•  64
    The 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
  •  63
    Thing, Object, Life
    Research in Phenomenology 42 (1): 18-34. 2012.
    Abstract The broad concern of this article is to contribute to discussions within hermeneutical philosophy that address the question of life as a form of correlation. More specifically, its purpose is to shed light on the character of life as correlation with reference to a basic aspect of this correlation: our living relation to things. To this end, the author focuses, first, on the later Heidegger's suggestion that our proper relation to things takes shape as an enactment guided by the release…Read more
  •  60
    Image and Word
    Epoché: 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
  •  59
    Specifications: Hegel, Heidegger, and the Comedy of the End of Art
    Epoché: 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
  •  55
    Are We a Conversation? Hermeneutics, Exteriority, and Transmittability
    Research in Phenomenology 47 (3): 331-350. 2017.
    Hermeneutics is widely celebrated as a call for “conversation”—that is, a manner of inquiry characterized by humility and openness to the other that eschews the pretenses of calculative rationality and resists all finality of conclusions. In this, conversation takes shape in efforts to understand and interpret that always unfold in the transmission of meaning historically in language. Yet, the celebration of hermeneutics for humility and openness appears, at least, to risk embarrassment in light…Read more
  •  54
    Passive Resistance: Giorgio Agamben and the Bequest of German Idealism and Romanticism
    Epoché: 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
  •  51
    Forgiveness, Freedom, and Human Finitude in Hegel’s The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate
    International 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
  •  48
    Examines the role that poets and the poetic word play in the formation of philosophical thinking in the modern German tradition. Several of the most celebrated philosophers in the German tradition since Kant afford to poetry an all-but-unprecedented status in Western thought. Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer argue that the scope, limits, and possibilities of philosophy are intimately intertwined with those of poetry. For them, poetic thinking itself is understood as intrinsic to …Read more
  •  47
    Nicolaus Cusanus and the Present
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1): 71-79. 2002.
  •  47
    What is the significance of hermeneutics at the intersections of ethics, politics and the arts and humanities? In this book, George - Discusses how hermeneutics offers ways to develop an ethics - Makes the case for the relevance of contemporary hermeneutics for current scholarly discussions of responsibility within continental European philosophy - Contributes a new, ethically inflected approach to current debate within post-Gadamerian hermeneutics - Extends his analysis to the practice of livin…Read more
  •  46
    Jean-Luc Nancy’s conception of the ‘inoperative community’ is one of the most original attempts in recent memory to develop a theory of the political that addresses contemporary concerns for difference and singularity. In this paper, I will argue that despite the deep rapprochement between Nancy and Heidegger, Nancy’s insistence upon the connection between community and singularity allows him to twist free from the more duplicitous features of his Heideggerian heritage. In contrast with Heidegge…Read more
  •  45
    Community in the idiom of crisis: Hegel on political life, tragedy, and the dead
    Research 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
  •  43
    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
  •  42
    Passive Resistance: Giorgio Agamben and the Bequest of Early German Romanticism and Hegel
    Epoché: 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
  •  41
    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
  •  37
    Günter Figal's hermeneutics
    Philosophy Compass 4 (6): 904-912. 2009.
    This article offers a survey of some main ideas in Günter Figal's hermeneutics as he presents them in his recent Gegenständlichkeit: Das Hermeneutische und die Philosophie [ Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy ]. Figal promises a new approach to the philosophical study of hermeneutics in this work that would advance beyond Gadamer, Heidegger, and others in significant respects. His project opens out from the belief that hermeneutical experience is guided by exteriority; such experience…Read more
  •  36
    Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy
    State 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
  •  34
    The purpose of this piece is to examine the contribution made to the philosophical study of hermeneutics by James Risser’s recently published book, The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics. The author argues that Risser’s emphasis on the relation of understanding to factical life places him among contemporaries, such as Donatella di Cesare and Günter Figal, who seek to advance hermeneutics beyond the context of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s approach. The author argues that Risser’s hermeneu…Read more
  •  34
    What is the future of the past? Gadamer and Hegel on the Work of Art in the Age of its Liberation
    Journal 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
  •  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
  •  33
    This article examines the hermeneutics as a basis of critique in the work of Gianni Vattimo and Hans-Georg Gadamer.
  •  31
    Book Reviews: Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts, edited by Bret W. Davis
    Comparative and Continental Philosophy 2 (2): 291-300. 2010.
    Although it might go without mention, editor Bret Davis nevertheless reminds us on the first page of his introduction to Key Concepts that “Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is widely considered to be the most famous, influential, and controversial philosopher of the twentieth century.” This really fine new companion put together by Davis promises to elucidate the main lines of Heidegger’s thought at a moment when Heidegger is perhaps receiving more scholarly attention and, indeed, more diverse schol…Read more
  •  29
    Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel's Phenomenology
    State 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
  •  29
    Hermeneutics as Slow Philosophy
    Research in Phenomenology 49 (2): 241-245. 2019.
  •  25
    Specifications
    Epoché: 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
  •  22
    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 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.
  •  22
    Letter from the Editor (review)
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (1): 5-6. 2014.
  •  21
  •  17
    Introduction
    Research 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