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11Utopia of Understanding: Between Babel and Auschwitz (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013. 2013.The appearance in English of Donatella Ester Di Cesare's Utopia of Understanding: Between Babel and Auschwitz brings a distinctive development within the philosophical study of hermeneutics to an Anglophone readership.
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40What is the future of the past? Gadamer and Hegel on the Work of Art in the Age of its LiberationJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 40 (1): 4-20. 2009.Some more recent scholarship that challenges received wisdom about Gadamer not withstanding, it remains common to associate his hermeneutical approach to art and literature, along with his hermeneutics generally, with political and cultural conservatism. In this essay, however, the author argues that some of Gadamer’s significant, but underappreciated, later essays on Hegel’s aesthetics further support and nuance the rising recognition of Gadamer’s sensitivity to the discontinuities, dislocatio…Read more
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30SpecificationsEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 8 (1): 27-41. 2003.In the “Postscript” to his Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger suggests that one important aim of his investigation into the relation between truth and art is to subject to scrutiny Hegel’s famous thesis on the end of art. The purpose of my essay is to contribute to this project by reexamining aspects of Hegel’s discussion of art in the Phenomenology of Spirit that appear to subvert his own thesis. Hegel’s treatment of ancient Greek drama and, specifically, some of his remarks on comedy, not on…Read more
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21IntroductionResearch in Phenomenology 44 (1): 107-110. 2014.The essays that follow concern one of these contributions, Günter Figal’s Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2010; English translation of Gegenständlichkeit: das Hermeneutische und die Philosophie, Mohr Siebeck 2006). These pieces are drawn from an “Author Meets Critics” session sponsored by the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics (NASPH) in conjunction with the 2012 meeting of SPEP. As conceived by the NASPH organizers, the principal purpose of the “Aut…Read more
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50Community in the idiom of crisis: Hegel on political life, tragedy, and the deadResearch in Phenomenology 32 (1): 123-138. 2002.One of the most pressing issues for contemporary continental philosophy turns on the determination of a concept of community that twists free from the dangerous tendency in the canon of Western thought to associate the perfection of political affiliation with complete unity, even totality and immanence. In this article the author suggests that in the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel provides important resources for this project—not, of course, in his conception of that community indicated by the ab…Read more
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36Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel's PhenomenologyState University of New York Press. 2006.In Tragedies of Spirit, Theodore D. George engages Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit to explore the philosophical significance of tragedy in post-Kantian continental thought. George follows lines of inquiry originally developed by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, and takes as his point of departure the concern that Hegel’s speculative philosophy forms a summit of modernity that the present historical time is called to interrogate. Yet, George argues that Hegel’s larger speculative ambit…Read more
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54Nicolaus Cusanus and the PresentEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1): 71-79. 2002.
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From Work to Play: Gadamer on the Affinity of Art, Truth, and BeautyInternationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik 10 107-122. 2011.In this essay, the author maintains that Gadamer’s affirmation of the relation among art, truth, and beauty is less a sign of conservatism or nostalgia than it is a key to his innovative and insightful examination of our experience of art. Gadamer’s approach to both the truth claim and the beauty of art flows from his association of the being of art with enactment (Vollzug). Yet, increasingly over the course of his writings, Gadamer appears to relinquishes talk of art in this sense as a ,work‘…Read more
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Objectivity and the Openness of Language: On Figal's Recent Contribution to the Debate between Hermeneutics and DeconstructionIn Friederike Rese, Michael Steinmann & David Espinet (eds.), Objektivität und Gegenstaendlichkeit, Mohr Siebeck. pp. 218-234. 2011.The author argues that Günter Figal sheds novel light on language in his recent Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy through a debate he appears to stage with the position Jacques Derrida develops in some of his early essays on deconstruction. Figal describes language as a form of showing and emphasizes the openness and flexibility of expression involved in determining significance. Yet, he rejects the idea he finds in Derrida that such flexibility should lead us to wholesale suspici…Read more
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25What is the Future of the Past? Gadamer and Hegel on Truth, Art and the Ruptures of TraditionJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 40 (1): 4-20. 2009.(2009). What is the Future of the Past? Gadamer and Hegel on Truth, Art and the Ruptures of Tradition. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology: Vol. 40, Tradition, Art & Sexuality, pp. 4-20.
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66Specifications: Hegel, Heidegger, and the Comedy of the End of ArtEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 8 (1): 27-41. 2003.In the “Postscript” to his Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger suggests that one important aim of his investigation into the relation between truth and art is to subject to scrutiny Hegel’s famous thesis on the end of art. The purpose of my essay is to contribute to this project by reexamining aspects of Hegel’s discussion of art in the Phenomenology of Spirit that appear to subvert his own thesis. Hegel’s treatment of ancient Greek drama and, specifically, some of his remarks on comedy, not on…Read more
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24Letter from the Editor (review)Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (1): 5-6. 2014.
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1De la invisibilidad a la intimidad: Honneth, Gadamer y el reconocimiento del otroIn Maria del Rosario Acosta Lopez (ed.), Idealismo alemán y hermenéutica: un retorno a las fuentes del debate contemporáneo, Universidad De Los Andes, Ceso. pp. 295-318. 2010.This article argues that the political significance Hans-Georg Gadamer's attributes to friendship not only resists the criticism of Gadamer (and Heidegger) leveled by Axel Honneth but, moreover, that Gadamer's approach to friendship sheds light on a certain intimacy we experience in our opening onto the political sphere.
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64Image and WordEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (2): 251-259. 2003.The Symposium is one of Plato’s most literary and poetic dialogues. How might one reconcile this evidence of Plato’s predilection for poetry in light of his severe critique of poetry in the Republic? Though his critique is modified and refined in other dialogues, the power of his critique is nowhere significantly undermined. I argue in this paper that Plato’s poetic writing is not inconsistent with his critique, and that in fact there is an affinity between his practice of poetry and his critiqu…Read more
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Tragedies of Spirit. Tracing Finitude in Hegel's 'Phenomenology' (review)Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 69 (3): 607-607. 2007.
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69Passive Resistance: Giorgio Agamben and the Bequest of German Idealism and RomanticismEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (1): 37-48. 2011.The purpose of this essay is to examine Giorgio Agamben’s important but underappreciated debts to the early German Romantics and to Hegel. While maintaining critical distance from these figures, Agamben develops crucial aspects of his approach to radical passivity with reference to them. The focus of this essay is on Agamben’s consideration of the early German Romantics’ notions of criticism and irony, Hegel’s notion of language, and the implications of this view of language for his notion of co…Read more
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50Passive Resistance: Giorgio Agamben and the Bequest of Early German Romanticism and HegelEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (1): 37-48. 2011.The purpose of this essay is to examine Giorgio Agamben’s important but underappreciated debts to the early German Romantics and to Hegel. While maintaining critical distance from these figures, Agamben develops crucial aspects of his approach to radical passivity with reference to them. The focus of this essay is on Agamben’s consideration of the early German Romantics’ notions of criticism and irony, Hegel’s notion of language, and the implications of this view of language for his notion of co…Read more
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A Monstrous Absolute: Kant, Schelling, and the Poetic Turn in PhilosophyIn Jason Wirth (ed.), Schelling Now, State University of New York Press. pp. 135-146. 2004.In this essay, the author contends that Schelling’s first publication, the Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism, provides crucial insights into the wide spread philosophical interest in poetic art today. For Schelling, philosophical inquiry finds that its native resource, reason, requires the disclosive power of the poetic genera of tragic drama in order to remedy a crisis which inheres in its very nature and operations.
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71The Disruption of Health: Shaffer, Foucault and 'the Normal'Journal of Medical Humanities 20 (4): 231-245. 1999.In this article the aurhtor explores the intimate connection between the concepts of ‘health’ and ‘normality’ in the fields of medicine and mental health by discerning Foucauldian themes in Peter Shaffer’s critically acclaimed drama Equus. Shaffer’s scrutiny of the mental health field pinpoints the same issue as Foucault does in his many works on medicine and psychiatry, namely, that operating behind any concept of ‘health’ in these fields is nothing other than the notion of ‘normality.’ By lo…Read more
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55The Myth of the West Interrupted: Community and Cultural Difference in Nancy’s “Literary Communism”International Studies in Philosophy 35 (1): 49-63. 2003.The author submits that while Nancy's tendency to make Occidentalist remarks cannot be denied, it is antithetical to his own conception of community that may be forged through literature. Nancy's conception actually provides a basis to critique not only Occidentalism, but any view that blinds us to the significance of cultural differences. For Nancy genuine community can only be achieved in the exposure of the other as a singular individual marked by unique cultural, historical, and existential …Read more
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7Letter from the Editor (review)Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2): 5-5. 2015.
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54Forgiveness, Freedom, and Human Finitude in Hegel’s The Spirit of Christianity and Its FateInternational Philosophical Quarterly 51 (1): 39-53. 2011.The purpose of this essay is to consider the significance that Hegel grants to religious love and, with it, forgiveness in his early The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate. Although Hegel characterizes religious love in this writing as a unity that transcends reason, his association of such love with forgiveness nevertheless sheds light on an important aspect of human finitude. In this, Hegel may be seen to identify forgiveness as a form of freedom elicited by limits that we encounter in practi…Read more
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45Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and PhilosophyState University of New York Press. 2010.Figal has long been recognized as one of the most insightful interpreters working in the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics and its leading themes concerned with ancient Greek thought, art, language, and history. With this book, Figal presses this tradition of philosophical hermeneutics in new directions. In his effort to forge philosophical hermeneutics into a hermeneutical philosophy, Figal develops an original critique of the objectification of the world that emerges in modernity as the …Read more
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51The Worklessness of Literature: Blanchot, Hegel, and the Ambiguity of the Poetic WordPhilosophy Today 50 (Supplement): 39-47. 2006.Although there is much scholarship on Maurice Blanchot’s relationship to his contemporaries on the French intellectual scene, substantially less has been made of his debts to the German philosophical heritage in general, and to G. W. F. Hegel in particular. In this article, the author maintains that Blanchot’s association of literature with worklessness comprises a direct, if somewhat tacit, refusal of Hegel’s determination of art as a work of spirit. The author argues that Blanchot’s critical …Read more
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Hermeneutics |
Hans-Georg Gadamer |
Continental Ethics |
Continental Aesthetics |
Continental Philosophy of Language |
G. W. F. Hegel |
Aesthetics and Ethics |
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Hermeneutics |
Hans-Georg Gadamer |
Hermeneutics, Misc |