛盾”（第 35 页）。（在否认道德推理的力量的同时，悲剧也否认了人类生活中神圣的存在。）这种观察随后成为哲学的一个难题：我们要么摒弃悲剧，要么扩大哲学的范围。

悲剧的问题在皮平的第一篇关于文学的文章中加深了，关于亨利詹姆斯的梅西知道什么，但主要是因为 Pippin 没有解决的问题。皮平强调詹姆斯认为梅西如何向她自己和其他人证明她最终能够理解她对危险迷人的父母和照顾者的立场。在 Maisie 最终选择与她的护理护士 Wix 夫人一起离开时，她对自己与整个社交圈的关系负责，并向其成员展示了她摆脱他们的能力。因此，她满足了黑格尔的要求，即只有当一个人根据自我知识行动时，才能合理地宣称自我知识；并且在受到挑战时能够坚持自己的决定。因为她随后完成了两项壮举。她的行为不是将自我认识作为一种内在状态的报告，而是作为“在社会世界中出于原因而采取的反身立场”（第 171 页）。它是在“社会争论”的背景下这样做的，而不是满足于对自己的有限投射（第 164 页）。然而，我后来说，虽然詹姆斯确实对梅西印象深刻，但她的知识并不能阻止她注定要过一种她的多种美德都没有的生活的悲惨后果。【完235页】有可能实现。有时，文学作品展示了自知之明……