A particularly insightful commentary on Heidegger’s thinking, as well as a fascinating look at Gadamer himself.

ContentTruth-telling is an integral part of medical practice in many parts of the world. However, recent public inquiries, including the Francis Inquiry reveal that a duty of candour in practise, are at times compromised. Consequently, the duty of candour became a statutory requirement in England. This study aimed to explore clinicians’ perspectives of the implications of the legislation for medical ethics education, as raising standards to improve patient safety remains an international concern.MethodsOne-to-one interviews with clinical educators from various specialties who (...) contribute to the MBChB programme at the authors’ university. Once data saturation had been assessed, transcripts were analysed using a thematic approach by the following concurrent activities: data reduction and coding into themes. Example quotations are used to illustrate that key themes are grounded in the data.ResultsEleven clinical educators were interviewed; three general practitioners, six physicians and two surgeons. Thematic... (shrink)

In this book, internationally recognized scholars in philosophical hermeneutics discuss various aspects of language and linguisticality. The translations of Hans-Georg Gadamer's two recent essays provoke a preliminary discussion on the philosopher's polemic claim in Truth and Method—"Being that can be understood is language." Topics addressed by the contributors include the relationship of rituals to tradition and the immemorial; the unity of the word; conversation; translation and conceptuality; and the interrelationship between the art of writing and linguisticality. This work is of (...) critical importance to anyone interested in Gadamer's claims regarding the boundaries of language, the transition from the prelinguistic to linguistic realms, and the role of rituals in this transition. (shrink)

Workplace bullying is a phenomenon that can have serious detrimental effects on health, work-related attitudes, and the behavior of the target. Particularly, workplace bullying exposure has been linked to lower level of general well-being, job satisfaction, vigor, and performance and higher level of burnout, workplace deviance, and turnover intentions. However, the psychological mechanisms behind these relations are still not well-understood. Drawing on psychological contract and self-determination theory (SDT), we hypothesized that perceptions of contract violation and the frustration of basic needs (...) mediate the relationship between workplace bullying exposure and well-being, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes. Self-reported data were collected among employees with different working backgrounds (N= 1,257)viaAmazon's Mechanical Turk in an online survey. Results showed that feelings of contract violation and frustration of basic needs accounted for unique variation in well-being, work satisfaction, burnout, vigor, and turnover intentions, pointing to individual contributions of both psychological mechanisms. However, when controlled for frustration of basic needs, feelings of psychological contract violation were no longer a mediator between workplace bullying exposure and work performance. Helping employees to deal effectively with workplace bullying exposure might buffer its negative effects and reduce their experienced frustration of basic needs, preserving their well-being, vigor, and work performance and, eventually, prevent burnout. The present study is the first to concurrently elucidate the proposed psychological mechanisms and unique contributions of psychological contract violation and frustration of basic needs in the context of workplace bullying. (shrink)

Der Band widmet sich der Suche nach einem zur Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit alternativen Wahrheitsbegriff. Durch einen solchen Wahrheitsbegriff wird eine Orientierung des Menschen in der Welt moglich, die nicht ein Beharren auf der eigenen Meinung erzwingt, sondern einen Raum eroffnet, in dem sich der Mensch vertrauensvoll auf sein Gegenuber einlassen kann. In einer textnahen Lekture ausgewahlter Schriften Johann Georg Hamanns arbeitet der Autor heraus, wie ein Wahrheitsbegriff aussehen kann, der sich am Anderen orientiert. Dadurch kommen Glaube und Skepsis als Denkmoglichkeiten (...) in den Blick, die als Bewegung zum Anderen hin eine Orientierung des Menschen am Anderen ermoglichen und zugleich eine Theologie in Bewegung erfordern. (shrink)

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Fool’s Truth: Diderot, Goethe, and HegelJames SchmidtI. Of the many works that crossed from France into Germany during the “long” eighteenth century, none took as circuitous a route as Rameau’s Nephew. Begun by Diderot in 1761 but never published during his lifetime, the dialogue was among the works sent to Catherine the Great after his death in 1784. A copy of the manuscript was brought to Jena late (...) in 1804, where it was read by Schiller and passed on to Goethe, who immediately set about translating it into German. Goethe’s translation was published in the Spring of 1805 but, as Goethe later complained, made little impact on the German reading public. 1 There was, however, one notable exception: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.Hegel’s interpretation of Diderot’s dialogue in his 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit has long been an topic of considerable interest. Marxists—and, for that matter, Marx himself—have regarded the Phenomenology’s discussion of Diderot as illustrative of Hegel’s interest in the social and economic foundations of modern society. 2 For Lionel Trilling, it marked an important step in the genesis of the modern ideal of “authenticity.” 3 More recently, the tensions between Diderot’s “dialogizing” of the Enlightenment and the [End Page 625] Hegelian dialectic have been explored by a number of commentators. 4 Less attention, however, has been paid to the fact that the words Hegel appropriated were not, strictly speaking, Diderot’s, but rather came from Goethe’s translation. 5 Before Rameau’s Nephew could appear in the pages of Hegel’s Phenomenology, it first passed into German in a translation that, no less than Hegel, inserted the text into a rather different context from the one in which it had originated.A consideration of Hegel’s appropriation of Rameau’s Nephew thus involves us in questions about the transporting, translating, and transposing of works across borders, languages, and genres. I will begin by examining briefly how Goethe went about presenting an eighteenth century French text to a nineteenth-century German audience. I will then explore, at greater length, how Hegel went about situating this most peculiar of dialogues into his most baffling of books. Finally, I will reflect on some of the tensions between what Diderot wrote and what Hegel attempted to do with it.II. “Now, think of a city like Paris,” Goethe told Eckermann, bemoaning the “isolated, miserable sort of life” to which German intellectuals had been condemned. In Paris one could find “all of the leading minds of a great kingdom all together at the same spot, mutually instructing and advancing one another through daily contact, conflict, and rivalry.” The leading German intellectuals, in contrast, were scattered about: “There is one in Vienna, another in Berlin, another in Königsberg, another in Bonn or Düsseldorf, all fifty to a hundred miles away from each other, so that personal contact and personal exchange of ideas count as rare events.” In Paris “the best from the realms of nature and art from throughout the world lies open for daily inspection,” while “every passage over a bridge or a square recalls a mighty past” and “every street corner has evolved into a piece of history.” It was a city where “men such as Molière, Voltaire, Diderot, and the like have kept up a current of intellect such as has not been found in a single spot anywhere else in the entire world.” 6 Weimar, quite clearly, was not Paris.Rameau’s Nephew was so thoroughly a creature of Paris that the mere thought of rendering it into German might have dismayed a weaker soul than Goethe. Moi and Lui begin a conversation at the Café de la Régence that will [End Page 626] lead them from discussions of the contest between French and Italian styles in music to a consideration of the prospects for human autonomy. In between they will pass over such matters as the social utility of geniuses, the tension between aesthetics and morality, the proper upbringing of children, and the structure of social dependency, pausing from time to time as Lui loses himself in increasingly wilder pantomimes. Along the way... (shrink)

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects (...) for Europe in the coming years. Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger’s leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world’s leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the “fusion of horizons” also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture. (shrink)

This collection contains the first English translations of a group of important eighteenth-century German essays that address the question, "What is Enlightenment?" The book also includes newly translated and newly written interpretive essays by leading historians and philosophers, which examine the origins of eighteenth-century debate on Enlightenment and explore its significance for the present. In recent years, critics from across the political and philosophical spectrum have condemned the Enlightenment for its complicity with any number of present-day social and cultural maladies. (...) It has rarely been noticed, however, that at the end of the Enlightenment, German thinkers had already begun a scrutiny of their age so wide-ranging that there are few subsequent criticisms that had not been considered by the close of the eighteenth century. Among the concerns these essays address are the importance of freedom of expression, the relationship between faith and reason, and the responsibility of the Enlightenment for revolutions. Included are translations of works by such well-known figures as Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Johann Georg Hamann, as well as essays by thinkers whose work is virtually unknown to American readers. These eighteenth-century texts are set against interpretive essays by such major twentieth-century figures as Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault. (shrink)

This chapter argues that as the tradition of hermeneutic reflection develops, it should come to show more clearly this very real and original concern with ethical life. It is also the most promising way of thinking the questions of ethics in our times. The chapter remarks on this topic to Gadamer's work on the ethical sensibility of hermeneutics. There are four rather obvious links between hermeneutic theory and ethics that can help illuminate this claim. First, hermeneutics is formulated with reference (...) to the question of ethical judgment as it is developed by Kant in his Third Critique; second, it is modeled on Aristotle's notion of ϕρóνησíς in his Nicomachean Ethics; third, it is concerned with conversation and listening, and with the need to engage others genuinely; and fourth, it is animated by a deep respect for alterity and a sensitivity to the complexities of historical realities. (shrink)

What are the assumptions and tasks hidden in contemporary calls to "overcome" the metaphysical tradition? Reflecting upon the internal contradictions of the notions of "tradition" and "finiteness," Dennis J. Schmidt offers novel insights into how philosophy must relate to its traditions if it is to retain a vital sense of the plurality of "edges" that constitute its finiteness. He does this through a close examination of issues found in the work of Hegel and Heidegger, two philosophers who made the (...) ideas of both tradition and finiteness the center of their concern.Schmidt begins by asking how Heidegger can claim to have destroyed metaphysics despite Hegel's claim to have perfected its possibilities. Systematically following the development of Heidegger's critique of Hegel, Schmidt generates a dialogue between them. The topic of that dialogue is the nature of finiteness as it is articulated in time, nothing, the dialectical and hermeneutical circles, and in the notions of experience, work, technology, history, and preSocratic thought.Beginning with Heidegger's critique of Hegel in Being and Time, Schmidt's strategy is to disclose the complexities of philosophical discourse about the finite by drawing out the proximities between Hegel and Heidegger. The dialogue that results presents novel portraits of both philosophers. It also reveals that Heidegger's early, unacknowledged failure to separate himself from the Hegelian dialectic is the motive behind many of the turns and decisions of his later career.In concluding, Schmidt offers an interpretation of the wider significance of the results of that dialogue, and connects his study to other contemporary discussions of postmodernism. He expands upon the idea of the plurality of edges opened by finiteness, arguing that philosophy only understands its own past and future once it recognizes the meaning of its own finiteness.Dennis J. Schmidt is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton. The Ubiquity of the Finite is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

The principal theme of the book is the fundamental problem of Marxist studies: the development of a theory of history that is an "epistemological reflection of materialist historical thought" and from which a rigorous methodology can evolve. In particular, Schmidt advances a view of history that reaffirms the reality and value of the actual content of historical experience. In the first half of the book, Schmidt returns to the historical texts of Hegel and Marx, and presents an original (...) and suggestive account of Marx's appropriation of Hegel, and most importantly, of the concept of "dialectical mediation" of logic and history. These sections focus on the perennial opposition of "logic," "theory," "system", and "structure," on the one hand, and "history-as-narrative" on the other, and argue that holding with only one side of this opposition—either structure without history or history without structure—is unfaithful to Marx and also makes for inadequate history. The final half of the book presents the opposing sides of the current debate between the two most influential streams of Marxist theory—structuralism vs. critical theory—and enters the debate by outlining the critical-theoretic arguments against the structuralists and what Schmidt sees as the modern loss of the sense of history and historical consciousness, as well as by appropriating for Marxist historiography what is of value in structuralism. This debate is given concrete form through the discussion of the writings of the French structuralist Louis Althusser and of the dialectically contradictory outlook of Antonio Gramsci. (shrink)

There are broad and narrow senses of hermeneutic application as well as of hermeneutic praxis. The broad sense of hermeneutic application means using what one has already understood in some later situation. Hermeneutic praxis in the narrow sense refers to an interpreter using a hermeneutic theory to interpret written or spoken language. The narrow sense of hermeneutic application is discussed by Hans‐Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method as the central problem of philosophical hermeneutics. Friedrich Schleiermacher had noted that the lax (...) practice of hermeneutics, which had been previously the main form of hermeneutics, assumes that understanding usually succeeds and that interpretation is only called for in difficult cases where misinterpretation might occur. Usually, after one has understood, interpreted, and applied an order to the concrete situation, one would carry out that order as it was understood. This action that follows from understanding is hermeneutic praxis in the broad sense. (shrink)

De George's account of philosophical and theological approaches to business ethics presupposes a particular view of the logic of argumentation. This paper presents an alternative model for describing arguments that has been suggested by Stephen Toulmin. It uses this model to qualify De George's claim that philosophers are justified in their indifference to the work of theologians in business ethics.Consider what you think justice requires, and decide accordingly. But never give your reasons; for your judgment will probably be (...) right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong. (shrink)

In this essay, the author argues that Dennis Schmidt’s considerations of ethical life, when taken together, comprise a prescient and distinctive response to Heidegger’s call to pursue an ‘original ethics.’ In this, Schmidt disavows discourses within the discipline of ethics that seek to establish an ethical theory or position, arguing instead that the demands of ethical life require us to focus on the incalculable singularity of the factical situations in which we find ourselves. The author suggests that (...) class='Hi'>Schmidt’s contributions to such an original ethical turns on Schmidt’s claims that the context of ethical life is fraught because bound up with radical finitude—though, for that very reason, also tender because marked by the need to care for one another in our vulnerability and fragileness. (shrink)

Any determination of Hans‐Georg Gadamer's place in Continental philosophy needs to begin by noting that his contribution to that tradition is associated with the style of philosophizing designated as “hermeneutics.” But while a presentation of Gadamer's thought is well‐advised to begin with a discussion of his conception of hermeneutics, it must not end with that theme. In fact, what is perhaps most notable about Gadamer's work is both its historical and disciplinary breadth as well as the wide range of issues (...) that it addresses. That engagement with the history of philosophy and such a diverse collection of issues is itself a reflection of the project of hermeneutics as Gadamer has developed it: not a “method,” Gadamer's hermeneutics is more aptly described as the effort to solicit the experience of limits harbored by all experience, and to demonstrate that this experience of finitude is not restricted only to some forms of experience. So one turns to his body of work and finds significant texts on ancient Greek philosophy and literature, all forms of art, translation, questions of contemporary culture and politics, theology, as well as issues in medicine and health. Just as one finds a remarkable pluralization of the fields in which Gadamer's hermeneutics can take root, so too one finds a similar situation with respect to the formative influences upon Gadamer's thought: while he is most frequently associated with the name of his teacher, heidegger (Article 18), it is clear that Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Holderlin, kant (Article 2), hegel (Article 6), dilthey (Article 37), husserl (Article 15), Rilke, and Celan need to be understood as providing many of the decisive impulses for Gadamer's own original philosophic contributions. (shrink)

The cultural politics of Catholic restoration under Mary Tudor have been as crucial to the historical legacy of Thomas More as More's image was to the regime's own historical self-presentation. Not only did the Marian period see the first reappearance in print of many of More's writings after twenty years, the overwhelming presence of More's figure and work in official Catholic discourse, especially from 1556 onwards, also generated many instances of implicit Morean echoes pervading a great variety of Marian literary (...) texts and genres. This essay analyses a number of such hidden presences of More within classical translations of the period, from John Brende's History of Quintus Curtius, which was issued almost simultaneously with the 1553 Marian edition of More's Dialogue of Comfort, to George Colvile's Boethius and Nicholas Grimald's De officiis, whose appearance coincided with the preparation of More's English Workes for print. As it emerges, such implicit echoes and allusions to More's life and writings not only reshaped the classical works themselves, both updating them and enriching them with additional cultural and political significations; above all they helped to invest the program of Marian religious restoration with the credentials of classical learning promoted by the early Tudor humanists. (shrink)

In his 1969 Trevelyan Lectures, Franco Venturi argued that Kant's response to the question ?What is Enlightenment?? has tended to promote a ?philosophical interpretation? of the Enlightenment that leads scholars away from the political questions that were central to its concerns. But while Kant's response is well known, it has been often misunderstood by scholars who see it as offering a definition of an historical period, rather than an attempt at characterizing a process that had a significant implications. This article (...) seeks (1) to clarify, briefly, the particular question that Kant was answering, (2) to examine ? using Jürgen Habermas? work as a case in point ? the tension between readings that use Kant's answer as a way of discussing the Enlightenment as a discrete historical period and those readings that see it as offering a broad outline of an ?Enlightenment Project? that continues into the present, and (3) to explore how Michel Foucault, in a series of discussions of Kant's response, sketched an approach to Kant's text that offers a way of reframing Venturi's distinction between ?philosophical? and ?political? interpretations of the Enlightenment. ??Thanks to an invitation from Karlis Racevskis, an earlier version of this article was delivered as the George R. Havens Lecture at Ohio State University in May 2007. I have also benefitted from discussions at a workshop arranged by Kenneth Baynes at Syracuse University in November 2009. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. Excerpt: Since I agree with von Glasersfeld’s proposal I will not criticise it in my commentary; instead I shall try to augment this proposal starting with an argument von Glasersfeld borrows from Georg Simmel, viz. the importance of reciprocal effect in the course of socialisation.

Key to Gadamer's theory of hermeneutics are notions of translation, conversation, and openness. What is often not known is just how much Gadamer himself embodied those notions in his own practice as a teacher and a friend. In what follows, I speak of how the man I knew Hans-Georg Gadamer to be, illustrated some of the traits of hermeneutic theory that show that such a theory is always a practice of life and an ethical practice. Not a theoretical text but (...) a recollection follows. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.21(4) 2002: 223–227. (shrink)

Although it might go without mention, editor Bret Davis nevertheless reminds us on the first page of his introduction to Key Concepts that “Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is widely considered to be the most famous, influential, and controversial philosopher of the twentieth century.” This really fine new companion put together by Davis promises to elucidate the main lines of Heidegger’s thought at a moment when Heidegger is perhaps receiving more scholarly attention and, indeed, more diverse scholarly attention, than at any previous (...) time. Alongside the vast and ever-growing body of literature on Heidegger, not only has a new edition of Joan Stambaugh’s English translation of Being and Time, revised by Dennis Schmidt, now appeared (State University of New York Press, 2010) but also previously untranslated writings are being put into English at an impressive clip. The purpose of Key Concepts, as Davis indicates in the “Acknowledgements,” is to facilitate readers’ access to Heidegger’s thought with a companion that strikes a mean between more advanced scholarly treatments of Heidegger’s ideas and more introductory surveys. (shrink)