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This volume makes available for the first time in English the most important of Hans-Georg Gadamer's extensive writings on art and literature. The principal text included is 'The Relevance of the Beautiful', Gadamer's most sustained treatment of philosophical aesthetics. The eleven other essays focus particularly on the challenge issued by modern painting and literature to our customary ideas of art, and use that challenge to revitalize our understanding of it. Gadamer demonstrates the continuing importance of such concepts as imitation, truth, symbol, and play for our appreciation of contemporary art, and thereby establishes its continuity with the Western tradition. The essays here are not technical and are readily accessible to the beginning student and the general reader. The collection as a whole serves to illustrate the practice of hermeneutics and to introduce Gadamer's thought. Robert Bernasconi provides an introduction clarifying the central aims of the essays and their relations to Gadamer's major work, Truth and Method, and to the philosophy of art since Kant. A bibliography of Gadamer's writings available in English is also included. ... Read more

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The hermeneutic circle explains how art can be `world disclosive'
I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art.The relationship that people have with language is an idea that philosophers who study "hermeneutical aesthetics" such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, have been exploring for decades.Gadamer, who was a student of Martin Heidegger, defines Hermeneutical aesthetics as not a theory of art per se, but more a set of practical guideposts for enhancing one's encounter with art.The goal of hermeneutical aesthetics is not to arrive at a concept of art but to deepen our experience of art.In hermeneutical aesthetics, theory is deployed to deepen contemplation of artworks by the audience rather than to categorize their nature.Thus, in the artform of literature, Gadamer's commitment to the linguistic nature of understanding also commits him to the view of understanding as essentially a matter of conceptual articulation between the author and the reader.This does not rule out the possibility of other modes of understanding, but it does give primacy to language and conceptuality in hermeneutic experience.

Thus, Gadamer in his essay "On the Contribution of Poetry to the Search for Truth" in his book "The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays," agrees with Wimsatt and Beardsley who created the "Intentional Fallacy" notion that the "success" of a literary text is not to be found in the author's intent or motivations, but what has been communicated in the text itself.For Gadamer, a successful text has to answer the same question as any other form of communication.Is it successful in conveying "...the universal nature of all speech--namely, the fact that what the word evokes is there."For example, Gadamer in his essay "Composition and Interpretation" makes a hermeneutic distinction between the linguistic characteristic traits of people speaking to one another and what he calls "the experience of poetry," which he believes has its own "language."In regards to poetic language, Gadamer argues that when young lovers write poems we all understand that there are powerful emotional forces behind the intent of the poem and we do not have to ask about the author's intentions and motivations behind her verse.However, in regards to serious poetry, Gadamer argues that the reader does not question to whom or why the author is communicating."The poem does not stand before us as a thing that someone employs to tell us something.It stands there equally independent of both the reader and poet.Detached from all intending, the word is complete in itself."Furthermore, Gadamer uses a unique argument for the importance of interpretation over authorial intent by hypothesizing that literary composition has a closer relationship with the practice of interpretation than any other artistic medium."As far as poetry and poetic composition are concerned, it is not uncommon to find the practice of interpretation and artistic creation united in one and the same individual."One prominent poet that fits Gadamer's observation is the post-modernist poet T. S. Eliot, who wrote on literary interpretation and is mentioned by Wimsatt, Beardsley, and E. D. Hirsch in their writings.I find that Gadamer's reason for this argument makes perfect sense.He observes that both literary composition and interpretation are closely linked because the medium they both use is language.However, in my opinion, the important point that brings him, closer to Hirsch's notion of the relationship of meaning and significance to the reader is how Gadamer acknowledges that there is a forceful difference in the everyday language of interpretation, and the rarified language many author's use in poetic compositions which serve more as "signs" to understanding.However, when it comes to examining the more ordinary form of language used by authors in novels, Gadamer notes that an author must acknowledge that a "common link" exists between composition and interpretation.

Using language that sounds similar to Hirsch's distinction between meaning and significance, Gadamer recognizes there are two different paths interpretation can lead readers on.First is the path of pointing to something, and second is the path of pointing towards the meaning of something."`Pointing to something' is a kind of `indicating' that functions as a sign.`Pointing out what something means,' on the other hand, always relates back to the kind of sign that interprets itself.Thus when we interpret the meaning of something, we actually interpret an interpretation."For example, when a text, especially a poem, uses such metaphoric "imagery" as dreams, waterfalls, premonitions, etc., an interpreter can only use interpretation as a tool to "pointing to something."These images are too ambiguous for an interpreter to interpret definitively what the images actually mean.

However, it is important to note that Gadamer, Wimsatt, Beardsley, and Hirsch, all correctly find that interpretation in Gadamer's sense is really only necessary when the text does not clearly communicate its meaning.Gadamer's argument for the rightful place of interpretation, especially when dealing with a text full of ambiguous language and "imagery," essentially agrees with Wimsatt and Beardsley's notion that it does not matter what an author means, only what a text says.Thus, Gadamer concludes, "All interpretation of poetic language only interprets what the poetry has already interpreted.What poetry interprets for us and points to is not of course the same as what the poet intends.What the poet intends is in no way superior to what anyone else intends."I find Gadamer's conclusion a bit dismissive in its assertion that the poet's intentions are not superior to anyone else's.The vast majority of the public that reads poetry and literature does so in order to be entertained and or to try to understand and deduce the author's meaning and emotions, and not to just see what emotion the work invokes in them.

However, I must say that Gadamer's hermeneutical circle methodology is pure genius, to learn more about it you must read his book "Truth and Method."The hermeneutic circle methodology of taking into account the artist, artwork, audience, artworld institution, history, and what he calls the "cultural horizon" interacting in a circular tension is the closest anyone has truly come to defining the age old question of what is art.As Heidegger would say, the hermeneutic circle explains how art can be "world disclosive."

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, philosophy of art, hermeneutics, and textual criticism.

Ars Critica
In The Relevance of the Beautiful, Gadamer hopes to justify the ways of art to modern man.He's answering Plato's banishment of the poets in The Republic, and every other such banishment, including Hegel's, who claimed that "art is a thing of the past" on the grounds that art re-establishes our sense of transcendence and order, that it "bridges the chasm between the ideal and the real," establishes our sense of "play," and otherwise enlarges our experience of life, communally, spiritually, culturally, and individually.It teaches us to go beyond ourselves.German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, famed student of Heidegger and author of the seminal Truth and Method, offers this phenomenological defense.As translated by Robert Bernasconi, Gadamer writes such a poetic and aphoristic prose that anyone with a moderate background in the arts can read it, as well as philosophers, artists, and critics.This essay is useful for a number of reasons: it gives articulate defenses-or condemnations-of translation, modern music (both pop and experimental), kitch, religious art, and historical painting.It is further particularly useful to me in that the grounds on which he makes many of his defenses mirror those of P.B. Shelley in "A Defense of Poetry." ... Read more

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Gadamer continues to stimulate the mind.
As Gadamer lived for 100 years it is difficult to say that he did not have the opportunity to be heard.But this collection of work provides a wonderful coda to a life that contributed to our collective effort to understand tradition, play, and dialogue.A welcome addition to the oeuvre.

Use the Hermeneutic lens to "see" the world
I read this book for a graduate seminar on philosophy of art.Hans-Georg Gadamer's "The Gadamer Reader" is really a companion book to his "Truth and Method," which is a seminal work."The Gadamer Reader" touches on such areas of investigating epistemology, ontology, teleology, history, and the social sciences.Hermeneutics first grew out of bible interpretation, interpreting law code, and the study of how humans communicate and use language, both in its verbal and written forms.Gadamer has taken hermeneutics to a whole new level, which touches on interpreting all communication, history, and the social sciences including the humanities.This book has caused me to "see" everything in a new philosophical light.When reading Gadamer, one instantly finds that he was influenced by Martin Heidegger, who he studied under, Hegel, and Aristotle.Hermeneutics is an interpretive methodology of a historically situated, linguistically mediated, contextualist and antifoundationalist theory of understanding.I know that is a mouthful, so the following will unpack this definition.The God Hermes is the source of the word "hermeneutics" Hermes the "messenger" was the go between the Gods and humans thus the word hermeneutics.

For Gadamer, interpretation is always connected with the "as," interpretation assumes that there are multiple ways or "lenses" with how we engage works.A different lens will produce a different way of seeing things.So, if our "as" is "cognitive knowledge" then we would approach a thing accordingly.If our "as" is "practical usefulness" then we approach it accordingly.For example, a botanist wants to understand what makes a tree a tree, a carpenter sees a tree as a source of lumber.Thus, hermeneutics is about the idea that there are many ways to interpret, which is why history is so important.It can also be present the world.Does historical inheritance allow for a blank slate?No, no divorce from what we are to be able approach a work in pure disinterestedness as Kant would have us do.No separate space in time.No pure present separated from the future.History doesn't tell us about the past, but about ourselves.Every present has sense of future, not just the past.

Gadamer's idea of interpretation, is to turn away from the idea of truth as a simple matter of fact, or certainty or a single principle.The idea of interpretation is that it is something that is "open."We use the word "interpret" that way when we say, "well how do you interpret that work"?This question means that there is not one way of reading the work.Unfortunately, though the difference between interpretation and fact is that a fact is not something open to interpretation, and therefore interpretation is seen as some kind of deficiency.It is seen as a lesser matter because it is open, and can't be secured by some kind of decisive result.A wide array of possibilities is what hermeneutics looks for; it is not just making it up.Hermeneutics does not mean one can't believe in objective truths; for example, there was a Civil War, it is a fact, what isn't a fact and has multiple truths and interpretations is what where the "causes" of the Civil War.Thus, hermeneutics for Gadamer doesn't mean that anything goes, it just means that there are multiple interpretations and possibilities when coming to terms with a text or artworks.The history of art is filled with different interpretations.There are multiple interpretations to many truths like in art.

There are already operating influences in how we regard anything.One of the ways to understand this is in child development.Every adult has been a child, and every child has been shaped by cultural influences through all sorts of ways, education, rearing, etc.So we sometimes forget about this because we are adults and no longer children, so we are on our own way so to speak.Every rearing of a child in terms of a certain set of historical influences or assumptions that the parents bring with them which they inherited from their parents and so on.In other words, any human self, will always be equipped with ways of seeing, and therefore there is no such thing as coming to see something as all by itself.However, as we'll also see, hermeneutic theory doesn't want to fall into the trap of saying "mere interpretation," because if it is mere interpretation it means there is something inadequate about it.If interpretation goes all the way down, then interpretation can't be deficient.It is simply a matter of getting clear what interpretations there are that shape us and being clearer about those.This doesn't mean that things can't change, it just means that whatever happens in human experience there is an already shaped factor to it.And because there is this already shaped factor that we did not produce ourselves, (since human child development has already been set), then it could be called mere interpretation in the sense that it is just an invention, an allusion, an appearance a relativism, that won't work either.Because, there is something about us being shaped by our culture that opens up our world for us, it is not just a matter of personal opinion.

Gadamer mentions history, thus the use of the historical artworld model is used by Gadamer, and brings in the notion of temporality, which means time.There obviously is a temporality in play, the game, the execution the time, the outcome.However, temporality for Gadamer is richer, a Heideggerian notion temporality is not just past present, and future, it is of fluid kind of circulation for people for selves who exist in time by experiencing these dimensions.It is impossible to live in the now.Because every sense of the present is formed by the past, if we didn't have a past there would be no shaping us to the point to the now, and every now is informed by the future.We have to live in the past and the future, everything we do is geared to the future.Past and future have a kind of openness to them.Heidegger's point is that idea of the abstractions of the past and the future as not now, and not yet now, or no longer now that very abstraction is created by an intellectual reflection that is not real.Therefore, any recollection is the present for the past.Thus, any anticipation is the present for the future, because you anticipate the future now, and you remember the past now.Thus, in a sense the past and the future are not abstractions that do not exist.There is a reality of the future and the past with anticipation and recollection.We all have various ways that the future is alive through anticipation and hope for example.The past is alive with things like nostalgia and regret.Temporality (time), is a circulation of these dimensions rather then three separate zones.Once that is done, the idea of history becomes a concrete temporality, history means what is the temporality of culture of people with actual means that occupy their lives, it is not just past, present, and future, its remembering the injustices of the past, to fix them in the future for example.Thus, history becomes an important temporality.It is filled with significance and meaningfulness rather than just the bare notions of the past.Because of Heidegger's open character of temporality in one sense the past is gone, but not totally gone, as we all know the past is something that can be revisited.The past is open to re-estimation; thus, structure of history is the same as temporality, it is open; thus, because of the open character it leads philosophers like Heidegger and Gadamer to say, that is why the idea of hermeneutics is interpretation and its model is open as well just like temporality.For instance, when we are trying to interpret and find meaning in something that is going on it is because we are presently trying to figure out what the hell happened in the past because of the future worries and consequences of what has happened.So we are inhabiting this circulation, and because the past is not like a objects that just stand there its open we can't really go back in time so we can only try to revision it, and the future is unknown and there is no way to be certain about what was said.It doesn't mean certain things can't be established, they can, but that doesn't end anything.No certainty however, the history of culture is therefore the history of temporal movement.

So, interpretation is not just simply opinion, interpretation refers to ways of seeing.Those ways of seeing are embedded in the world; they are not just subjective opinions.So, on the one hand we have the subject-object divide.The subjective is our opinions of the art, our impressions of it, neither one can hold in the hermeneutic theory, there can't be anything purely objective free of interpretation on the one hand, nothing can stand by itself, on the other hand it can't be merely subjective either, because we don't just make it up.This is the important point, we don't make it up.It shapes us.This hermeneutical way of "seeing" is analogous to a lens.A lens is something that lets us see in a certain way.A lens is only an analogy it isn't something that you could take off.A lens is a way of seeing that influences the way the thing appears, just as a lens does.However, a lens is nothing apart from what is being seen, so even though a lens is some kind of mere subjective concoction the lens is a way of seeing things.A lens is not a body of beliefs that is just simply in our heads, it is a way of seeing.However, according to the theory of interpretation, using the analogy, there is no "lens less seeing."Different cultures might have different lenses of a kind, or different periods in history might have different lenses.And here is one of the important ideas which needs to be stressed, art is something that has to do with ways of seeing.Therefore, art can affect our lenses.Art can be a lens that opens up something that we otherwise might not have seen.

What I like about Gadamer's notion is that in the modern period, the idea of the objective world was just scientific fact and so on, and the subjective world was ethics, art, and values, and so art is just how the human mind can see a thing.Gadamer talks allot about the phrase "Medial Structure," which is one way of trying to get over the subject/object divide, which is talked about in modern thought like the mind on one side of the fence and everything else on the other side.The idea of a medial structure is whatever is going on in experience or in the act of reading or responding is medially structured, that is to say that you can't pinpoint the source or the core of the truth on one side of the fence or the other of the work no object/subject divide.

Well one of the things about hermeneutics is it doesn't want to play that game of in the mind or in reality.The history of objectivity, what we mean by objectivity was a historical discovery, so, objectivity is a lens as well.Another words, the call to see the world objectively is another way of seeing or thinking and as you well know, objectivity is not usually the first thing that comes to mind, it has to be drilled in, coaxed, educated, disciplined.So, another words, to become objective is to discover another kind of lens.

I recommend this work for every thinking human; especially anyone interested in philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of art, art history, history, and the humanities.Get off the couch and read his book!!! ... Read more

Product Description
"This book is a virtual case study in the application of hermeneutical principles to illuminate philosophical texts. The book contains translations of eight of Gadamer's best known essays on Plato....These studies, spanning a period of almost fifty years, are important not only for what they have to say concerning Plato, but also for what they reveal about the development and insightfulness of Gadamer's hermeneutical theory of interpretation....[He] aims at dialogue with Plato and achieves it."-Jeremiah P. Conway, International Philosophical Quarterly"A remarkable felicitous set of translations."-Martin Warner, Times Higher Education Supplement"Gadamer is among the most eminent followers of Heidegger and rather more accessible that most. It is therefore a service to have these eight essays on Plato, dating from 1934 to 1974, translated competently into English."-Choice"May be the best introduction to Gadamer yet published in this country."-W.G. Regier, Modern Language Notes ... Read more

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Treat Plato with the respect he deserves
One of the greatest intellectual injustices in the history of philosophy is the standard treatment of Plato and Platonism more broadly.Gadamer reads the dialogues as what they are--dialogues, not treatises.Carefully reading the context, mythos, and logos of the dialogues, Gadamer not only understands Plato better than the majority of 20th century thinkers, he also provides an exemplary account of what it would like to perform the kind of rigorous hermeneutics he lays out in Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts).
A must-have for anyone interested in either Plato or Gadamer--this is one of those wonderful texts is equal parts theory and commentary. ... Read more

Product Description
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was one of the greatest philosophers of our era. He was also at the center of some of the century’s darkest, most complex historical events, for he chose to remain in his native Germany in the 1930s, neither supporting Hitler nor actively opposing him, but negotiating instead an "unpolitical" position that allowed him to continue his philosophical work. In this magisterial book, Jean Grondin appraises Gadamer’s life and achievement. Drawing on countless interviews with Gadamer and his contemporaries, Gadamer’s personal correspondence, and extensive archival research, Grondin traces Gadamer’s life as an academician and the development of his ideas, placing them in the context of his times. He sheds light on the genesis and accomplishment of Gadamer’s major opus, Truth and Method, the bible of modern-day hermeneutics. And he addresses the question of Gadamer’s attitude and actions amid the catastrophe of Nazi Germany, painting a balanced portrait of a scholar who tried to preserve German culture and tradition in the face of an invasive menace. ... Read more

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recommendation
The purchase was very simple, and they had the available book, the times and delivery of the product was made under the engaged conditions. I recommend this company for their quality and responsibility. I recommend this company for their quality and responsibility.

Truth And Tedium!
The author of this thick biography, Jean Grondin, has always been one of the most astute and informed commentators on the subject of philosophical hermeneutics.

Prospective readers need not be put off by this volume's bulk (478 pages) since almost 140 pages are devoted to scholarly apparatus which most of us will ignore.That leaves only 338 pages of actual text to read (plus a few pages of pictures to enjoy).In this era of bloated biographies, we can be thankful for Professor Grondin's restraint.The average intelligent reader will probably find herself skimming chapters 2 - 5 (Gadamer's ancestry and youth) and chapters 10 - 12 (academic politics in the mid-twentieth century) thereby shortening this book by an additional 115 pages.That leaves about 200 pages of interesting reading about Gadamer, Heidegger, Nazis, poets, Habermas, Derrida, Plato, phenomenology, human finitude, etc.

Not surprisingly, Professor Grondin does a fine job of sorting out the influences of others in the formation of Gadamer's conception of hermeneutics and in communicating the gist of his major work, TRUTH AND METHOD.Unfortunately, Grondin never gets around to telling us much about his subject's life-long enthusiasm for the arts (Why did Gadamer love Rilke's poetry?What visual artists was Gadamer excited about?).

In short, this is a good biography of an important twentieth century philosopher, but not a great one (for a great one order Ray Monk's WITTGENSTEIN : THE DUTY OF GENIUS). ... Read more

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Short and Sweet
5, concise and insightful essays. A great primer for Hegel's thought, the author's hermeneutic method proves itself over and again throughout. Highly recommended.

The young Hegelians
Concerning the rational structure of the Absolute, Hegel, following the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, argued that "what is rational is real and what is real is rational." This must be understood in termsof Hegel's further claim that the Absolute must ultimately be regarded aspure Thought, or Spirit, or Mind, in the process of self-development. Thelogic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialecticalmethod involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is theresult of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension ofHegel's thought has been analyzed in terms of the categories of thesis,antithesis, and synthesis. Although Hegel tended to avoid these terms, theyare helpful in understanding his concept of the dialectic. The thesis,then, might be an idea or a historical movement. Such an idea or movementcontains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or anantithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of the conflict athird point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict byreconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis andantithesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates anotherantithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion theprocess of intellectual or historical development is continually generated.Hegel thought that Absolute Spirit itself (which is to say, the sum totalof reality) develops in this dialectical fashion toward an ultimate end orgoal. For Hegel, therefore, reality is understood as the Absolute unfoldingdialectically in a process of self-development. As the Absolute undergoesthis development, it manifests itself both in nature and in human history.Nature is Absolute Thought or Being objectifying itself in material form.Finite minds and human history are the process of the Absolute manifestingitself in that which is most kin to itself, namely, spirit orconsciousness. In The Phenomenology of Mind Hegel traced the stages of thismanifestation from the simplest level of consciousness, throughself-consciousness, to the advent of reason. ... Read more

Product Description
In this work Gadamer reminds us that philosophy for the Greeks was not just a question of metaphysics and epistemology but encompassed cosmology, physics, mathematics, medicine and the entire reach of theoretical curiosity and intellectual mastery. Whereas Gadamer's book "The Beginning of Philosophy" dealt with the inception of philosophical inquiry, this book brings together nearly all of his previously published but never translated essays on the Presocratics. Beginning with a hermeneutical and philological investigation of the Heraclitus fragments (1974 and 1990), he then moves on to a discussion of the Greek Atomists (1935) and the Presocratic cosmologists (1964). In the last two essays (1978 and 1994/95), Gadamer elaborates on the profound debt that modern scientific thinking owes to the Greek philosophical tradition. ... Read more

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Hans-Georg Gadamer's "Truth and Method" is generally considered to be the single most important twentieth century contribution to hermeneutics. "The Beginning of Philosophy", published here in a centennial edition, is his bold exploration of philosophy and philology. ... Read more

Product Description
Gadamer on Celan makes all of Hans-Georg Gadamer's published writings on Paul Celan's poetry available in English for the first time. Gadamer's commentaries on Celan's work are explicitly meant for a general audience, and they are further testimony to Celan's growing importance in world literature since the Second World War. Celan's poetry has attracted the attention of many well-known figures, including Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Edmond Jabe's, Otto Poggeler, and George Steiner. As Steiner has said, "It will take a long time for our sensibilities to apprehend poetry of these dimensions and this radicality". Gadamer's commentaries will help readers to listen to Celan's poetry, and to become acquainted with his only book-length commentary on a poet, using the best example of Gadamer's thinking on the relationship of philosophy and poetry. This book also contains a translation of Who Am I and Who Are You? the centerpiece of Gadamer's most important philosophical project since the publication of Truth and Method (1960). Who Am I and Who Are You? demonstrates Gadamer's continual engagement with the key figures of twentieth-century thought, and his responsiveness to the challenges of modernist art and its various affronts to hermeneutics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Academic hubris has its way with a noble poet
Either you get Gadamer or you don't. Either you understand/respect/follow him out of the Heideggerian 'Clearing' or you start hacking therough the dense and tangled undergrowth and make your own path. I've never felt much affinity for his magnum opus, 'Truth and Method,' but then, all of Heidegger's belabored philosophical children leave me a tad cold... Hannah, Karl, Hans... The only one I felt had something new to say was Levinas. So let's just say that, 'ideologically' I'm not an enemy- just a contender.

You buy this- you get jargon juggling. Lots of jargon juggling. Little substance. I wonder what Celan would have made of this, as he too was very influenced by H's opus, Being and Time, he kept an annotated copy with him. This 'engagement,' as it is described, is another shred of soulless, brittle, and all-too obscurantist work that drains the lifeblood of Celan, page by page. The essay, "Who Am I and Who Are You?" Didn't seem to get anywhere on that topic. Endlessly tangential. Painfully dry.

It's strikes me as odd that Celan seemd able to draw upon Heidegger more deeply and interestingly than Lowith, Gadamer, et al... Most academic reformulation, elaborations of the H-ian legacy come off as tendentious posturing- weilding academic lingo as a blunt plank with which one beats one's readers into unconsciousness.

Beware. Get the Felstiner work, if anything. Or better yet... Let Celan speak for himself. ... Read more

Product Description
A philosophical and historical testament to the twentieth century, this volume consists of a wide-ranging series of interviews conducted in 1999/2000 between the then centenarian and his former assistant and associate of over thirty years, Riccardo Dottori. In the course of the interviews, Gadamer addresses-often critically-the work of a wide range of philosophers, including Heidegger, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Popper, Vico, Habermas, Rorty, and Derrida. With the possible exception of his autobiography, A Century of Philosophy is perhaps the most accessible expression of Gadamer’s life and work in English today. ... Read more

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Addressing the works of a variety of philosophers
A welcome addition to academic library Philosophy Studies collections, Hans-Georg Gadamer's A Century Of Philosophy: A Conversation With Riccardo Dottori presents a series of interviews conducted in the years 1999 and 2000, examining what has been arguably the bloodiest century in human history. Addressing the works of a variety of philosophers, including Nietzsche, Jaspers, Popper, Vico, and many others, A Century Of Philosophy astutely summarizes and expresses Riccardo Gadamer's life and work in a highly accessible and straightforward manner. ... Read more

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Here, Gadamer's work in hermeneutics and its influence in the thinking of humanities is brought together. The main focus of his work has been Greek philosophy, especially Plato, but his influences range through varied sources from Kant to Heidegger.Amazon.com Review
This latest in a series on living philosophers in which one philosopher's lifetime work is analyzed, critiqued, and expounded by numerous contemporaries, allowing the philosopher to respond to each, is particularly appropriate in the case of Hans-Georg Gadamer. His influential Truth and Method propounded the idea of a fusion of horizons in which we collectively come to the truth through the interaction of conversation. This book is the perfect way, then, to a true interpretation of the champion of philosophical hermeneutics, a challenge to deconstructionism. ... Read more

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Use the Hermeneutic lens to "see" the world
I read this book for a graduate seminar on philosophy of art.Hans-Georg Gadamer's "The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer" is really a companion book to his "Truth and Method," which is a seminal work.The book touches on such areas of investigating epistemology, ontology, teleology, history, and the social sciences.Hermeneutics first grew out of bible interpretation, interpreting law code, and the study of how humans communicate and use language, both in its verbal and written forms.Gadamer has taken hermeneutics to a whole new level, which touches on interpreting all communication, history, and the social sciences including the humanities.This book has caused me to "see" everything in a new philosophical light.When reading Gadamer, one instantly finds that he was influenced by Martin Heidegger, who he studied under, Hegel, and Aristotle.Hermeneutics is an interpretive methodology of a historically situated, linguistically mediated, contextualist and antifoundationalist theory of understanding.I know that is a mouthful, so the following will unpack this definition.The God Hermes is the source of the word "hermeneutics" Hermes the "messenger" was the go between the Gods and humans thus the word hermeneutics.

For Gadamer, interpretation is always connected with the "as," interpretation assumes that there are multiple ways or "lenses" with how we engage works.A different lens will produce a different way of seeing things.So, if our "as" is "cognitive knowledge" then we would approach a thing accordingly.If our "as" is "practical usefulness" then we approach it accordingly.For example, a botanist wants to understand what makes a tree a tree, a carpenter sees a tree as a source of lumber.Thus, hermeneutics is about the idea that there are many ways to interpret, which is why history is so important.It can also be present the world.Does historical inheritance allow for a blank slate?No, no divorce from what we are to be able approach a work in pure disinterestedness as Kant would have us do.No separate space in time.No pure present separated from the future.History doesn't tell us about the past, but about ourselves.Every present has sense of future, not just the past.

Gadamer's idea of interpretation, is to turn away from the idea of truth as a simple matter of fact, or certainty or a single principle.The idea of interpretation is that it is something that is "open."We use the word "interpret" that way when we say, "well how do you interpret that work"?This question means that there is not one way of reading the work.Unfortunately, though the difference between interpretation and fact is that a fact is not something open to interpretation, and therefore interpretation is seen as some kind of deficiency.It is seen as a lesser matter because it is open, and can't be secured by some kind of decisive result.A wide array of possibilities is what hermeneutics looks for; it is not just making it up.Hermeneutics does not mean one can't believe in objective truths; for example, there was a Civil War, it is a fact, what isn't a fact and has multiple truths and interpretations is what where the "causes" of the Civil War.Thus, hermeneutics for Gadamer doesn't mean that anything goes, it just means that there are multiple interpretations and possibilities when coming to terms with a text or artworks.The history of art is filled with different interpretations.There are multiple interpretations to many truths like in art.

There are already operating influences in how we regard anything.One of the ways to understand this is in child development.Every adult has been a child, and every child has been shaped by cultural influences through all sorts of ways, education, rearing, etc.So we sometimes forget about this because we are adults and no longer children, so we are on our own way so to speak.Every rearing of a child in terms of a certain set of historical influences or assumptions that the parents bring with them which they inherited from their parents and so on.In other words, any human self, will always be equipped with ways of seeing, and therefore there is no such thing as coming to see something as all by itself.However, as we'll also see, hermeneutic theory doesn't want to fall into the trap of saying "mere interpretation," because if it is mere interpretation it means there is something inadequate about it.If interpretation goes all the way down, then interpretation can't be deficient.It is simply a matter of getting clear what interpretations there are that shape us and being clearer about those.This doesn't mean that things can't change, it just means that whatever happens in human experience there is an already shaped factor to it.And because there is this already shaped factor that we did not produce ourselves, (since human child development has already been set), then it could be called mere interpretation in the sense that it is just an invention, an allusion, an appearance a relativism, that won't work either.Because, there is something about us being shaped by our culture that opens up our world for us, it is not just a matter of personal opinion.

Gadamer mentions history, thus the use of the historical artworld model is used by Gadamer, and brings in the notion of temporality, which means time.There obviously is a temporality in play, the game, the execution the time, the outcome.However, temporality for Gadamer is richer, a Heideggerian notion temporality is not just past present, and future, it is of fluid kind of circulation for people for selves who exist in time by experiencing these dimensions.It is impossible to live in the now.Because every sense of the present is formed by the past, if we didn't have a past there would be no shaping us to the point to the now, and every now is informed by the future.We have to live in the past and the future, everything we do is geared to the future.Past and future have a kind of openness to them.Heidegger's point is that idea of the abstractions of the past and the future as not now, and not yet now, or no longer now that very abstraction is created by an intellectual reflection that is not real.Therefore, any recollection is the present for the past.Thus, any anticipation is the present for the future, because you anticipate the future now, and you remember the past now.Thus, in a sense the past and the future are not abstractions that do not exist.There is a reality of the future and the past with anticipation and recollection.We all have various ways that the future is alive through anticipation and hope for example.The past is alive with things like nostalgia and regret.Temporality (time), is a circulation of these dimensions rather then three separate zones.Once that is done, the idea of history becomes a concrete temporality, history means what is the temporality of culture of people with actual means that occupy their lives, it is not just past, present, and future, its remembering the injustices of the past, to fix them in the future for example.Thus, history becomes an important temporality.It is filled with significance and meaningfulness rather than just the bare notions of the past.Because of Heidegger's open character of temporality in one sense the past is gone, but not totally gone, as we all know the past is something that can be revisited.The past is open to re-estimation; thus, structure of history is the same as temporality, it is open; thus, because of the open character it leads philosophers like Heidegger and Gadamer to say, that is why the idea of hermeneutics is interpretation and its model is open as well just like temporality.For instance, when we are trying to interpret and find meaning in something that is going on it is because we are presently trying to figure out what the hell happened in the past because of the future worries and consequences of what has happened.So we are inhabiting this circulation, and because the past is not like a objects that just stand there its open we can't really go back in time so we can only try to revision it, and the future is unknown and there is no way to be certain about what was said.It doesn't mean certain things can't be established, they can, but that doesn't end anything.No certainty however, the history of culture is therefore the history of temporal movement.

So, interpretation is not just simply opinion, interpretation refers to ways of seeing.Those ways of seeing are embedded in the world; they are not just subjective opinions.So, on the one hand we have the subject-object divide.The subjective is our opinions of the art, our impressions of it, neither one can hold in the hermeneutic theory, there can't be anything purely objective free of interpretation on the one hand, nothing can stand by itself, on the other hand it can't be merely subjective either, because we don't just make it up.This is the important point, we don't make it up.It shapes us.This hermeneutical way of "seeing" is analogous to a lens.A lens is something that lets us see in a certain way.A lens is only an analogy it isn't something that you could take off.A lens is a way of seeing that influences the way the thing appears, just as a lens does.However, a lens is nothing apart from what is being seen, so even though a lens is some kind of mere subjective concoction the lens is a way of seeing things.A lens is not a body of beliefs that is just simply in our heads, it is a way of seeing.However, according to the theory of interpretation, using the analogy, there is no "lens less seeing."Different cultures might have different lenses of a kind, or different periods in history might have different lenses.And here is one of the important ideas which needs to be stressed, art is something that has to do with ways of seeing.Therefore, art can affect our lenses.Art can be a lens that opens up something that we otherwise might not have seen.

What I like about Gadamer's notion is that in the modern period, the idea of the objective world was just scientific fact and so on, and the subjective world was ethics, art, and values, and so art is just how the human mind can see a thing.Gadamer talks allot about the phrase "Medial Structure," which is one way of trying to get over the subject/object divide, which is talked about in modern thought like the mind on one side of the fence and everything else on the other side.The idea of a medial structure is whatever is going on in experience or in the act of reading or responding is medially structured, that is to say that you can't pinpoint the source or the core of the truth on one side of the fence or the other of the work no object/subject divide.

Well one of the things about hermeneutics is it doesn't want to play that game of in the mind or in reality.The history of objectivity, what we mean by objectivity was a historical discovery, so, objectivity is a lens as well.Another words, the call to see the world objectively is another way of seeing or thinking and as you well know, objectivity is not usually the first thing that comes to mind, it has to be drilled in, coaxed, educated, disciplined.So, another words, to become objective is to discover another kind of lens.

I recommend this work for every thinking human; especially anyone interested in philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of art, art history, history, and the humanities.Get off the couch and read his book!!! ... Read more

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In this selection of writings from Hans-Georg Gadamer`s Gesammelte Werke, here translated into English for the first time, the philosopher probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of questions surrounding religion and ethics. Gadamer discusses such issues as the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ethics with one another. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Gadamer on Religion and Ethics
A splendid selection of essays dating from 1941 to 1989 and ranging from Kant to Greek philosophy from the PreSocratics to Plotinus.Topics center on ethics, friendship, religion, and science.The translation by Joel Weinsheimer is unfailingly felicitous.Gadamer is a splendid writer, and these essays are learned without being ponderous, wise, and warmly human.

Valuable Collection of Essays
This translation of ten important essays of the late Hans-Georg Gadamer by Joel Weinsheimer, distinguised translator of the recent Gadamer biography by Jean Grondin (Yale U. Press) and co-corrector of Gadamer's , TRUTH AND METHOD, revised translation, is a valuable contribution to the growing number of Gadamer's writings in English.It offers the following ten essays:
1. Kant and the Question of God (1941)
2. On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics (1963)
3. On the Divine in Early Greek Thought (1970)
4. The Ontological Problem of value (1971)
5. Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine (1980)
6. Myth in the Age of Science (1981)
7. The Ethifs of Value and Practical Philosophy (1982)
8. Reflections on the Relation of Religion and Science (1984)
9. Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics.
10. Aristotle and Imperative Ethics [Kant].

The translation is deft and faithful and will be valuable to those seeking to see the relationship of Gadamer's hermeneutics to religion, science, and ethics.Highly recommended.

Richard E. Palmer
(...)

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This volume presents six lively conversations with Hans-Georg Gadamer (born 1900), one of the twentieth century's master philosophers. Looking back over his life and thought, Gadamer takes up key issues in his philosophy, addresses points of controversy, and replies to his critics, including those who accuse him of having been in complicity with the Nazis. A genial and direct conversationalist, Gadamer is here captured at his best and most accessible.The interviews took place between 1989 and 1996, and all but one appear in English for the first time in this volume. The first three conversations, conducted by Heidelberg philosopher Carsten Dutt, deal with hermeneutics, aesthetics, and practical philosophy and the question of ethics. In a fourth conversation, with University of Heidelberg classics professor Glenn W. Most, Gadamer argues for the vital importance of the Greeks for our contemporary thinking. In the next, the philosopher reaffirms his connection with phenomenology and clarifies his relation to Husserl and Heidegger in a conversation with London philosopher Alfons Grieder. In the final interview, with German Nazi expert Dörte von Westernhagen, Gadamer describes his life as a struggling young professor in Germany in the 1930s and refutes accusations of his complicity with the Nazis. These conversations are a lucid introduction for readers new to the philosopher's thought, and for experts they present an invaluable commentary on Gadamer's most important themes. ... Read more

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One of this century's most important philosophers here focuses on Plato's PROTAGORAS, PHAEDO, REPUBLIC, and PHILEBUS and on Aristotle's three moral treatises to show the essential continuity of Platonic and Aristotelian reflection on the nature of "good". ... Read more