Journal of the History of Philosophy

Edwards, Jeffrey, 1951-
The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition (review)
Journal of the History of Philosophy - Volume 38, Number 4, October 2000, pp. 609-610

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Jeffrey Edwards - The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition (review) - Journal of the History of Philosophy 38:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.4 (2000) 609-610 David Carr. The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xii + 150. Cloth, $35.00. This book presents a response to contemporary attacks on the concept of the subject. Carr investigates the historical background to the criticisms of the "Metaphysics of the Subject" that are found in French post-structuralist thought and in critical theories descended from the Frankfurt School. In explaining this background, he targets the widely held assumption that the history of modern philosophy can best be understood in terms of a fundamentally unified conception of the subject and subjectivity that unfolds inevitably from Descartes and culminates in twentieth-century phenomenology and existentialism. Those who share this assumption fail to recognize the significance of what Husserl (in the Crisis of European Sciences) called the "paradox of...