Walter Brogan

I expose facets of Nancy's notion of being singular plural. Nancy's political ontology overcomes the metaphysical dualism of theory and practice by thinking the space of the between as primary. Nancy's treatment of the event of creation and the presence of the divine rethink meta-physical notions of origin and God in a way that emphasizes the parting of unity and the plurality of the world. Nancy thinks the everyday and the existential together by affirming the importance of curiosity and wonder in the face of what is. Nancy offers an ontology of space (being-with) that uncovers what it means to be in touch as a way of being.

This article is an interpretive analysis of James Risser’s book The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics. I focus on the key elements of Risser’s notion of community and what I call his hermeneutics of the strange and foreign. The article pays particular attention to some of the most important themes in Risser’s book: aesthetics and the flash of beauty; language and the poetic word; the transmission of tradition; the movement of Ruinanz and the circulation of life; weaving. Overall, I attempt to trace the nexus of Plato-Gadamer-Risser in Risser’s text in order to trace the emergence of a contemporary hermeneutics after Gadamer that is developed by Risser in this text.