Festivals of Interpretation

Essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer's Work

Edited by Kathleen Wright

Subjects: Hermeneutics, Continental Philosophy
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791403785, 257 pages, August 1990
Hardcover : 9780791403778, 257 pages, August 1990

Alternative formats available from:

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Kathleen Wright

Part I: Situating Gadamer's Hermeneutics and Its Problems

1. Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics
Reiner Wiehl

2. Hermeneutics and Relativism
Jean Grondin

3. Philosophical Discourse and the Ethics of Hermeneutics
Robert J. Dostal

Part II: The Practice of Hermeneutics

4. Hermeneutics and Justice
Fred Dallmayr

5. Legal Hermeneutics: Recent Debates
David Couzens Hoy

6. Walzer, Rawls, and Gadamer: Hermeneutics and Political Theory
Georgia Warnke

7. Poetry, Dialogue, and Negotiation: Liberal Culture and Conservative Politics in Hans-Georg Gadamer's Thought
Dieter Misgeld

Part III: Hermeneutics and the Challenges of Poetry and Postmodern Thinking

8. Paul Celan's Challenges to Heidegger's Poetics
Veronique M. Foti

9. Poetry and the Political: Gadamer, Plato, and Heidegger on the Poetics of Language
Dennis J. Schmidt

10. Literature and Philosophy at the Crossroads
Kathleen Wright

Index

Description

This book engages and clarifies concepts crucial to Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, including the concepts of effective-history, tradition, dialogue, and language. Festivals of Interpretation exhibits the universal scope of hermeneutics.

The authors respond to three questions often raised about Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Part One takes up the question of how Gadamer understands truth. It discusses how hermeneutical truth relates to methods, how truth may be thought to be historically conditioned without at the same time being relative, and how a truthful interpretation can produce a new understanding while simultaneously remaining faithful to the text.

Part Two brings out the political, legal, and social relevance of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics by focusing on the role interpretation plays in times of political crisis, of disputes in Constitutional law, of changing ideas of societal needs such as health care, and of increased technological control of public opinion.

The last question often asked about Gadamer's work concerns its relation to poetry. Part Three treats the challenge posed to philosophy by poetry in general and particularly by the poetry of Paul Celan as well as questions raised recently by Jacques Derrida about different ways of thinking about interpretation and text.

Kathleen Wright is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College.