The ideas of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) have had considerable influence, both in their own right as the leading modern exposition of philosophical hermeneutics and in ...interpreting the works of others, especially Heidegger, Hegel and Plato. This introduction provides authoritative interpretation and exposition of Gadamer's monumental work, Truth and Method (1960). With exemplary clarity Grondin presents the key themes of the book - method, humanism, aesthetic judgement, truth, the work of history - and provides readers with an unrivalled guide through Gadamer's often complex and difficult ideas. Of particular value is the way in which Grondin situates Gadamer's concerns within the wider context of traditional philosophical issues, showing, for example, how Gadamer both continues, and significantly modifies, the philosophical problem of the method as it begins with Descartes, and how he advances rather than simply follows Heidegger's treatment of the relationship of thinking and language. In this way Grondin shows how the issues of philosophical hermeneutics are relevant for contemporary concerns in science and history. The Philosophy of Gadamer is essential reading for all students, beginning or experienced, setting out to tackle Gadamer's challenging body of work.
Noting the prevalence of a misguided suspicion towards tradition, as well as an overt misunderstanding of the very notion of tradition in certain academic circles, this essay seeks to outline some of ...the basic tenets of an alternative understanding of tradition, based on a 'sociological' reading of several major philosophical works. It does so by revisiting and synthesizing some well-known, highly influential conceptual arguments that, taken together, offer a compelling, comprehensive interpretation and understanding of tradition, which manages to avoid and overcome the false dichotomies that have dominated social-scientific thought. The article offers three corresponding analogies that capture the complex nature of tradition: tradition as language, tradition as narrative, and tradition as horizon. It then goes on to discuss the main implications these analogies carry to our understanding of tradition.
In Gadamer's hermeneutics, interpretation is inseparable from the broader concern of making one's way in life. In this book, James Risser builds on this insight about the juxtaposition of human ...living and the act of understanding by tracing hermeneutics back to the basic experience of philosophy as defined by Plato. For Risser, Plato provides resources for new directions in hermeneutics and new possibilities for "the life of understanding" and "the understanding of life." Risser places Gadamer in dialogue with Plato, with the issue of memory as a conceptual focus. He develops themes pertaining to hermeneutics such as retrieval as a matter of convalescence, exile as a venture into the foreign, formation with respect to oneself and to life with others, the experience of language in hermeneutics, and the relationship between speaking and writing.
This book, first published in 2005, offers a radical challenge to accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which ...will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book shows that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context; tradition and transformation are locked in a mutually reinforcing but thoroughly contingent embrace. In contrast to the dewy-eyed offerings of much contemporary work, it demonstrates that, like life, law is an organic process (i.e., events are the products of functional and localized causes) rather than a miraculous one (i.e., events are the result of some grand plan or intervention). In short, common law is a perpetual work-in-progress - evanescent, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalising, and bottom-up.
The publication of Hans-Georg Gadamer's magnum opus Truth and Method in 1960 marked the arrival of philosophical hermeneutics as a dominant force in philosophy and the humanities as a whole. ...Consequences of Hermeneutics celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of one of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century with essays by most of the leading figures in contemporary hermeneutic theory, including Gianni Vattimo and Jean Grondin.
These essays examine the achievements of hermeneutics as well as its current status and prospects for the future. Gadamer's text provides an important focus, but the ambition of these critical reappraisals extends to hermeneutics more broadly and to a range of other thinkers, such as Heidegger, Ricoeur, Derrida, and Rorty. Forcefully demonstrating the continuing relevance and power of hermeneutics, Consequences of Hermeneutics is a fitting tribute to Gadamer and the legacy of his thought.
A philosophical and historical testament to the twentieth century, this volume consists of a wide-ranging series of interviews conducted in 1999/2000 between the then centenarian and his former ...assistant and associate of over thirty years, Riccardo Dottori.These ten dialogues distill and situate Gadamer's philosophy in the context of what has arguably been the bloodiest century in human history. In the course of the interviews, Gadamer addresses-often critically-the work of a wide variety of philosophers, including Heidegger, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Popper, Vico, Habermas, Rorty, and Derrida. He also elaborates on German philosophy during the Nazi period; and, in one of the more fascinating conversations, we are treated to a glimpse of Gadamer's personal perspective on the question of Heidegger's Nazism, including a discussion of the political influence that great philosopher's wife, Elfirde, had on him that tends to contradict most other published accounts. With the possible exception of his autobiography 1985, A Century of Philosophy is perhaps the most accessible expression of Gadamer's life and work in English today.
Effective History presents its reader with a thorough explanation and evaluation of H.-G. Gadamer’s concept of “effective history," not only as it pertains to the broader range of hermeneutic and ...postmodern thinkers working in the wake of Kantian philosophy, but first and foremost as a careful and measured consideration of the practice of effective history as a critical method for philosophy in our current times.
Certainly one of the key German philosophers of the twentieth century, Hans-Georg Gadamer also influenced the study of literature, art, music, sacred and legal texts, and medicine. Indeed, while much ...attention has been focused on Gadamer's writings about ancient Greek and modern German philosophy, the relevance of his work for other disciplines is only now beginning to be properly considered and understood. In an effort to address this slant, this volume brings together many prominent scholars to assess, re-evaluate, and question Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, as well as his place in intellectual history. The book includes a recent essay by Gadamer on "the task of hermeneutics," as well as essays by distinguished contributors including Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Gerald Bruns, Georgia Warnke, and many others. The contributors situate Gadamer's views in surprising ways and show that his writings speak to a range of contemporary debates—from constitutional questions to issues of modern art. A controversial final section attempts to uncover and clarify Gadamer's history in relation to National Socialism. More an investigation and questioning than a celebration of this venerable and profoundly influential philosopher, this collection will become a catalyst for any future rethinking of philosophical hermeneutics, as well as a significant starting place for rereading and reviewing Hans-Georg Gadamer.
During his exploration, Tompsett proves to be greatly interested in the poet's gestures and figures of connection and primal unity, which he reads principally in the context of Parmenides' "blank ...monism" (Santayana's phrase quoted on 43), even when such ontological reductions to the One are frequently founded on a Heraclitean multiplicity and sense of polemos - the Greek word for war whose role in the analysis has affinities with what we would nowadays frame as Darwinian struggle. Many of his readings of individual poems and key Stevensian concepts are also compelling: the Heraclitean elements in "Earthy Anecdote" and "Domination of Black" are convincingly demonstrated, as are the pre-Socratic roots of the "first idea"; the analysis of "The Idea of Order at Key West" through the concept of techne is well done; "Of Modern Poetry" profits from linking the "metaphysician in the dark" (CPP 219) to "Heraclitus the Dark," and its ending is interestingly revealed to have an antifascist slant; the interpretations of "Metaphor as Degeneration" and "Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself" deserve to be singled out as well; and we are clearly able to extend our purchase on Stevens' poetic thinking when we begin to see his "supreme fiction" in terms of a "universal hermeneutics" (152). In this sense, Tompsett's book may be felt to suffer occasionally from the violent reduction the author so convincingly criticizes in Stevens' poetic worldview. Because he seeks to adduce as much evidence as he can to demonstrate the relevance of pre-Socratic ontological thinking for our understanding of Stevens, Tompsett is not quite willing to pay attention to the many ways in which the poetry contradicts, complicates, obscures, or resists such an assimilation - and how its doing so might add to the poetry's aesthetic value.
