The hermeneutic turn of philosophy, initiated by Dilthey and Heidegger, led to a reevaluation of understanding of the classical disciplines of philosophy, from ontology and epistemology to aesthetics and ethics. The cognitive importance of these disciplines have been relativized to the cultural conditions in which they operate. With regard to ethics, it does not lead to the creation of some new "hermeneutic ethics," but to the hermeneutic approach to ethics which underlines the value of existing morality and reduces the pretensions (...) of philosophical ethics to universal validity. This book presents it on the ground of a solid and innovatory analysis of ethical considerations of Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Guenter Abel. (Series: Philosophy: Research and Science / Philosophie: Forschung und Wissenschaft, Vol. 46) [Subject: Philosophy, Religious Studies, Ethics]. (shrink)

Sense, Meaning, and Understanding takes seriously the claim of Herbert Schnadelbach (originally expressed by d'Alembert) that even if we condemn the philosophizing in systems, we are still obliged to philosophize systematically. Thus, the book develops a systematic hermeneutical theory, based on Gadamer, Heidegger, Dithey, and Ricoeur. It analyzes different issues connected with this project which constitutes a new prima philsophia, such as: understanding as the main categories of modern anthropology, the notion and the limits of hermeneutical reason, and the hermeneutical (...) view on ethics and on the sciences. (Series: Development in Humanities - Vol. 9). (shrink)