- College Station, Texas, United States
Theodore George
Texas A&M University, Department of Philosophy, Faculty Member
- University of Calgary, Nursing, Adjunctadd
- Philosophy, Hermeneutics, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Applied Hermeneutics, New Realism, German Idealism, and 12 moreEthics, Philosophy of Art, Aesthetics, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gadamer, Hegel, G.W.F. Hegel, Dennis Schmidt, John D. Caputo, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Architecture, and Philosophy of Nursingedit
- Theodore George is Professor of Philosophy and Presidential Impact Fellow at Texas A&M University. He is the author o... moreTheodore George is Professor of Philosophy and Presidential Impact Fellow at Texas A&M University. He is the author of The Responsibility to Understand: Hermeneutical Contours of Ethical Life (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel’s Phenomenology (State University of New York Press, 2006), and numerous articles and book chapters in his areas of expertise, including The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, “Hermeneutics.” He is co-ed. with Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Gadamerian Mind in the Routledge Philosophical Minds series (Routledge, 2021), as well as co-ed. with Charles Bambach, Philosophers and their Poets: Reflections on the Poetic Turn in Philosophy Since Kant (State University of New York Press, 2019) and translator of Günter Figal, Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 2010). His writings also include a work of poetry, Motherfisher: a haiku-story of grieving in the age of COVID (Alien Buddha Press, 2021).
George’s honorary appointments include Professor (Adjunct appointment), Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary (2021–present) and Professor (Adjunct appointment), College of Fellows, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University (2016–2021). George is category editor, PhilPapers, “Hermeneutics,” / leaf editor “Hans-Georg Gadamer.” His research has been supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Fulbright Commission, the Goethe Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) at the University of Freiburg, Germany, as well as at Texas A&M University by the Presidential Impact Fellows Program, the Rothrock Fellows Program, and the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research. He is a recipient of the Texas A&M Association of Former Students College of Liberal Arts Teaching Award.
Dr. George’s administrative and service contributions include two terms as Head of the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University, Academic Program Review work in conjunction with Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board mandate, as well as peer-review work for granting agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, as well as for numerous presses and journals. He serves on advisory boards for journals and professional organizations in his areas of expertise, he is a former Director of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum, and former President of the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics. Dr. George also serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Brazos Valley Food Bank, Bryan, Texas.edit - Dennis Schmidtedit
What is the significance of hermeneutics at the intersections of ethics, politics and the arts and humanities? This book: - Discusses how hermeneutics offers ways to develop an ethics - Makes the case for the relevance of contemporary... more
What is the significance of hermeneutics at the intersections of ethics, politics and the arts and humanities? This book:
- 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 living and covers animals, art, literature and translation
Few topics have received broader attention within contemporary philosophy than that of responsibility. Theodore George makes a novel case for a distinctive sense of responsibility at stake in the hermeneutical experiences of understanding and interpretation.
He argues for the significance of this hermeneutical responsibility in the context of our relations with things, animals and others, as well as political solidarity and the formation of solidarities through the arts, literature and translation.
- 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 living and covers animals, art, literature and translation
Few topics have received broader attention within contemporary philosophy than that of responsibility. Theodore George makes a novel case for a distinctive sense of responsibility at stake in the hermeneutical experiences of understanding and interpretation.
He argues for the significance of this hermeneutical responsibility in the context of our relations with things, animals and others, as well as political solidarity and the formation of solidarities through the arts, literature and translation.
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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... more
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 ambitions in the Phenomenology compel him to turn to the resource of tragedy in order to give voice to issues of incommensurability, discontinuity, otherness, strife, and crisis. From this standpoint, Hegel’s interest in the tragic proves to be more pervasive and to run deeper than has previously been recognized. The author shows that Hegel’s reliance upon the tragic not only stretches and tests assumptions of speculative philosophy, but also illuminates original insights into human finitude. While situating Hegel’s approach to tragedy as part of a broader response to Kant, George also contextualizes Hegel’s interest in tragedy with reference to figures in German Idealism and Romanticism, such as Schelling, Hölderlin, and Schlegel. || “This is an important contribution to the current reception of Hegel. Lucid and concise, it displays an admirable command of both the continental and the Anglo-American scholarship of Hegel. Even more importantly, it is both faithful to Hegel’s project, yet keenly aware of the subterranean possibilities that Hegel’s insistence on the triumph of speculative unity excludes. George clearly indicates Hegel’s contribution to our understanding of the German retrieval of Greek tragedy as well as tragic elements that elude Hegel’s speculative interests. Overall, it is both a fine work of scholarship, addressing a largely neglected theme, and a fine piece of philosophizing in its own right.” — Jason M. Wirth, author of The Conspiracy of Life: Meditations on Schelling and His Time
Research Interests: History, Greek Tragedy, Comedy, Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, and 3 moreFinitude, Experience, and Tragedy
This edited volume 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... more
This edited volume 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 the kind of thinking that defines philosophical inquiry and the philosophical life, and they developed their views through extensive and sustained considerations of specific poets, as well as specific poetic figures and images. This book offers essays by leading scholars that address each of the major figures of this tradition and the respective poets they engage, including Schiller, Archilochus, Pindar, Hölderlin, Eliot, and Celan, while also discussing the poets’ contemporary relevance to philosophy in the continental tradition.
Above all, the book explores an approach to language that rethinks its role as a mere tool for communication or for the dissemination of knowledge. Here language will be understood as an essential event that opens up the world in a primordial sense whereby poetry comes to have a deeply ethical significance for human beings. In this way, the volume positions ethics at the center of continental discourse, even as it engages philosophy itself as a discourse about language attuned to the rigor of what poetry ultimately expresses.
“With its impressive range of both philosophers and poets, this volume opens up new avenues of thinking at the intersections of philosophy and poetry.” — Robert D. Metcalf, cotranslator of Martin Heidegger’s Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy
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 the kind of thinking that defines philosophical inquiry and the philosophical life, and they developed their views through extensive and sustained considerations of specific poets, as well as specific poetic figures and images. This book offers essays by leading scholars that address each of the major figures of this tradition and the respective poets they engage, including Schiller, Archilochus, Pindar, Hölderlin, Eliot, and Celan, while also discussing the poets’ contemporary relevance to philosophy in the continental tradition.
Above all, the book explores an approach to language that rethinks its role as a mere tool for communication or for the dissemination of knowledge. Here language will be understood as an essential event that opens up the world in a primordial sense whereby poetry comes to have a deeply ethical significance for human beings. In this way, the volume positions ethics at the center of continental discourse, even as it engages philosophy itself as a discourse about language attuned to the rigor of what poetry ultimately expresses.
“With its impressive range of both philosophers and poets, this volume opens up new avenues of thinking at the intersections of philosophy and poetry.” — Robert D. Metcalf, cotranslator of Martin Heidegger’s Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy
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Appearing for the first time in English, Günter Figal’s groundbreaking book in the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics offers original perspectives on perennial philosophical problems. Figal has long been recognized as one of the most... more
Appearing for the first time in English, Günter Figal’s groundbreaking book in the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics offers original perspectives on perennial philosophical problems. 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 first stage in his systematic treatment of the elements of experience hermeneutically understood. Breaking through the prejudices of modernity, but not sacrificing the importance and challenge of the objective world that confronts us and is in need of interpretation, Figal reorients how it is that philosophy should take up some of its most longstanding and stubborn questions. World, object, space, language, freedom, time, and life are refreshed as philosophical notions here since they are each regarded as elements of human life engaged in the task assigned to each of us—the task of understanding ourselves and our world. || “…a welcome addition to reflections on phenomenology and the role of hermeneutical thinking.” — CHOICE / “Figal’s work launches a renewal of hermeneutics in the broadest sense. Through his investigation of the hermeneutical dimension of experience and of language, he enlarges the scope of hermeneutics to such an extent that it comes to coincide with philosophy as such. Thus, he takes up not only questions concerning understanding and interpretation but also the classical philosophical issues of space and time, of language and speech, and of life and reason. Objectivity is a thoroughly original and rigorous work, which retrieves much of the content of the philosophical tradition while also advancing into the still uncharted territory opened up by recent philosophical thought.” — John Sallis, author of Platonic Legacies
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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... more
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 inherited from the past. Yet, this normative orientation runs the risk of a proliferation of interpretations that leaves us in hermeneutical isolation from one another. A realistic hermeneutics, by contrast, suggests that we should pursue a plurality of interpretations because the matters of mutual concern to us are, in and of their own reality, plural. This realistic reason to pursue a plurality of interpretations does not silo us from one another but, on the contrary, reminds us of the need for conversation that allows us to address our shared world of matters of mutual concern.
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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... more
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 hermeneutics and hermeneutic realism focus on truth, objectivity, the structure of reality, normativity, and meaning. The issue publishes contributions of this track’s pioneers (Gaspare Mura – veritative hermeneutics, Günter Figal, and Anton Friedrich Koch – hermeneutic realism) as well as authors that explore this track from various perspectives: ethics, personalism, normativity, testimony, Biblical hermeneutics and Jewish thought, religious language, meaning. In this introduction, we will first present the authors working on veritative hermeneutics, then those working on hermeneutic realism....
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Review article of Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy of Testimony (Albany: SUNY Press, 2019).
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Scholarly companion to Gadamer, Truth and Method Part I, Section 1.1. The Significance of the Humanist Tradition for the Human Sciences
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Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is important to phenomenology for a number of reasons. Chief among these, perhaps, is that Gadamer describes his philosophical hermeneutics as an attempt to build on and even advance beyond the early... more
Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is important to phenomenology for a number of reasons. Chief among these, perhaps, is that Gadamer describes his philosophical hermeneutics as an attempt to build on and even advance beyond the early Heidegger’s break from the transcendental idealism of Husserl’s phenomenology. Yet Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics takes him down a path that diverges from Heidegger’s Denkwege.
What I wish to show in this chapter is that Gadamer clarifies central tenets of his divergence from Heidegger indirectly, as it were by proxy, in reference to the legacy of German Idealism generally and to Hegel’s legacy in particular. As we shall see, Gadamer takes his point of departure from critical concerns about German Idealism. Gadamer suggests that German Idealism has left not only a broader legacy of alienation from art and history but also a philosophical legacy of subjective idealism that haunts even phenomenology. Yet, as Gadamer believes, this legacy of German Idealism does not exhaust the significance of Hegel. As I shall argue, Gadamer turns to Hegel in order to elucidate historico-lingusitic conditions of what the early Heidegger called ‘facticity.’ Thus, Gadamer’s integration of Hegel’s legacy into his philosophical hermeneutics, though often viewed as a retreat from Heidegger’s project of a ‘destruction’ of metaphysics, in fact proves to be the basis of his attempt to make Heidegger’s hermeneutics more radical.
What I wish to show in this chapter is that Gadamer clarifies central tenets of his divergence from Heidegger indirectly, as it were by proxy, in reference to the legacy of German Idealism generally and to Hegel’s legacy in particular. As we shall see, Gadamer takes his point of departure from critical concerns about German Idealism. Gadamer suggests that German Idealism has left not only a broader legacy of alienation from art and history but also a philosophical legacy of subjective idealism that haunts even phenomenology. Yet, as Gadamer believes, this legacy of German Idealism does not exhaust the significance of Hegel. As I shall argue, Gadamer turns to Hegel in order to elucidate historico-lingusitic conditions of what the early Heidegger called ‘facticity.’ Thus, Gadamer’s integration of Hegel’s legacy into his philosophical hermeneutics, though often viewed as a retreat from Heidegger’s project of a ‘destruction’ of metaphysics, in fact proves to be the basis of his attempt to make Heidegger’s hermeneutics more radical.
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Research Interests: Critical Theory, Deconstruction, Hermeneutics, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, and 15 moreMartin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, Speculative Realism, Schleiermacher, Gianni Vattimo, Husserl, Habermas, Derrida, Gadamer, Friedrich Schleiermacher, New Realism, and Günter Figal
Publishing, philosophy, the university, and the humanities.
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This article compares Vattimo's notion of hermeneutical responsibility and of critique in his recent Of Reality with themes from Gadamer's hermeneutics.
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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... more
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 brought into a novel philosophical context and, with this, comes to designate a philosophical movement – or, at least, a number of related philosophers and themes – concerned with the scope and limits of phenomenology, the character of human existence, the relation of the natural sciences and humanities, as well as a range of interrelated matters in the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, practical philosophy, as well as in epistemology and the theory of meaning.
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The purpose of this article is to examine Hans-Georg Gadamer’s considerations of the hermeneutical significance of the body. This theme may come as a surprise, given that Gadamer has criticized himself for not having done enough to... more
The purpose of this article is to examine Hans-Georg Gadamer’s considerations of the hermeneutical significance of the body. This theme may come as a surprise, given that
Gadamer has criticized himself for not having done enough to elucidate the hermeneutics of the body. In this essay, I argue, however, that Gadamer makes important contributions to the hermeneutics of the body in later essays concerned with health, medical science, and the art of healing. Specifically, I argue that Gadamer’s treatment of these themes recommends the body as an ineluctable aspect of what Heidegger referred to as the hermeneutics of facticity. In this, Gadamer suggests that the hermeneutics of facticity is characterized not only by the experience of language as this is transmitted historically, but, at the same time, by the embodied experience of pain. Through an analysis of references made by Gadamer in these later essays to the newborn child’s experience of the cry at birth, in particular, I argue that the hermeneutical significance of language, or logos, is always bound up with a rhythm, or rhythmos, of the body that is punctuated by pain.
Der Aufsatz untersucht Hans-Georg Gadamers Überlegungen zur hermeneutischen Bedeutung des Leibes. Diese Themenstellung mag überraschen, da Gadamer sich selbst vorwarf, die Hermeneutik des menschlichen Körpers vernachlässigt zu haben. Jedoch versuche ich zu zeigen, dass Gadamer in späten Aufsätzen, die sich mit Themen wie der Gesundheit, der Medizin und der Heilkunst beschäftigen, durchaus wichtige Beiträge zu einer hermeneutischen Theorie des Leibes liefert. Insbesondere argumentiere ich dafür, dass Gadamer den Leib als wesentlichen Aspekt dessen begreift, was Heidegger eine Hermeneutik der Faktizität genannt hat. Gadamer schlägt damit vor, nicht allein die Sprache in ihrer geschichtlichen Überlieferung, sondern auch die Leiberfahrung des Schmerzes als wesentlichen Bestandteil einer Hermeneutik der Faktizität zu begreifen. Die hermeneutische Beschreibung von Sprache oder logos ist immer mit einem Rhythmus, einem rhythmos verbunden, der jedoch im Schmerz unterbrochen wird.
Gadamer has criticized himself for not having done enough to elucidate the hermeneutics of the body. In this essay, I argue, however, that Gadamer makes important contributions to the hermeneutics of the body in later essays concerned with health, medical science, and the art of healing. Specifically, I argue that Gadamer’s treatment of these themes recommends the body as an ineluctable aspect of what Heidegger referred to as the hermeneutics of facticity. In this, Gadamer suggests that the hermeneutics of facticity is characterized not only by the experience of language as this is transmitted historically, but, at the same time, by the embodied experience of pain. Through an analysis of references made by Gadamer in these later essays to the newborn child’s experience of the cry at birth, in particular, I argue that the hermeneutical significance of language, or logos, is always bound up with a rhythm, or rhythmos, of the body that is punctuated by pain.
Der Aufsatz untersucht Hans-Georg Gadamers Überlegungen zur hermeneutischen Bedeutung des Leibes. Diese Themenstellung mag überraschen, da Gadamer sich selbst vorwarf, die Hermeneutik des menschlichen Körpers vernachlässigt zu haben. Jedoch versuche ich zu zeigen, dass Gadamer in späten Aufsätzen, die sich mit Themen wie der Gesundheit, der Medizin und der Heilkunst beschäftigen, durchaus wichtige Beiträge zu einer hermeneutischen Theorie des Leibes liefert. Insbesondere argumentiere ich dafür, dass Gadamer den Leib als wesentlichen Aspekt dessen begreift, was Heidegger eine Hermeneutik der Faktizität genannt hat. Gadamer schlägt damit vor, nicht allein die Sprache in ihrer geschichtlichen Überlieferung, sondern auch die Leiberfahrung des Schmerzes als wesentlichen Bestandteil einer Hermeneutik der Faktizität zu begreifen. Die hermeneutische Beschreibung von Sprache oder logos ist immer mit einem Rhythmus, einem rhythmos verbunden, der jedoch im Schmerz unterbrochen wird.
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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... more
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 Nancy Moules and Kate Beamer.
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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... more
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 suggests that Schmidt’s contributions to such an original ethical turns on Schmidt’s claims that the context of ethical life is fraught because bound up with radical finitude—though, for that very reason, also tender because marked by the need to care for one another in our vulnerability and fragileness.
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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... more
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 mimesis in Truth and Method provides testimony to the significance of tradition for our experience of artworks, his account in “Art and Imitation” makes the supplementary proposal that our experience of artworks testify to a more fundamental and encompassing experience of what he simply refers to as “order.” Gadamer thereby suggests that our experience of artworks concerns not only foremost or exclusively our belonging to a tradition but, more originally, our possibilities for belonging as such.
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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.... more
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 of claims found in Heidegger and Gadamer that conversation is always contingent on “prior accord.” Critics of hermeneutics have, for some decades, interpreted this claim of prior accord to refer to a common tradition, so that the understanding achieved in conversation is restricted to those who belong to the same heritage. In this essay, the author argues that although Heidegger and Gadamer often suggest this prior accord is a matter of common tradition, crucial threads of Gadamer’s thought, in particular, recommend a different view. Gadamer, in these threads, offers that “prior accord” concerns not a common tradition, but, on the contrary, the call to participate in hermeneutic transmission as such, even—and no doubt especially—when those in conversation are not familiar with the tradition or language of the other. With this, we are called to converse not first by what the other says, but by the fact that we do not yet understand, that we have already misunderstood, and that we perhaps cannot understand.
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This chapter focuses on Gadamer's debts to figures and themes in German idealism, focusing in particular on Kant and Hegel.
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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... more
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. Gadamer's concern for us to discover solidarities, however, concerns not first that we ally ourselves with some political identity, ideal, or cause, but, rather, that we allow ourselves to become visible to one another in our respective exteriority as finite, free beings. In this context, the author seeks to show that world literature may contribute to the discovery of solidarities by bringing us into such visibility on a global scale.
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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... more
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 hermeneutics is distinguished by his concern for the radical finitude at stake in the experience of tradition, language, and beauty. In view of this, the author broaches questions that bring into focus the proximity between Risser’s hermeneutics and Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstruction.
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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... more
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 understand—on the motif of Gadamer’s call for us to “elevate” ourselves “to humanity” through “the aptitude [Fähigkeit] for conversation.” This identification of the responsibility to understand with our elevation of ourselves to our humanity appears, initially at least, to stand in opposition to Heidegger’s celebrated (some would say notorious) criticism of humanism in his “Letter on Humanism” and elsewhere. Yet, as we shall see, Gadamer’s call for us to elevate ourselves to our humanity in fact may be grasped as an ‘extreme’ form of humanism that answers to criticisms of the humanist tradition prevalent since they were first raised by Heidegger in his “Letter.”
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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... more
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 releasement or letting-be (Gelassenheit) of things in their independence; and, second, on Günter Figal’s recent claim that this enactment, in turn, depends on our referential relation to the exteriority or objectivity of things. The author concludes that our living relation with things may be understood best in terms of the movement or mutual interplay of these two conditions.
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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... more
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 suspicion of the capacity of language to fix significance. Whereas Derrida concludes that all attempts to fix significance through supplementation of our expressions can only end in the need for further supplementation, Figal stresses the dialectical mien of language that allows supplementation to yield genuinely determinate significances.
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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... more
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‘ in favor of an emphasis on the kinship between art and the phenomenon of play. In light of this shift, it is argued that Gadamer’s conception of the truth claim and beauty of art may best be understood not as properties of a product or artifact, of something already enacted and thus complete in itself, but, instead, as nothing other than the very enacting of that freedom which he finds at the heart of human play.
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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... more
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 community.
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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... more
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 practical life. The author suggests that Hegel’s approach to forgiveness, which makes use not only of themes expressed by Jesus in the Gospel but also Greek tragedy, comprises an attractive alternative to some current views.
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Published in Spanish translation by Juanita Maldonado, 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... more
Published in Spanish translation by Juanita Maldonado, 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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Translator's Introduction to Günter Figal's Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy
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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... more
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 is directed toward and sustained by what stands outside the subject and its sphere, or, as he develops this idea, by what is objective ( das Gegenständliche ). His orientation toward this sense of objectivity leads him to establish a notion of hermeneutical philosophy based on novel views of interpretation and understanding. This discussion reveals that hermeneutical philosophy belongs in the world, taken as hermeneutical space organized by the dimensions of freedom, language, and time. His hermeneutics culminates in an elucidation of human life as it is lived in this space.
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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... more
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, dislocations, and fractures that pervade any experience of the past. Specifically, Gadamer’s critical response in these essays to Hegel’s familiar thesis that art is a “thing of the past” sheds light on the special hermeneutical difficulties faced in the present historical juncture—a time, which Gadamer suggests is increasingly alienated from its own heritage. As I wish to show, Gadamer believes this schism to signal not an end of Western art, but, rather, a liberation of art that releases novel possibilities for artistic practice and for the interpretation of art. Far from being a conservative who might deny or lament the rupture of tradition, then, Gadamer’s take on the Hegelian thesis reveals Gadamer to acknowledge and even embrace this withdrawal of tradition as a source of new meaning and experience.
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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... more
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 Heidegger, Nancy interprets the political significance of finitude with reference not to the work of a people, but, instead, to the finitude of singular beings that we encounter in our exposure to the death of others. From Nancy’s interpretation emerges a view of community that resists, or, as he puts it, unworks all tendencies toward totalitarian politics.
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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.... more
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 relation to Hegel sheds new light not only on Blanchot’s conception of literature and related themes of language, but also on his view of the significance of literature as a powerful and elusive force of resistance to hegemonic and ideological programs of many kinds.
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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,... more
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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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... more
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 only bring Hegel’s claim about the end of art into question, but also lend new insights into the possibilities for the relationship between truth and art in our age.
Research Interests: Greek Tragedy, Greek Comedy, Comedy, Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and 3 moreG.W.F. Hegel, Heidegger, and Tragedy
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... more
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 experiences. His approach reminds us that it is impossible to achieve genuine community unless we recognize and respect not only cultural differences, but differences of all kinds. It is possible, in fact, that despite some of Nancy's untenable remarks suggesting a precedence of the Occident, his concept of literary communism must be understood as a non-, or perhaps better, post-Western form of community.
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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... more
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 absolute spirit, itself a preeminent example of political totality, but instead in his discussion of a very different form of togetherness, one achieved in the tragic work of art. As the author argues, this is a sense of community that takes as its very basis the impossibility of political totality, for Hegel an impossibility evoked by a crisis concerning the political significance of the dead.
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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... more
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 looking not only to the acumen of Foucault’s research and critique, but also to the depiction of Foucauldian themes in Shaffer’s compelling dramatic work, this article is able to explore the implications of the relation between ‘health’ and ‘normality’ in concrete, human terms. In Equus, the effects of psychiatric discourse are written all over the face of a disturbed, young teenager, a fact which reminds us that the human beings subjected to the mental health care profession are all too real, precariously delicate, suffering individuals.
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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... more
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 critique. Plato’s critique of poetry is not aimed against poetry itself, but just against its problematic claims and false promises. In turn, Plato’s use of the poetic image, especially in relationship to eros, delimits philosophy, and places it in relation to that which is not attainable for it. The battle between poetry and philosophy is seen to involve a reciprocal benefit for both, and a hidden affinity. In this sense, the poetic image has its philosophical sense precisely because it falls outside of the philosophical perspective.
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Three-day advanced course presented at the 2018 meetings of the Canadian Hermeneutics Institute, June 6-8, 2018, University of Calgary.
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The purpose of this presentation is to consider the contour, or, at least, one contour of the responsibility to understand that guides our experience of ourselves as part of the global community. Specifically, I focus on the... more
The purpose of this presentation is to consider the contour, or, at least, one contour of the responsibility to understand that guides our experience of ourselves as part of the global community. Specifically, I focus on the responsibility that Gadamer suggests we have to foster a robust global culture of translation.
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The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine the association between elevated depressive symptoms and the clinical severity of sickle cell disease (SCD) using African-American adults with and without SCD. The population... more
The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine the association between elevated depressive symptoms and the clinical severity of sickle cell disease (SCD) using African-American adults with and without SCD. The population consisted of 102 African-American adults with SCD, diagnosed using hemoglobin electrophoresis, individually matched on age (+/-5 years), gender and recruitment location to 103 African-American adults without SCD (mean age of all subjects was 35.4 years, 55.6% female). Logistic regression was used to examine the association between SCD clinical severity and elevated depressive symptoms in bivariate and multivariable analyses. The prevalence of elevated depressive symptoms as measured using the 10-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) was 38.6% in those with SCD, compared to 27.5% in those without SCD; however, this difference was not statistically significant (p>0.05). Compared to African Americans without SCD, African America...