《时尚的哲学》是西美尔的文集，他的一贯主题、断片风格、暧昧行话、理论气质和哲学性情，在书中都展露无遗。

In this book, Hans Blumenberg disputes the view that the modern idea of progress represents a secularization of religious belief in some divine intervention (the coming of the Messiah, the end of the world) which consummates human history from outside. Drawing from sources ranging from Aristotle and Augustine to Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Kuhn - with an impressive number of stops between - he argues that progress always implies a process at work within history, a process that ultimately expresses human choices, human self-assertion, and man's responsibility for his own fate.Hans Blumenberg has been associated with Kiel University in Hamburg since 1947. The book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.

哲学归根到底关注的是人的命运。根据逻辑与历史、时代精神与时代相一致的原则，本书区分出西方哲学发展的前现代（古代）、早期现代、后期现代和后现代（当代）四种形态，并重点探讨现代哲学的历程。导论是对主体问题的概述，其余各章围绕主体的确立、主体的危机、主体的解体和主体的终结来揭示意识主体在现代性及其转折进程中的命运。本书几乎囊括了自笛卡尔以来的主要西方哲学流派，既具有宏大的理论视野，又具有强烈的问题意识。