•  9
    Horizons of Passion: Hermeneutics as Fusion or as Fracture
    History of the Human Sciences. forthcoming.
    How can a post-Christian, secular audience understand the devoutly Christian, sacred music of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion? This article addresses this question with reference to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg. Their confrontation reveals broad implications for the theory of humanistic interpretation at large. Gadamer celebrates Bach as a ‘classical’ touchstone of Western culture whom we may productively interpret through a ‘fusion of horizons’. Blumenb…Read more
  •  162
    The Recovery of the Fundamental Hermeneutic Problem: Application and Normativity
    In Gregory Lynch & Cynthia R. Nielsen (eds.), Gadamer's Truth and Method: A Polyphonic Commentary, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 165-85. 2022.
    This paper is an explication of Gadamer's idea of "application." I argue that the relation between the first and third persons in application contains a viable conception of the normativity of understanding. Application includes a measure for understanding. The thing that is to be understood must be allowed to address me, and such involvement responds to the text’s meaning. While this measure is not expressible in principled rules, application is normatively accountable both to the text’s third-…Read more
  •  206
    Truth and Perspective: Gadamer on Renaissance Painting
    International Yearbook for Hermeneutics 20 (1): 286-305. 2021.
    This essay develops a critical interpretation of Gadamer’s account of Renaissance painting. My point of departure is a brief reference in Truth and Method to Leon Battista Alberti, the Italian Renaissance humanist who developed an influential mathematical theory of perspective in painting. Through an explication of Gadamer’s critique of Alberti and of perspective generally, I argue that what is ultimately at stake in Gadamer’s confrontation with Alberti is Gadamer’s opposition to relativism and …Read more
  •  243
    Attitude Isn't Everything: Hermeneutics as an Unfinished Project
    Analecta Hermeneutica 13 (1): 158-180. 2021.
    This article critically investigates the landscape of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics, especially Gadamerian hermeneutics. This investigation reveals that one of the central trends in recent decades has been to construe hermeneutics as, instead of an ongoing and substantive philosophical research project, rather an amorphous current or nebulous spirit of intellectual life and culture—what this article refers to as the sense of hermeneutics as an attitude. The “effective history” of this …Read more
  •  46
    Music and Time
    with Hans-Georg Gadamer and Cynthia R. Nielsen
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (1): 251-258. 2021.
    This is a translation of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s 1988 essay, “Musik und Zeit: Ein philosophisches Postscriptum.” The essay, although brief, is noteworthy in that it contains Gadamer’s philosophical reflections on music—reflections which are largely absent in his masterwork, Truth and Method. In the essay, one finds several important Gadamerian hermeneutical themes such as the notion of art as performance or enactment (Vollzug), the linguisticality of understanding, the importance of lingering with …Read more
  •  20
    Heidegger and Gadamer on the Modern Age: The Sun Setting in the Western Sky
    Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual 11 152-182. 2021.
    This essay contributes to research on, and develops a critique of, the later Heidegger’s conception of the relationship between modernity and a future beyond or after the modern age. It is argued that Heidegger does not engage in a reactionary rejection of modernity, since he is methodologically opposed to pure negation. Rather, as the example of his reading of Van Gogh demonstrates, Heidegger uses suggestive poetic hints from modern culture to transcend modernity from within into a “postmodern”…Read more
  •  23
    This article considers the limitations, but also the insights, of Gadamerian hermeneutics for understanding and responding to the crisis precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Our point of departure is the experience of deep disagreements amid the pandemic, and our primary example is ongoing debates in the United States about wearing masks. We argue that, during this dire situation, interpersonal mutual understanding is insufficient for resolving such bitter disputes. Rather, following Gadamer’s…Read more
  •  386
    Hermeneutics and the Conservatism of Listening
    Cosmos and History 16 (2): 495-519. 2020.
    It is well known that philosophical hermeneutics has long been associated in political discussions with a conservative orientation. Many Gadamerians have sought to rebut this suggestion, convincingly emphasizing progressive political dimensions of hermeneutics in general and of Gadamer’s thought in particular. One version of the association of hermeneutics with conservatism has been overlooked, however, namely, Hans Blumenberg’s provocative claim that the predilection in the hermeneutic tradit…Read more
  •  33
    Hermeneutics in Post-War Continental European Philosophy
    In Kelly Becker & Iain D. Thomson (eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015, Cambridge University Press. pp. 399-415. 2019.
    Taken in general terms, “hermeneutics” refers to the study of understanding and interpretation, and, traditionally, this study focuses on considerations of the art, method, and foundations of research in the arts and humanities. The study of hermeneutics has been developed and applied in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry, such as biblical exegesis, literary studies, legal studies, and the medical humanities. In the context of post-war Continental European thought, however, hermeneutics is b…Read more
  •  53
    From Deconstruction to Rehabilitation: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity
    Dissertation, University of New Mexico. 2019.
    This dissertation is a study of the problem of modernity, formulated as the following multivalent question: How should we understand the scope, character, and limitations of our historical age? The study approaches this question from the point of view of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. We will, first, clarify how Heidegger and Gadamer think about modernity, thereby shedding light on their widely misunderstood intellectual relationship; and, next, uncover and defend a distinctively Gadam…Read more
  •  901
    Another Beginning? Heidegger, Gadamer, and Postmodernity
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (1): 221-238. 2019.
    Martin Heidegger’s critique of modernity, and his vision of what may come after it, constitutes a sustained argument across the arc of his career. Does Hans-Georg Gadamer follow Heidegger’s path of making possible “another beginning” after the modern age? In this article, I show that, in contrast to Heidegger, Gadamer cultivates modernity’s hidden resources. We can gain insight into Gadamer’s difference from Heidegger on this fundamental point with reference to his ambivalence toward and departu…Read more
  •  392
    Reading Oneself in the Text: Cavell and Gadamer’s Romantic Conception of Reading
    Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology 6 (1): 79-87. 2019.
    Can we gain knowledge by reading literature? This essay defends an account of reading, developed by Stanley Cavell and Hans-Georg Gadamer, that phenomenologically describes the experience of acquiring self-knowledge by reading literary texts. Two possible criticisms of this account will be considered: first, that reading can provide other kinds of knowledge than self-knowledge; and, second, that the theory involves illegitimately imposing subjective meaning onto a text. It will be argued, in res…Read more