Philosophy For everyday - thought not for everyone

Abstract

The subtlety of contemporary philosophical reflection, proclaimed and magisterially displayed in Gillian Rose's The Broken Middle, is an effect of postmodern challenge, rather than inner tendency of modern thought; above all, this applies to the acceptance of inherent ambiguity of ‘:the middle’ - the space where possibility is recast into actuality, and hence of the infinity of philosophy's task. ‘The middle’, though already structured by the law (the ethical codification of morality), was through modern times the locale of moral solitude: what was determined was inescapability of choice. ‘The middle’ has been ‘broken’ - a site of freedom/ unfreedom, uncertainty/determination - from the start, yet the recognition of its nature has been hard earned mostly through the experience of persons/ categories refused or refusing ‘assimilation’ into the Law modernity stood for; what is called ‘postmodern condition’ is the universalization of that experience. Universalized, this experience is increasingly wary of the two most tried modern attempts to ‘repair’ ‘the middle’ - through the ‘general will’ or through the escape into privatized self.