Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-352) and indexes

"Bourgeois philosophy" and the problem of the subject -- The Kantian aftermath : reaction and revolution in modern German philosophy -- Necessary conditions for the possibility of what isn't : Heidegger on failed meaning -- Gadamer's Hegel : subjectivity and reflection -- Negative ethics : Adorno on the falseness of bourgeois life -- The unavailability of the ordinary : Strauss on the philosophical fate of modernity -- Hannah Arendt and the bourgeois origins of totalitarian evil -- On not being a neo-structuralist : remarks on Manfred Frank and romantic subjectivity -- Leaving nature behind, or, Two cheers for subjectivism : on John McDowell -- Postscript : On McDowell's response to "Leaving nature behind" -- The ethical status of civility -- Medical practice and social authority in modernity -- "The force of felt necessity" : literature, ethical knowledge, and law -- What was abstract art? (from the point of view of Hegel) -- On "becoming who one is" (and failing) : Proust's problematic selves

Discussing Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Leo Strauss, Manfred Frank, & John McDowell, Robert Pippin attempts to understand how subjectivity arise in contemporary institutional practices such as medicine, as well as in other contexts such as modernism in the visual arts & in the novels of Marcel Proust