Alejandro G. Vigo

Gadamer’s hermeneutics comprehensive project is to be understood in terms of an expanded alethiology, in which the phenomenon of comprehension – considered as an experience of sense – acquires a central role. For Gadamer, the essential hermeneutic phenomenon, which is also the essential ontological phenomenon, corresponds to the autoexhibition of what is open to comprehension. Such autoexhibition takes place, paradigmatically, through two elemental modalities that Gadamer identifies as the “coming to (auto) exhibition” (zur Darstellung kommen) and the “coming of language” (zur Sprache kommen). Both modalities refer to the same essential hermeneutic phenomenon.

The present collection brings together a number of studies interested in highlighting the role of reflexivity and sentiment in Kant's philosophy. If philosophy is by definition a reflective endeavor, Kant's writings document a particularly powerful philosophical enterprise; not only because he constitutes reflexivity itself into the cornerstone of philosophical method, but also because, in doing so, he unveils fundamental structures of human subjectivity. Authors in this volume have succeeded in highlighting how Kant's commitment to reflexivity represents a privileged gateway of exploring the complexity and richness of human experience. Aesthetic and moral experiences are particularly eloquent in this regard: aesthetic and moral sentiments represent for Kant a particular site of human reflexivity, which bring to light a specifically human world, marked by different kinds of normativity, in the midst of which humans actually live.