•  4
    Gadamer and German Idealism
    In Niall Keane & Chris Lawn (eds.), A Companion to Hermeneutics, Wiley. 2015.
    Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics cannot fully be understood without the contour his project receives from his relation to Kant's third Critique of Judgmentand Hegel's absolute idealism. Although Gadamer's deepest ties are to Heidegger, his thought also remains shaped greatly by the Greeks, especially Plato and Aristotle, as well as figures and themes in the classical age of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel. This chapter discusses two crucial points of Gadamer's approach to German idealis…Read more
  •  8
    Editors' Introduction
    with Cristiana Freni and Mirela Oliva
    Critical Hermeneutics 6 (2). 2023.
    Hermeneutics has a long tradition in the history of philosophy. It carries the task of Hermes to bring God’s message to humans and translate it without betraying it. This special issue of the journal Critical Hermeneutics proposes a double research track: veritative hermeneutics and hermeneutic realism. This double track testifies to the original purpose of hermeneutics to formulate fundamental philosophical questions in light of human historical experience. Opposed to relativism, veritative her…Read more
  •  10
    Is Hermeneutics Realistic? On the Normative Orientation toward Plurality
    Critical Hermeneutics 6 (2): 191-210. 2023.
    Significant proponents of both postmodern and realistic hermeneutics suggest that our efforts to understand are better when they involve a plurality of interpretative perspectives. The author of this essay argues, however, that a realist approach can provide a more persuasive reason for this orientation toward plurality. Postmodern approaches in hermeneutics suggest that we should pursue a plurality of interpretations to help us break free from the influence of reductive interpretations inherite…Read more
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  •  15
    The Gadamerian Mind (edited book)
    Routledge. 2021.
    "Hans-Georg Gadamer is one of the most important philosophers of the post-1945 era. His name has become all but synonymous with the philosophical study of hermeneutics, the field concerned with theories of understanding and interpretation and laid out in his landmark book, Truth and Method. Influential not only within continental philosophy, Gadamer's thought has also made significant contributors to related fields such as religion, literary theory and education. The Gadamerian Mind is a major s…Read more
  •  6
    Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is important to phenomenology for a number of reasons. One chief reason is that Gadamer describes his philosophical hermeneutics as an attempt to advance beyond the early Heidegger’s introduction of a “hermeneutics of facticity” that would break from the transcendental idealism of Husserl’s phenomenology. This chapter argues that Gadamer attempts to clarify his advance beyond Heidegger’s hermeneutical turn in phenomenology, at least in part, in reference to H…Read more
  • This chapter focuses on Hegel's important but underappreciated conception of romantic art. The author argues that for Hegel, art is a work of language. Whereas Hegel believes classical art is a work of language that serves as a foundation of society, however, romantic art provides what the author refers to as a supplement.
  •  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
  •  33
    This article examines the hermeneutics as a basis of critique in the work of Gianni Vattimo and Hans-Georg Gadamer.
  •  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
  •  15
    In this paper, the author turns to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to examine the experience of grieving. Specifically, the author argues that grieving may be grasped as a limit situation of memory. This approach suggests that grieving cannot be adequately captured by a stage model theory but, instead, poses an infinite task that is fraught with difficulty and ethical demands. The author develops this approach in reference not only to Hans-Georg Gadamer but recent research by Nan…Read more
  •  3
    Letter from the Edtior
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2): 5-5. 2015.
  •  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
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    Hermeneutics as Slow Philosophy
    Research in Phenomenology 49 (2): 241-245. 2019.
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    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
  • Translator's Introduction to Günter Figal's Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy
  • The Promise of World Literature
    Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik 13 (1): 128-143. 2014.
    In this essay, the author argues that Gadamer's approach to world literature contributes to the call for us mutually to discover our solidarities with those from different traditions, and, thus also, different linguistic traditions. He holds that the discovery of global solidarities is urgent because current prospects to address the world's political, social and economic challenges have been put in jeopardy by the increasingly ubiquitous use of calculative rationality to manage human relations. …Read more
  • The Responsibility to Understand
    In Gert-Jan van der Heiden (ed.), Phenomenological Perspectives on Plurality, Brill. pp. 103-120. 2014.
    The concern of the present inquiry is whether, and, if so, how, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of hermeneutical understanding can help us grasp the character of our ethical responsibility, and, indeed, a sense of responsibility that remains answerable to the plurality of our always singular and contingent ethical experiences. The focus of this essay, however, is to shed novel light on the responsibility at stake in understanding—or, as this may be referred to more simply, the responsibility to …Read more
  •  1
    Hermeneutics and German Idealism
    In Niall Keane & Chris Lawn (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 54-62. 2015.
    This chapter focuses on Gadamer's debts to figures and themes in German idealism, focusing in particular on Kant and Hegel
  • Art as Testimony of Tradition and as Testimony of Order
    Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik 16 (1): 107-120. 2017.
    Some critics charge that Gadamer’s approach to our experience of art remains mired in conservatism because he believes our experience of artworks depends on tradition. In this essay, I argue that this charge fails to address the full scope of Gadamer’s considerations of our experience of art. This becomes clear with an emendation that Gadamer appears to make to his Truth and Method account of artistic imitation, or, mimesis, in his later essay “Art and Imitation.” Whereas Gadamer’s approach to m…Read more
  •  8
    In a World Fraught and Tender
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (1): 39-52. 2017.
    In this essay, the author argues that Dennis Schmidt’s considerations of ethical life, when taken together, comprise a prescient and distinctive response to Heidegger’s call to pursue an ‘original ethics.’ In this, Schmidt disavows discourses within the discipline of ethics that seek to establish an ethical theory or position, arguing instead that the demands of ethical life require us to focus on the incalculable singularity of the factical situations in which we find ourselves. The author sugg…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
  • This dissertation provides a careful interpretation of Hegel's conception of political community in the Phenomenology of Spirit. It is often accepted by commentators that for Hegel in this text the highest achievements of community life are to be associated with the realization of 'absolute spirit' and 'the concept.' The author of this dissertation, however, develops a conception of political community based not upon this view, but instead upon a number of crucial, if somewhat oblique, passages …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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  47
    Nicolaus Cusanus and the Present
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1): 71-79. 2002.