Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History

Applied Hermeneutics

Edited by Dieter Misgeld, Graeme Nicholson
Translated by Lawrence Schmidt, and Monica Reuss

Subjects: Translation
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791409206, 264 pages, March 1992
Hardcover : 9780791409190, 264 pages, April 1992

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Table of contents

Editors' Introduction

Translators' Approach

Part I The Philosopher in the University

1. Interview: The German University and German Politics. The Case of Heidegger.

2. On the Primordiality of Science: A Rectoral Address

3. The University of Leipzig, 1409-1959: A Former Rector Commemorates the 550th Anniversary of its Founding

4. The University of Heidelberg and the Birth of Modern Science

5. The Idea of the University—Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Part 2 Hermeneutics, Poetry, and Modern Culture

6. Interview: Writing and the Living Voice

7. Are the Poets Falling Silent?

8. The Verse and the Whole

9. Hö1derlin and George

10. Under the Shadow of Nihilism

11. Interview: Historicism and Romanticism

Part 3 Europe and the Humanities

12. Interview: The 1920s, the 1930s, and the Present:National Socialism, German History, and German Culture

13. The Philosophy and the Religion of Judaism

14. Notes on Planning for the Future

15. The Limitations of the Expert

16. The Future oft he European Humanities

17. Citizens of Two Worlds

18. The Diversity of Europe: Inheritance and Future

Sources

Description

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects for Europe in the coming years.

Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger's leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world's leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the "fusion of horizons" also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture.

Dieter Misgeld is Associate Professor of the Ontario Institute for Studies of Education and the Graduate Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is coeditor of Modern German Sociology with V. Meja and N. Stehr. Graeme Nicholson is Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College in Toronto and author of Seeing and Reading and Illustrations of Being.