Philosophical Hermeneutics Reinterpreted

Dialogues with Existentialism, Pragmatism, Critical Theory, and Postmodernism

Contents

Introduction: Hermeneutical Engagements

PART ONE: EXISTENTIALISM

1. Perspectivism: Friedrich Nietzsche

2. Reason as Boundless Communication: Karl Jaspers

3. The Thou and the Mass: Gabriel Marcel

PART TWO: PRAGMATISM

4. Truth After Correspondence: William James

5. The Theory of Inquiry: John Dewey

6. Practice, Theory, and Anti-Theory: Richard Rorty

PART THREE: CRITICAL THEORY

7. Interpretation and Criticism: Max Horkheimer

8. Deliberative Politics: Jurgen Habermas

9. Discourse Ethics: Karl-Otto Apel

PART FOUR: POSTMODERNISM

10. Genealogy and Suspicious Interpretation: Michel Foucault

11. Radical Hermeneutics: John Caputo

12. Unprincipled Judgments: Jean-Francois Lyotard

Publisher's Description

In this important new study, Paul Fairfield examines a number of issues of central important to philosophical hermeneutics. His aim is less to re-examine the basic hypotheses of hermeneutics (Gadamer's hermeneutics in particular) than to understand it in relational terms, by bringing it into closer association with existentialism, pragmatism, critical theory, and postmodernism. Fairfield contends that there are important affinities and areas for critical exchange between hermeneutics and these four schools of thought which have, until now, remained underappreciated.

Philosophical Hermeneutics Reinterpreted examines several of these connections by interpreting hermeneutics in relation to specific themes in the writings of key figures within each of these traditions. In so doing, he both clarifies some outstanding issues in hermeneutics and advances the subject beyond what Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur have given us.