Abstract

In this appreciation of Robert Pippin’s work, I focus on locating his project by focusing on the way that the inner-outer distinction in action receives a distinctive shape in modernity. I profile Pippin’s view of this momentous change as a middle path between those who see it primarily in historical terms (Hannah Arendt and Reinhart Koselleck) and those who see it in primarily linguistic terms (Robert Brandom and John McDowell). Pippin’s middle way has two aspects. First, purposiveness, rather than any specific goal, provides the speculative identity of inner and outer; this is the conceptual middle path. Second, Pippin thinks that the pattern of historical justification can be used in local arguments for specific institutions without having to defend either Hegel’s own justification for his proposed state much less his conceptualization of world history as a whole; this is the social or historical middle path.