Abstract

To put modernity in its place. Such is the avowed goal of David Kolb’s important and impressive new book. Accordingly, it presents itself not merely as a contribution to the scholarly literature on Hegel and Heidegger, though it should be remarked at the outset that Kolb’s scholarship is sound and his acquaintance with the burgeoning literatures, not only in English and German, but in French and Italian as well, commendable and put to good use. Rather, Kolb’s conviction that Hegel and Heidegger are united in their “refusal to take as final the categories of modernity’s self-description” leads him to adopt the two thinkers as “guides” to an alternative understanding of the nature, place, and limits of modernity and the modern self understanding.