This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer'sKleine Schriften,dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and ...

The paper begins with an overview of the historical roots of philosophical hermeneutics grounded in the work of Husserl and Heidegger. It goes on to explore the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer as a philosophy useful to nursing research. The four concepts of prejudice, the fusion of horizons, the hermeneutic circle and play are discussed, as are the implications these concepts have for nursing research. These concepts have been utilized in the author's own research and (...) examples from this research are given to illuminate how these concepts can be shaped to the purposes of nursing research. While the concepts discussed stem from the work of Gadamer, the ways they have been utilized by the author do not represent a Gadamerian method. Gadamer's project is purely philosophical. (shrink)

In this lucid and elegantly written book, Joel Weinsheimer discusses how the insights of Hans-Georg Gadamer alter our understanding of literary theory and interpretation. Weinsheimer begins by surveying modern hermeneutics from Schleiermacher to Riocoeur, showing that Gadamer’s work is situated in the middle of an ongoing dialogue. Gadamer’s hermeneutics, says Weinsheimer, is specifically philosophical for it explores how understanding occurs at all, not how it should be regulated in order to function more rigorously or effectively. According to (...) Weinsheimer, Gadamer views understanding as an effect of history, not an action but a passion, something that happens to the interpreter. Gadamer offers a new model of historical understanding that is based on metaphor: it fuses the different into the same but, like metaphor, does not repress difference. Similarly, Gadamer’s critique of the semiotic conception of language redresses the balance between difference and sameness in the relation of word and world. The common thread in the contributions of philosophical hermeneutics to literary theory is the multifaceted tension between the one and the many, between sameness and difference. This appears in metaphor and application, in the complex dialogue between the past and present, and between the interpretation and the interpreted generally. In the final chapter of the book, “The Question of the Classic,” Weinsheimer explores the implications of this analysis of Gadamer’s hermeneutics for the current debate concerning the study of the canon and the classic. (shrink)

Published in German during the last 15 years, the 13 essays in this volume provide readers with valuable knowledge of the much discussed theme of hermeneutics today. Gadamer was an early student of Martin Heidegger and has been a lifelong friend and interpreter. These essays are an outgrowth of Gadamer's Truth and Method. They can be understood, however, independently of it. Gadamer's standpoint is a blend of Hegel's and Heidegger's, with his own independent development in part. The book contains (...) a long and highly competent introduction by the editor, David E. Linge, who has translated most of the essays. - Choice, on back cover. (shrink)

One of the fundamental theses of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is that all knowledge is historically conditioned. This thesis appears to be self-refuting. That is, it appears to contradict itself insofar as its assertion that every knowledge claim is historically conditioned seems to assert an absolute, unconditionally true knowledge claim. If the historicity thesis does, in fact, refute itself in this way, then that spells trouble for philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer was well aware of this, and so he (...) attempts in several passages to respond to this charge of self-contradiction. Those passages, however, are brief and difficult to understand. They consequently have been either neglected or inadequately understood. This paper makes better sense of those passages in order to defend Gadamer’s historicity thesis as coherent. (shrink)

The history of philosophical hermeneutics is one of expanding scope—moving from the interpretation of religious texts, to all texts, to understanding in the human sciences, to all understanding. As its scope expands it intersects with a wider range of philosophical traditions; only by making these intersections explicit can the key themes of philosophical hermeneutics come forward. I consider two central hermeneutic claims—that nature can be thought of as a text and that insights drawn from understanding (...) texts illuminate all understanding. These ideas have roots in the Liber Naturae, especially in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor and of Robert Boyle. Understanding how they each see nature as a text enables us to clarify how Hans-Georg Gadamer must see it and draws our attention to his neglected phenomenology of reading. (shrink)

This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer's _Kleine Schriften, _dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer applies hermeneutical analysis to Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology, an approach that proves critical and instructive.

In this wide-ranging historical introduction to philosophical hermeneutics, Jean Grondin discusses the major figures from Philo to Habermas, analyzes conflicts between various interpretive schools, and provides a persuasive critique of Gadamer's view of hermeneutic history, though in other ways Gadamer's Truth and Method serves as a model for Grondin's approach. Grondin begins with brief overviews of the pre-nineteenth-century thinkers Philo, Origen, Augustine, Luther, Flacius, Dannhauer, Chladenius, Meier, Rambach, Ast, and Schlegel. Next he provides more extensive treatments of such (...) major nineteenth-century figures as Schleiermacher, Böckh, Droysen, and Dilthey. There are full chapters devoted to Heidegger and Gadamer as well as shorter discussions of Betti, Habermas, and Derrida. Because he is the first to pay close attention to pre-Romantic figures, Grondin is able to show that the history of hermeneutics cannot be viewed as a gradual, steady progression in the direction of complete universalization. His book makes it clear that even in the early period, hermeneutic thinkers acknowledged a universal aspect in interpretation--that long before Schleiermacher, hermeneutics was philosophical and not merely practical. In revising and correcting the standard account, Grondin's book is not merely introductory but revisionary, suitable for beginners as well as advanced students in the field. (shrink)

This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer's _Kleine Schriften, _dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer applies hermeneutical analysis to Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology, an approach that proves critical and instructive.

Agronomic science or technoscience has an important role in contemporary times and is the focus of necessary philosophical investigations. The present study aimed to relate Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics with the Laudanian concept of philosophy of science, also applied to the philosophy of technology within the agronomic context. The central question to be answered is: can Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics apply to the understanding of agronomy? Given this, central references and commentators were selected, dividing the dialogue between (...) the authors and the argumentation into the following points: sciences, technologies, and Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics; agronomic traditions and their Laudanian progress; reaching the final possibility of intersections between Gadamer and Laudan, when reflecting on agronomy, especially on the theme of traditions. (shrink)

1施莱尔玛赫 contribution to the development施莱尔玛赫for hermeneutics in the development of Historically hermeneutics In order to make a decisive turn when he made ​​the future "general hermeneutics" , hermeneutics will be applied to all text interpretation. When the traditional hermeneutics contains In order to understand, description and application,施莱尔玛赫the attention is hermeneutics as "the art of understanding." 施莱尔玛赫also introduced the interpretation of psychology, can penetrate the text by means of its author's individuality and flexibility soul. He (...) wanted to become a systematic hermeneutics, and criticism of previous hermeneutics is "the rules of the merger," and the lack of coherence. Wu Ning speaking, they deal with different issues is a combination of methods. 施莱尔玛赫hermeneutics points to avoid misunderstanding of the text. This part is up to the final discussion of施莱尔玛赫criticism of the United States. 2. Dilthey contribution to the philosophical hermeneutics of Dilthey on施莱尔玛赫In order to write the thesis, including In order to Protestant hermeneutics history, from the Reformation to the future as a second reference books. He was a learned scholar and has been on many topics regardless above. For our purposes, Dilthey is a philosopher with a passion for life, he was placed In order to humanities and social sciences and natural sciences in an established full equality of points, by the foundation on the hermeneutics In order to develop a basic methodology. But in the science competition, he was seeking "Allgemeingultigkeit", a universal validity, to do so In order to give him too much towards the foundation to the scientific methods of thought. He is still a major development of the character of philosophical hermeneutics. 3 Heidegger before and on philosophical hermeneutics, "and there is time" contribution to the development of philosophical hermeneutics is the decisive shift in Heidegger, born with the future, there are original philosopher The early works. He Freiburg Hu plugs Seoul assistant, and in the phenomenological Hu stopper Seoul In order to create a useful set up beyond the traditional methods of philosophy, but he is still too dependent on science Hu stopper Marco effectiveness. Part I: description of the evolution of the early Heidegger: "ontology - the fact of hermeneutics," the book published after the death of Heidegger was published in 1999, English translation, Heidegger in this series by the fact that the ontology of hermeneutics In order to give us a hermeneutic understanding of his meaning. In order to avoid the traditional hermeneutics of his meaning, In order to return to the ancient hope臘hermeneueinc and hermeneia idiom. He attempts to go beyond the limits of contemporary objects, through the period of return to the ancient hope臘general language idioms. Hermeneutic encounter with the interpretation of Homer's description of the mouth, publish, translate and interpret. His description of historical hermeneutics in the pull-down maps and sub ​​Lane Park after a groundbreaking Aristotle hope臘idioms in the loss of richness and decline. But the hermeneutics of Heidegger speaking the method is close to something, such as early speech hermeneutics In order to approach closer to the truth of it is understandable the former interpretation of this domain as there face life. For this last hermeneutics as the method of self-understanding, but in a letter to his students Engelbert Kerbs letter, Heidegger also emphasizes the history In order to recognize the character. Us from our understanding of historical context, our understanding of the structure is formed by shaping the concept of history and even our language. In Dilthey's hermeneutics, he also stressed that understanding the historical basis. From Dilthey to Heidegger this view. Heidegger in his speech defines hermeneutics as "the fact of participation, close, and descriptions of the same interrogation methods." Hermeneutics is the interpretation of not only understanding knowledge as a negative process, but active participation, interrogation and close. Fact of itself is interpreted, it is through understanding the questions and answers something. Heidegger back to the necessary conditions for our understanding of factors, understanding of "the former structure." He describes some part of the former, is awareness and understanding of nature, we understand something "to" something, and we understand it in a specific historical context. Further more, we expect to understand it in the presence of a sight, not a determining sexual arousal by the sight, by the basic problems of the future horizon, it is "the possibility of there," the sight, for there is a special special possible time horizon. These early works of Heidegger has been found there the possibility of meaning. We all都leadership to a new concept of the humanities. In addition, as a rational animal, as Aristotle said sub-Lane, who is of a future there may not be included, including the timing of there. People are looking to understand their own there. Instructions to Heidegger, hermeneutics offers a new concept for the person's point of view. Part II: there and time hermeneutics is first mentioned in the "there and the time," Section VII, Heidegger phenomenology has been interpreted as if it is. In order that he found "the meaning of phenomenological description as a way to rely on hermeneutics, phenomenology of this and some of the logos have hermeneuein the characteristics of this phenomenology is to use some basic meaning of the word hermeneutics, it indicates the work In order to interpret . "In the second sense, Heidegger found in hermeneutics裡are there for the meaning of this method of exposing the shield. The third meaning is the interpretation of this promising continuous manner so that its future is possible, it's future there. Section 31 of hermeneutics is important, because there is some understanding that is. Understanding the process is the center of human existence, in Section 32 entitled "interpretation and understanding," understanding the interpretation built on. Visit the world around it and understand things as this or that, always never as pure consciousness. As Heidegger said, "always had to watch as the ability to understand and interpret", in other words, there is no precedence in the interpretation of pure consciousness, there is always ask questions and interpretation of the visual field. Section 44, regardless Heidegger also true about management, in its modern form as a true statement, is always carried a deeper understanding and interpretation of the export process. But the really right is defined as the management there has been an associate of knot, so it access to basic ontology of sight. It is obvious that there's open, this hole is to guide him toward the police point of view of the artistic part of the next lecture will be discussed. This lecture primarily presents the two early works of Heidegger in which hermeneutics plays a definitive role. As background, the contributions of Schleiermacher and Dilthey are presented briefly before going into Heidegger's contribution. Ⅰ. Schleiermacher's Contribution to the Development of a Philosophical Hermeneutics Schleiermacher made a decisive turn in the history of hermeneutics when he proposed a "Universal Hermeneutics," a hermeneutics that would apply to all kinds of text interpretation. While traditional hermeneutics included moments of understanding, explication and application, Schleiermacher focused on hermeneutics as the "art of understanding . "Schleiermacher also introduced psychological interpretation whereby one tried to penetrate the individuality and soul of the author of a text. He wanted hermeneutics to be systematic, and he criticized previous hermeneutics for being only an" amalgam of rules "and lacking systematic coherence. Rather , they were methods for dealing with an array of different kinds of problems. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics was directed at avoiding misunderstanding of the text. At the end of this section Gadamer's criticisms of Schleiermacher will be discussed. Ⅱ. Dilthey's Contribution to Philosophical Hermeneutics Dilthey wrote his dissertation on Schleiermacher and included a history of Protestant hermeneutics since the Reformation as a second companion volume. He was a broadly educated professor and wrote on many topics. For our purposes, Dilthey was a life-philosopher with a passion for placing the Humanities and Social Sciences on an equal footing with the Natural Sciences by developing a basic methodology for them based on hermeneutics. But in competing with the sciences, he sought an "Allgemeingultigkeit," a universal validity, and in doing so he tended to give too much ground to the way of thinking in the sciences. Still, he is a major figure in the development of philosophical hermeneutics. Ⅲ. The Contribution of Martin Heidegger to Philosophical Hermeneutics before and in Being and Time The decisive turn in the development of a philosophical hermeneutics came in the early writings of Martin Heidegger, a radical and original philosopher. He was in Freiburg an assistant to Husserl and found in Husserl's phenomenology a useful way of overcoming traditional philosophy, but he still found Husserl too preoccupied with scientific validity. Part Ⅰ: Heidegger's Early Lectures: Ontology-the Hermeneutics of Facticity A posthumously published and translated set of Heidegger's lectures on ontology in terms of a hermeneutics of facticity gives us a sense of his understanding of hermeneutics. He bypassed the traditional sense of hermeneutics and went back to the Greek usage of hermeneuein and hermeneia. He attempted to overcome the limitations of modern objectivity by returning to the usages current in ordinary language in ancient Greece. There hermeneutics meant orally interpreting Homer, announcing, translating, and explaining. His account of the history of hermeneutics after Plato and Aristotle is a history of decline and loss of the richness found in Greek usage. But hermeneutics for Heidegger meant a means of access to something, and in these early lectures hermeneutics became an interpretive means of access to facticity, to the realm of pre-interpretive understanding as Dasein faces life. Ultimately hermeneutics became a means for the self-understanding for Dasein. But in a letter to his student, Engelbert Krebs, Heidegger also emphasizes the historical character of cognition. We understand from our situation in history, and our understanding is structured by historically shaped concepts and even our language. Dilthey, too, emphasized the historical matrix for understanding in his hermeneutics, and Heidegger took this up from Dilthey. Heidegger defined hermeneutics in the opening lines of the lectures as "the unified manner of the engaging, approaching, accessing, interrogating, and explication of facticity." Hermeneutics as interpretation is not just understanding as a passive process of cognition but an active engaging, interrogating, and accessing. Facticity itself is interpretive in that it sees what something is through question and answer. Heidegger is stepping back into the factors that precondition our understanding, the "forestructure" of understanding. This forehaving, he says, belongs to the very nature of knowing and understanding. We see something "as "something, and we see it in a specific historical situation. Furthermore, we see it in an existential horizon of expectation, a horizon haunted by uncertainty, by the" fundamental questionability of the future, that is of "possible being," of what is possible for this particular being at this particular time and place. Already in these early works Heidegger finds in the sense of what is possible being, a sense of "ontic questionability, care, restlessness, anxiety, temporality." All of this leads to a new conception of humanity. Instead of being an animal endowed with reason, as in Aristotle, a human being is a being with a possible future, a being with temporality. Humans are beings seeking to know themselves. Hermeneutics, Heidegger says, offers the standpoint for a new conception of the human being. Part Ⅱ: Being and Time The first mention of hermeneutics is in section 7 of Being and Time, where Heidegger is already interpreting phenomenology as letting what is show itself. He finds that " the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation. The logos of the phenomenology of Dasein has the character of hermēneúein. The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the original signification of the word, where it designates the work of interpreting. "In a second sense, Heidegger finds in hermeneutics a means of uncovering the meaning of being for Dasein. And the third sense is the interpretation Dasein as continually making its future possibilities, its future being. Section 31 is important to hermeneutics because there the being of Dasein is said to be understanding. Understanding is the central process of an existing human being. In section 32, titled "Understanding and Interpretation," interpretation builds on understanding. It looks around at the surrounding world and sees things as this or that, always already , never as pure perception. As Heidegger puts it, "The seeing of this sight is always already understanding and interpreting." In other words, there is no pure perception prior to interpretation; there is always the horizon of questioning and interpreting. In section 44, Heidegger argues that truth, too, in its modern forms as statements which are true, is derivative from the deeper processes of understanding and interpreting that are always already going on. But when truth is rightfully defined in connection with being, then it moves into the horizon of fundamental ontology. It is the disclosure of being. This insight is part of what leads him to his view of art, which we will discuss in the next lectur. (shrink)

The paper applies Gadamerian hermeneutics to everyday situations of nonverbal social interaction in the urban space. First, relevant aspects of urban encounters are briefly discussed with philosophical hermeneutics’ relation to nonverbal communication and bodily understanding. Second, hermeneutic understanding is presented as conversation, and the ethical implications of hermeneutics are articulated: as philosophical practice, Gadamerian hermeneutics is about intensifying the voice of the other. There is a demand for mutual openness towards otherness. Connected to this (...) attitude required for hermeneutic encounters are the ideas of a cosmopolitan public sphere and an inclusive hermeneutic community. After attending to these, the value of specifically urban encounters can be articulated. Urban context and built environment can in good circumstances assist in encountering the other hermeneutically. The passing communicative situations can be negotiations of meanings and values, instances of public sphere. The urban mass society with its crowds has potentiality to enact an inclusive hermeneutic community. To conclude, the consequences of our failures to engage hermeneutically with each other are discussed in a plea for hermeneutic openness. (shrink)

Buddhas, gods, prophets and oracles are often depicted as asking questions. But what are we to understand when Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?”, or Mazu, the Classical Zen master asks, “Why do you seek outside?" Is their questioning a power or weakness? Is it something human beings are only capable of due to our finitude? Is there any kind of question that is a power? -/- Focusing on three case studies of questions in divine discourse on (...) the level of story - the god depicted in the Jewish Bible, the master Mazu in his recorded sayings literature, and Jesus as he is depicted in canonized Christian Gospels - Nathan Eric Dickman meditates on human responses to divine questions. He considers the purpose of interreligious dialogue and the provocative kind of questions that seem to purposefully decenter us, drawing on methods from confessionally-oriented hermeneutics and skills from critical thinking. -/- He allows us to see alternative ways of interpreting religious texts through approaches that look beyond reading a text for the improvement of our own religion or for access to some metaphysically transcendent reality. This is the first step in a phenomenology of religions that is inclusive, diverse, relevant and grounded in the world we live in. (shrink)

Philosophical hermeneutics is a style of hermeneutics that focuses on the ontology of understanding and interpretation. One of the leading exponents of philosophical hermeneutics is Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer explained that the prejudice and historical aspects that accept the dialectics of the past, the present and the future are crucial in understanding religious language related to COVID-19. This concept then underlies Gadamer’s thoughts on the idea of the fusion of horizon. This idea indicates that understanding religious (...) texts must be done by bringing together the text’s horizon, author and reader to reach a meaningful knowledge in interpreting a text. Suppose this view applies in understanding religious language related to the COVID-19 pandemic protocol. In that case, interpreter must consider all dimensions associated with the social situation to find a substantive meaning and a complete understanding of all dimensions related to the interpreter’s current position to apply the substantive meaning contextually in actual cases. (shrink)

This essay deals with two poetics of distinctly different traditions that arrived at the same concept of literary art, one in which the reader of, or listener to, a poem shares in the creative process with the poet. The first tradition I will examine is the that of the pre-Hispanic Mexican poets of the Cantares mexicanos and the 20th- century appropriation of their work by two of Mexico's most distinguished poets, Octavio Paz (1914–1998) and ]ose Emilio Pacheco (1939–2014), both awarded (...) the Premio Cervantes, and Paz, the Nobel Prize. The second part of this essay examines the contemporary Continental tradition of philosophical hermeneutics that began with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2001) and culminated in the work of Paul Ricoeur (1913– 2005). Although Heidegger is now well known among philosophers throughout the world, it should be noted that ]ose Gaos of the National University of Mexico, an exile from Spain, completed the first translation of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit in 1951, more than a decade before the English and French translations appeared. (shrink)

Xenocrates of Athens was a sculptor and theoretician of the 3rd cen. B.C., whose now lost writings were used as basic sources by Pliny the Elder in his 34th and 35th Books of Natural History, about Sculpture and Painting respectively. It is strongly believed that the progressive model of the development of art in both books has Xenocratian origins: influenced by the tradition of Democritus, Xenocrates had explained the evolution of art as a process of resolution of artistic problems. His (...) narrative was, though, a descriptive one without a theoretical or philosophical background. A similar case had prevailed in the Historiography of Art for many centuries, up to the beginnings of the 20th cen., when the rise of Philosophical Hermeneutics changed the picture. Art Historians began to create theories and methods trying for the first time to explain at a theoretical level the phenomena both of the development of art and of the capability of later perceivers to understand previous artworks and their changes through time. Ernst Gombrich’s theory that combines modern and postmodern ideas is to be understood as influenced both by the Xenocratian idea that there is always an innovative person who first overcomes traditional methods triggering the progress of art’s development and by the Popperian notion of “trial and error” as the main schema for the development of science. (shrink)

Although the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer was not a religious thinker or theologian, his work and approach have influenced thinkers in the field of theology. This article explores some ‘overlaps’ between Gadamerian hermeneutics and the ideas of some contemporary Muslim scholars such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Abdolkarim Soroush, Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari and Hassan Hanafi regarding issues of textual interpretation and understanding. In particular, the article seeks to understand how such ideas have appeared in these Muslim scholars’ approaches to (...) interpreting the Qurʾan. It also explores some of the implications that follow from incorporating Gadamer’s ideas into Islamic theological and political discourses. The article argues that the application of Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy to the realm of Qurʾanic studies is not only fruitful insofar as it provides new insights into the interpretation of the Qurʾan, but also has important consequences for Islamic theological and political discourses more broadly. (shrink)

This book applies philosophical hermeneutics to biblical studies. Whereas traditional studies of the Bible limit their analysis to the exploration of the texts' original historical sense, this book discusses how to move beyond these issues to a consideration of biblical texts' existential significance for the present. In response to the rejection of biblical significance in the late nineteenth century and the accompanying crisis of nihilism, B. H. McLean argues that the philosophical thought of Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, Habermas, (...) Ricoeur, Levinas, Deleuze and Guattari provides an alternative to historically oriented approaches to biblical interpretation. He uses basic principles drawn from these philosophers' writings to create a framework for a new 'post-historical' mode of hermeneutic inquiry that transcends the subject-based epistemological structure of historical positivism. (shrink)

The paper deals with some religious and philosophical ideas of the Austrian philosopher Gerhard Oberhammer, who analyses the religious text of vishishta-advaita tradition from the point of Levinas’ philosophy. In the final fragment of his article Oberhammer analyses the formula of Ramanuja parabhaktiparajVAnaparamabhakti, which is understood in the works of the later thinkers of vishishta-advaita as prapatti. Meanwhile this formula for Ramanuja himself means only the meditative God-vision in the form of the steady remembering of God and vision of (...) Him in the images of the Vishnu religion. (shrink)

Despite the importance of linguistic disclosure for philosophical hermeneutics there has been a conspicuous lack of attention to the question of how linguistic disclosure actually works. I examine the mechanics of disclosure by drawing on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as well as Ricoeur’s concept of translation and his theory of metaphor. My claim is that the background horizon of the unsaid that differs between languages enables each to disclose different things. This situation underscores the importance of engaging (...) in East-West comparative philosophy, of philosophizing across what Ricoeur calls the radical “fold” (pli) in what can be thought and experienced. (shrink)

This paper considers the challenge to understanding another that comes from the view that language is, in Cristina Lafont’s phrase, ‘world‐disclosing’. If different speakers understand and refer to the world from different holistically structured worldviews, it seems to follow that there can be no mutual understanding unless there is significant overlap between ‘worlds’. Gadamer’s hermeneutics, I claim, blocks this consequence while maintaining that language is indeed world‐disclosing. By holding that language is a medium in which the distinction between interpretation (...) and object of interpretation is paradoxically both maintained and overcome, Gadamer shows us that the interpreter always thinks the object of interpretation as both transcending and immanent in her worldview. Mutual understanding becomes a matter of mutual recognition of such worldview‐(but not language‐) transcendent objects. Truth and meaning may on this view be characterized as ‘objective’, while retaining a significant element of relativity. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics - one of the seminal philosophies of the 20th century - has had a profound influence on a wide array of fields, including classical philology, theology, the philosophy of the social sciences, literary theory, philosophy of law, critical social theory and the philosophy of art. This collection expands on some of these areas and takes his hermeneutics into yet new fields including narrative medicine, biotechnology, the politics of memory, the philosophy of place and (...) the non-verbal language of the body. And, building on Gadamer's well-known discussions with Heidegger, Habermas and Derrida, Inheriting Gadamer sets him in dialogue with Mahatma Gandhi, Christine Korsgaard, Charles Mills and others. In these ways, the volume holds fast to a Gadamerian virtue: cultivating our important philosophical traditions while embracing the constant need to re-think their meaning in new circumstances and in relation to new knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophically robust conceptions of ethical life and moral critique would advance the struggle against capital. Marx can be read as implying that human life is irreducibly meaningful, linguistic, and cultural, but he often is not. Whether or not Marx recognized them himself, these dimensions of life have not been sufficiently thematized or developed by Marxists. I argue that we can move toward doing so with assistance from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. A hermeneutical approach to historical materialism would help (...) clarify and articulate some aspects of Marxism which in particular have been hard to resolve within a wider view of the ethical, political, scientific, and historical dimensions of social action and change. (shrink)

Notwithstanding its prominence in the title of Gadamer’s major work, the concept of truth remains implicit and underspecified in Gadamer’s writings. Consequently, it is often assumed that, for Gadamer, as for Heidegger, the emergence of truth is adequately characterised as a sudden flash of enlightening insight, an impression reinforced by the prominence accorded by Gadamer in the first part of Truth and Method to the experience of aesthetic truth and the model of play. But in addition to leaving the hermeneutic (...) truth concept open to charges of arbitrariness and subjectivism, this assessment overlooks Gadamer’s emphasis in the second part of TM on the need for investigating a topic dialogically. Accordingly, this paper contends that it is only when these two elements are counterbalanced, as Gadamer intends, that a defensible conception of hermeneutic truth emerges, impervious to charges of arbitrariness and subjectivism. Notably too, this hermeneutic truth concept transcends both coherence and correspondence truth in important respects. (shrink)

This collection highlights the important role of the topic of revelation in the work of Paul Ricœur. It discusses his biblical hermeneutics and his philosophical hermeneutics of the self on such topics as identity, trauma, or forgiveness, and also puts him in conversation with other thinkers on the topic of revelation.

In this article I draw together what is a largely neglected account of the hermeneutic thrust of Mead’s late writings. In particular, I argue that Mead’s philosophy of the present also amounts to a theory of interpretation. In an open dialogue with a number of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s most fundamental concepts, I demonstrate how Mead’s notion of emergence in the present of both past and future neatly aligns with Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. I will trace the foundation of this common (...) ground by highlighting the pivotal influence of Wilhelm Dilthey on both Gadamer and the young Mead. Then, I will draw out the consequences this mutual influence has on the critique of the methodological historicist tradition. Throughout I demonstrate several missed opportunities by Hans Joas at providing a philosophical hermeneutic account of Mead’s work. It is my intention to display how together the traditions of philosophical hermeneutics and pragmatism inform one another. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging historical introduction to philosophical hermeneutics, Jean Grondin discusses the major figures from Philo to Habermas, analyzes conflicts between various interpretive schools, and provides a persuasive critique of Gadamer's view of hermeneutic history, though in other ways Gadamer's _Truth and Method_ serves as a model for Grondin's approach. Grondin begins with brief overviews of the pre-nineteenth-century thinkers Philo, Origen, Augustine, Luther, Flacius, Dannhauer, Chladenius, Meier, Rambach, Ast, and Schlegel. Next he provides more extensive treatments of such (...) major nineteenth-century figures as Schleiermacher, Böckh, Droysen, and Dilthey. There are full chapters devoted to Heidegger and Gadamer as well as shorter discussions of Betti, Habermas, and Derrida. Because he is the first to pay close attention to pre-Romantic figures, Grondin is able to show that the history of hermeneutics cannot be viewed as a gradual, steady progression in the direction of complete universalization. His book makes it clear that even in the early period, hermeneutic thinkers acknowledged a universal aspect in interpretation—that long before Schleiermacher, hermeneutics was philosophical and not merely practical. In revising and correcting the standard account, Grondin's book is not merely introductory but revisionary, suitable for beginners as well as advanced students in the field. (shrink)

Hermeneutics is a mantic art involved in the translation of the unintelligible into the intelligible. However, within modern contexts the term possesses a more methodological sense - ‘a universal doctrine for the interpretation of signs’. This conception of hermeneutics was given impetus during the Renaissance with the quest for theological objectivity, but it was with Schleiermacher and other philosophers of the Romantic movement that hermeneutics was viewed as a universal ‘dialogical’ condition. The Romantic conception of hermeneutics (...) was psychologized by Dilthey and re-founded upon the principle of consciousness. With Heidegger became conceived as an ontological phenomenon identical to Existenz itself. For Gadamer, hermeneutics criticizes the ‘pale abstractions’ of Enlightenment conceptions of philosophy for neglecting the work of concepts in philosophy; concepts that have their origins in the self-critical communicative movement of human interpretation. (shrink)

This volume explores Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics within a musical context. It features contributions from philosophers, musicians, educators, and musicologists from a variety of backgrounds, and sheds light on both the hermeneutic nature of music and the musicality of hermeneutics. Contributors to this volume hermeneutically think with music to uncover its fundamentally hermeneutic character, and by thinking with Gadamer in a musical context, explore ways in which hermeneutics may be understood to possess an inherent musicality. Gadamer's (...) thought is taken up in a variety of musical contexts including improvisation, musical performance, classical music, jazz, and music criticism. This first volume to explore Gadamer's hermeneutics in a musical context breaks new ground by challenging musical concepts and by pushing Gadamer's thought in new directions. It appeals to philosophers engaged with Gadamer's thought (and philosophical hermeneutics more broadly), as well as philosophers of music, musicologists, and musicians interested in critically engaging with the practice of performing and listening to music. (shrink)