The Story of the Rise and fall of the Modern Subject

Ardebili, Mohammad Mehdi

doi:10.30465/crtls.2020.5284

The Story of the Rise and fall of the Modern Subject

Document Type : Research

Author

Mohammad Mehdi Ardebili

PhD in West Philosophy, Assistant Professor, Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.30465/crtls.2020.5284

Abstract

The concept of the subject, along with concepts such as object, God, and substance, is one of the most important concepts in the history of philosophy. Each of these concepts can be used to narrate a history of philosophy. This is precisely the mission of Robert C. Salman that he sets out for himself in his book The Rise and Fall of the Self (A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 7). He began the history of the subject, or, in his own terms, 'History of the Self' from the beginning of German idealism in the second half of the eighteenth century, with Kant (together with prominent idealists such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel), to the first glimpses of the collapse of modern subjectivity and proliferation of critical approaches, such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger. In the end, he ends his discussion with the most prominent postmodern figures, such as Foucault and Derrida. The present article focuses on the first Persian translation of this book, rather than the formal and content review of this work. As a result, the present article is more than a mere critique of the book’s content itself, a critique of translation that, although it criticizes a particular translation, hopes that this critique will provide a critical analysis about the translation of philosophical works in general.

Keywords

Robert Solomon

Self

Modern

Continental Philosophy

Subjects