Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics

Contents

Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii Chapter One: Philosophical Hermeneutics: Navigating the Approaches 1 Introduction 1 Eleven Theses on Philosophical Hermeneutics 3 Thesis One: Hermeneutical Understanding Requires Difference 5 Thesis Two: Philosophical Hermeneutics Promotes a Philosophy of Experience 5 Thesis Three: Philosophical Hermeneutics Entails a Commitment to Hermeneutic Realism 6 Thesis Four: Philosophical Hermeneutics Seeks Otherness within the Historical 7 Thesis Five: Philosophical Hermeneutics Reinterprets Transcendence 8 Thesis Six: Philosophical Hermeneutics Entails an Ethical Disposition 9 Thesis Seven: Hermeneutic Understanding Redeems the Negativity of Its Constituting Differential 12 Thesis Eight: Philosophical Hermeneutics Affirms an Ontology of the In-between 15 Thesis Nine: Philosophical Hermeneutics Is a Philosophical Practice Rather Than a Philosophical Method 17 Thesis Ten: Philosophical Hermeneutics Is a Negative Hermeneutics 27 vii Thesis Eleven: Philosophical Hermeneutics Looks upon Linguistic Being as a “Mysterium ” 27 Conclusion: Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Question of Openness 31 Chapter Two: Philosophical Hermeneutics and Bildung 37 Introduction 37 Bildung as a Transformative and Formative Process 42 Bildung and Tradition 50 Bildung and the Question of Essence 54 Bildung and the In-between 58 Bildung and Hermeneutical Practice 66 Bildung and Subject Matter (Die Sache selbst) 69 Sachen as a Totality of Meaning 75 Die Sachen and Negative Dialectics 79 Die Sachen and Plato’s Forms 83 Sachen, Cultural Communities, and Cortesia 87 “Bildung” and the Question of Nihilism 91 Conclusion 106 Chapter Three: Intimations of Meaning: Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Defense of Speculative Understanding 109 What Is Speculative Thinking? 113 The Formal Elements of Speculative Thought 114 The Speculative Motion of Hermeneutic Experience 116 The Defense of Speculative Understanding 128 The Speculative and the Humanistic 129 Speculative Insight and the “Unfounding” of Experience 131 Language and the Dialectic of Speculative Experience 137 Nietzsche, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Language, and the Market Place. 144 Entr’acte 161 Chapter Four: Understanding’s Disquiet 171 The Wantonness of Understanding 171 Four Responses to Deconstructive Criticism 176 Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Question of Alterity 179 viii CONTENTS Nihilism and the Life of Understanding 182 Dialogue and Dialectic 189 Language, Ideas, and Sachen 194 Keeping the Word in Play 197 Choice Words 207 The Poise of the In-between 214 The Giving Word 216 Language and Withoutenness 219 Language Negation and Affirmation: A Resumé 222 The Open and the Empty 225 Understanding and the Disquieting of the Self 230 Di-alogue and Di-stance 237 Afterword 248 Notes 253 Bibliography 275 Index 285 CONTENTS ix ...