In these spirited essays, John D. Caputo continues the project he launched with Radical Hermeneutics of making hermeneutics and deconstruction work together.

"This is a remarkable book: wide-ranging, resonant, and well-written; it is also reflective and personable, warm and engaging." —Philosophy and Literature "With this book Caputo takes his place firmly as the foremost American, continental post-modernist... " —International Philosophical Quarterly "One cannot but be impressed by the scope of Radical Hermeneutics." —Man and World "Caputo’s study is stunning in its scope and scholarship." —Robert E. Lauder, St. John’s University, The Thomist For John D. Caputo, hermeneutics means radical (...) thinking without transcendental justification: attending to the ruptures and irregularities in existence before the metaphysics of presence has a chance to smooth them over. Radical Hermeneutics forges a closer collaboration between hermeneutics and deconstruction than has previously been attempted. (shrink)

These essays focus on and explore the idea of "radicalizing" hermeneutics, which John D. Caputo first proposed in his provocative and widely read study, Radical Hermeneutics (1987). In the wake of Derrida, the essays address the confrontation of hermeneutics and postmodernism. The contributors are from various disciplines—philosophy, literature, and science—and they make exciting and original contributions to hermeneutic work. Caputo and Martinez have coauthored an introductory piece that sets out the "very idea of radical (...) class='Hi'>hermeneutics," which several contributors proceed to work and rework in quite original ways. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the hermeneutical method of Theodoret of Cyrus, who was one of the most important Biblical commentators and an influential theologian of the School of Antioch. This paper attempts to point out the fact that in the person of the Blessed Theodoret we find the first attempt of synthesis between the Antioch and Alexandria hermeneutical schools. In his hermeneutical work Theodoret attempted to overcome the contradictions existing up to that point and to follow (...) a middle way, without discarding neither the literal nor the spiritual-allegorical interpretation. It could be argued that Theodoret rejected the extreme hermeneutical trends of both the Alexandrian and Antioch inspirations; he developed his unique methods and tactics, which were rooted in the previous patristic tradition of the Church Fathers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS people will in fact he causally influenced to do B as well. The former is a philosophical issue and the latter is an empirical one. There are many interesting issues in these last three chapters. But the most important planks in Rachels's radical view are his distinction between biological and biographical life and his Bare Difference argument against the active killing/passive letting die distinotion. This hook (...) contains a number of very important moral issues which are rich· ly discussed. But his case against the rtraditional view must ultimately he judged inadequarte. Rachels himself admits that until now the traditional view has been the only one that is sufficiently worked out in a sophisticated and satisfactory way. In my opinion, Rachels's contribution to the discussion has not changed that situartion. J.P. MORELAND Lynchburg, Virginia Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic Project. By JoHN D. CAPUTO. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987. Pp. 319. Professor Caputo's impressive book, which is composed of an introduction and three parts, is a closely reasoned, scholarly explanation and defense of what its author calls radical hermeneutics. In his Jn. troduction, which he entitles "Restoring Life rto Its Original Difficulty," Caputo presents what he takes to be the problem of trying l:o make sense of contemporary experience, given the thought developments of the last two centuries. Central to Caputo's project is his reading of traditional metaphysics as a betrayal of the human experi· ence of the flux. He claims that, though metaphysics makes a show of beginning with questions, it quickly forecloses those questions as soon as things begin to look uncertain. In Being and Time Heidegger tried to restore the original difficulty of Being that metaphysics had swept under the rug. Viewing Kierkegaard in his pseudonymous masks, such as the disguise of Contantin Constantius, as involved in making life difficult rather than easy, Capuito links the Danish existentialist's con· cerns to Heidegger's. Caputo argues that radical hermeneutics is for the hardy and not for those who seek some way out of the flux. Meta· physics has illegiitimartely claimed some transcendental high ground ac· cording to Caputo, hut radical hermeneutics will have none of that ap· parently consoling hut ultimately unjustifiable comfort. Rather, her· BOOK REVIEWS meneutics wants to describe the difficulrty we are in and rather than rise above the flux " gets up the nerve to stay with it " (p. 3). Caputo's book is evidence of the author's attempt to "get up the nerve to stay with it " and though difficult reading the hook is nonetheless exciting. Caputo argues Philosophy is scandalized by motion and thus tries either to exclude movement outright from real being (Platonism) or more subversively, to portray itself as a friend of movement and thus to lure it into the philosophical house of logical categories (Hegelianism). Kierkegaard objects to the mummifying work of philosophy, not because he thinks that eternity-the sphere of that which lies outside of time and movement -is an illusion, that the real world is a myth (Fabel), as does Nietzsche, but because he thinks that philosophy makes things too easy for itself. It is ready to sneak out the back door of existence as soon as life begins. It does not have the courage for the flux, for the hard work of winning eternity in time, of pushing forward existentially for the prize which lies ahead. It is not eternity as such (Nietzsche's 'real world') to which he objects but philosophy's effete manner of seeking it. He takes the side of becoming against Being, of existence against thought, of existential 'interest' against metaphysics. For it is on the basis of interest that philosophy founders, that metaphysics comes to grief (pp. 11-12). Impressed with :the radicalization which hermeneutics provides, Caputo sees the protohistory of hermeneutics in thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Husserl, Nietzsche, Meister Eckhart, the late Heidegger and even Derrida, who is a critic of hermeneutics. In Part One Caputo discusses Kierkegaardian repetition and Husserlian conS. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is the human search for authentic understanding that gives birth to radical hermeneutics, and not the reverse. Radical hermeneutics in the “contemporary” sense begins with Martin Heidegger’s critical reinterpretation of Immanuel Kant’s answer to the question of “What is the man?” , and continues with his reflection on Being as the foundation of hermeneutics. Hans-Georg Gadamer has developed Heidegger’s thesis into what he termed philosophical hermeneutics, while Jacques Derrida seized (...) Heidegger’s Kehre as the momentum to launch a typically Nietzschean interpretation, that is, to “return” to understanding in its genetic stage. Despite their difference, Gadamer and Derrida believed that authentic understanding is possible only if it is motivated by a creative force that remains loyal to humanness: identity in difference and difference in identity. (shrink)

The paper criticizes John Caputo's formulation of "radical hermeneutics" and its understanding of both religion and tragedy, arguing that a "tragic theology" would be a truly radical hermeneutic.

In 1987 John D. Caputo, one of America’s foremost Heideggerian thinkers, published a text, the impact of which is still being felt today.

This article develops the thesis that normative social orders are always fore-structured by horizons of possibilities. The thesis is spelled out against the background of a criticism of ethnomethodology for its hermeneutic deficiency in coping with radical reflexivity. The article contributes to the debates concerning the status of normativity problematic in the cultural disciplines. The concept of hermeneutic pre-normativity is introduced to connote the interpretative fore-structuring of normative inter-subjectivity. Radical reflexivity is reformulated in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology.

Gadamer offered a paradigm of hermeneutic experience and understanding as a humanist alternative to the scientific rationality that dominates Western modernity. He derived his perspective in great part from the philosophy of his mentor, Martin Heidegger, but he was grounded less in ontology than in his own humanistic training in classical philosophy, art, and literature. It was only somewhat late (in his debates with Habermas) that he grappled with the political relevance of his theory, but even in that context, he (...) continued to insist on its universal applicability. This paper takes the position that Gadamer’s account of hermeneutic understanding provides an inadequate approach to the political dimensions of modernity, but that there is a radical kernel in his theory of experience that is relevant to political engagement. I suggest a way to reconfigure his model of hermeneutic experience that highlights this radical feature as the basis for viable political hermeneutics. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to defend Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics against what I call the radical hermeneutic critique, specifically the critique developed in Robert Bernasconi’s article “’You Don’t Know What I’m Talking About’: Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal” (1995). Key to this critique is the claim that Gadamer’s account does not rise to the ethical task of embracing the alterity of the Other, but instead reduces it to a projection of one’s self. The implication is therefore that Gadamer’s (...) philosophical hermeneutics has to be rejected on ethical grounds, as it does not appreciate but assimilates the alterity of the Other. In contrast to this radical hermeneutic critique, I argue that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics can accommodate an Other that is not assimilated but appreciated, on the condition that the unique status of a dialogue with the Other as a person is no longer neglected, as Gadamer does, but instead truly distinguished from a dialogue with the Other as a text. (shrink)

The chapter approaches the hermeneutic concept of experience introduced by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method (1960) from the perspective of the conceptual history of experience in the Western philosophical tradition. Through an overview of the concept and the epistemological function of experience (empeiria, experientia, Erfahrung) in Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and Hegel, it is shown that the tradition has considered experience first and foremost in methodological terms, that is, as a pathway towards a form of scientific knowledge that is itself (...) increasingly immune to experience. Science strives “beyond” experience because of the limitations inherent in the fundamentally contingent, singular, and negative character of experience: experience comes to us through unpredictable chance encounters and in singular situations and negates, tests, or “imperils” previous knowledge, thereby transforming it. By contrast, philosophical hermeneutics rethinks experience precisely in terms of these limitations. In the hermeneutic approach articulated by Gadamer and Claude Romano, experience is an encounter with the irreducible finitude and historical situatedness of one’s understanding and conceptual framework, an encounter with an otherness that puts our preunderstanding to test and requires us to revise it. Hermeneutic experience is thus a singular event that irreparably transforms us. (shrink)

Following some remarks of Jacques Taminiaux on Gadamer, I examine the permeating presence of history and alterity in interpretation by contrasting Gadamer’s views with Davidson’s notion of “radical interpretation.” I start by examining the debate they held with each other on several occasions. I then analyze Gadamer’s understanding of interpretation as a “hermeneutic experience” and Davidson’s method of “triangulation.” They both agree that interpretation should be free from the psychological turmoil of either divining an author’s intent or projecting the (...) reader’s expectations. The fundamental difference is that, for Davidson, interpretation is an ahistorical process taking place in the synchrony of interpreter and observed subjects, whereas for Gadamer interpretation is a historical “event,” in which something “happens” and contributes to the making of history. (shrink)

Following some remarks of Jacques Taminiaux on Gadamer, I examine the permeating presence of history and alterity in interpretation by contrasting Gadamer’s views with Davidson’s notion of “radical interpretation.” I start by examining the debate they held with each other on several occasions. I then analyze Gadamer’s understanding of interpretation as a “hermeneutic experience” and Davidson’s method of “triangulation.” They both agree that interpretation should be free from the psychological turmoil of either divining an author’s intent or projecting the (...) reader’s expectations. The fundamental difference is that, for Davidson, interpretation is an ahistorical process taking place in the synchrony of interpreter and observed subjects, whereas for Gadamer interpretation is a historical “event,” in which something “happens” and contributes to the making of history. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and remedies for this injustice are widely debated. This article adds to the existing debate by arguing that theories of recog- nition can fruitfully contribute to Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and can provide a framework for structural remedy. By pairing Fricker’s theory of hermeneutical injustice with theories of recognition, I bring forward a modest claim and a more radical claim. The first concerns a shift in our vocabulary; recognition theory can give a (...) name to the seriousness of the long-term effects of hermeneutical injustice. The second claim is more radical: thinking of hermeneutical injustice as preventing what I call “self-recogni- tion” provides a structural remedy to the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice. Because hermeneutical injustice is first and foremost a structural injustice, I contend that every virtue theory of hermeneutical justice should be complemented by structural remedies in terms of recognition. Finally, what I argue sheds light on the seriousness of cases of exclusion of and discrimination against women in academia and helps to draw our attention to new ways to combat such problems. (shrink)

How can a post-Christian, secular audience understand the devoutly Christian, sacred music of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion? This article addresses this question with reference to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg. Their confrontation reveals broad implications for the theory of humanistic interpretation at large. Gadamer celebrates Bach as a ‘classical’ touchstone of Western culture whom we may productively interpret through a ‘fusion of horizons’. Blumenberg, by contrast, cautions that our relation to Bach's Passion is fractured (...) because it is impossible to ‘pace off the horizon’. Blumenberg emphasizes the first-person experience of the diminution of historical meaning, a position this article calls ‘shattered hermeneutics’. The article concludes that Blumenberg's interpretation of Bach and his critique of Gadamer thereby usefully and plausibly deepen and radicalize hermeneutics. (shrink)

HERMENEUTICS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE by Susan J. Hekman Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986. 224 pp., $29.95 HERMENEUTICS AND PRAXIS edited by Robert Hollinger Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985. 296 pp., $29.95, $12.95 HERMENEUTICS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY edited by Brice R. Wachterhauser Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986. 506 pp., $49.50. $16.95 RADICAL HERMENEUTICS: REPETITION, DECONSTRUCTION AND THE HERMENEUTIC PROJECT by John D. Caputo Bloomington: Indiana University (...) Press, 1987. 319 pp., $37?50, $17.50 HERMENEUTICS AS POLITICS by Stanley Rosen New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. 256 pp., $24.95. (shrink)

Inter-cultural dialog is frequently treated as either unnecessary or else impossible. It is said to be unnecessary, because we all are the same or share the same ‘human nature'; it is claimed to be impossible because cultures seen as language games or forms or life are so different as to be radically incommensurable. The paper steers a course between absolute universalism and particularism by following the path of dialog and interrogation - where dialog does not mean empty chatter but the (...) exploration of the ‘otherness’ of interlocutors on the far side of either assimilation or exclusion. Such dialog is the heart of hermeneutics as formulated by Hans-Georg Gadamer. The paper explores the question whether hermeneutical interpretation can be transferred from textual readings to the domain of cross-cultural encounters. After discussing both the historical development and the basic meaning of contemporary hermeneutics, the paper draws attention to the intimate linkage between interpretive understanding and ‘application’, or ‘practical philosophy.’ Drawing on the insights of Gadamer and some more overtly political thinkers, the paper then shows the relevance of hermeneutics for cross-cultural studies, as an antidote to the looming ‘clash of civilizations.’ It turns to some writings by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to emphasize the necessary linkage between interactive dialog and concrete embodied engagement. Undercutting purely mentalist or ‘idealist’ misconstruals of dialog, this linkage shows the mutual compatibility between Gadamerian hermeneutics and existential phenomenology. Keywords: hermeneutics; dialogue; praxis; cross-cultural understanding; Gadamer; Merleau-Ponty (Published: 10 March 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i1.1937. (shrink)

Philosophical and technoculture studies surrounding the existential understanding of the human–technology–world experience have seen a slow but steady increase that makes a turn to material hermeneutics in the second decade of the twenty-first century (Ihde in Postphenomenology: essays in the postmodern context. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1993; Capurro in AI Soc 25(1):35–42, 2010; Romele in Digital hermeneutics: philosophical investigations in new media and technologies. Routledge, Abingdon, 2020; among others). This renewed focus makes sense because human–technology–world experiences need to (...) be interpreted. And many of these are more complicated to study, precisely because technology is at the root of the experiences. One interesting subset of technologies is media technologies, also called digital media, which intertwines the device and the content to mediate together in the world (Irwin in Digital media: human-technology connection. Lexington Books, Lanham, 2016). Visual media technologies and media content, together, through what is called moving image technologies, create virtual role-playing, virtual and augmented reality, video games, and social media focused worlds that have become central experiences in contemporary culture. Just as image-based scientific instruments read the world in different ways, so to do these visual mediated experiences. How might this comingled “reading” of technology explain the digital film language and experience? I contend that understanding the existential “early” film experience helps understand the new age of cinema, with implications for digital media, digital representation of the visual, and technoscience and technoculture studies. The material hermeneutics perspective called postphenomenology is one way to study these visually focused human–technology–world perceptual and interpretive experiences. Don Ihde’s methodological framework (1990, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2019) is both an idea from technoscience studies and a set of nuanced vocabulary that helps to explore and reveal variations, patterns, and trajectories of the whole-body experience of technology. This use case will first explore traditional cinema and then the “new age” term “moving image”, to learn more about this complicated and radically transforming technological experience. Work by Don Ihde and Vivian Sobchack is considered. (shrink)

We observed that despite international declarations on child-rights, outsourced domestic girl-child labour still persists. Raising the question whether outsourced domestic girl-child labour constitutes hermeneutical injustice, we respond affirmatively. Relying on two indigenous victimology-narratives that are newspaper reports, we expose some of the horrors that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer. Comparing these reports with other victimology-narratives of hermeneutical injustice as reported by Miranda Fricker and Hilkje Hänel, we argue that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer a (...) hermeneutical gap and hermeneutical interference; and that the perpetuators of this practice, help to foster what we call ‘hermeneutical obstruction’. We recommend different counteracting measures such as: a radical feminization of educational curricula, which will allow for the introduction of the relevant hermeneutical resources that female children need in making sense of their experiences, into the classrooms and other places of learning; establishing feminist liberation agencies in all schools, religious institutions and hospitals, as ways of increasing the level of awareness about the rights of the girl-child in children and adults; feminizing legislation and legislative processes, to allow for the enactment of laws to protect the rights of the girl-child; and campaigning for a more rigorous enforcement of child-rights laws. (shrink)

In this article, the author argues that the phenomenological revolution inaugurated by Husserl and Heidegger opens up new avenues for a radical rethinking of the God question. With Husserl's 'free variation of possibilities in imagination' and Heidegger's famous claim in Being and Time that 'for phenomenology possibility stands higher than actuality', the author discovers new resources for our understanding of both Being and God. In both cases, the article claims, we witness the surpassing of the traditional metaphysical priority of (...) actuality over possibility. Then, in a second moment, the paper explores the notion of the 'God of possibility' from the perspective of three different hermeneutic circles: scriptural, testimonial and literary. The essay concludes with an analysis of the positive implications of the notion of the 'possible' (as posse and possest) for a new understanding of the God of eschatology. /// No presente artigo, o autor defende que a revolução fenomenológica inaugurada por E. Husserl e M. Heidegger abre novas possibilidades para um repensar radical da questão de Deus. A partir da 'livre variação de possibilidades na imaginação' de Husserl e afamosa pretensão de Heidegger em Ser e Tempo de que para a 'fenomenologia a possibilidade está acima da actualidade', o autor descobre novos recursos para a nossa compreensão quer do Ser quer de Deus. Tanto num caso como no outro, diz-nos o artigo, podemos testemunhar a superação da tradicional prioridade metafisica da actualidade sobre a possibilidade. Em seguida, num segundo momento, o artigo explora também a noção de um 'Deus da possibilidade' a partir da perspectiva de três círculos hermenêuticos diferentes: o escriturístico, o testemonial e o literário. 0 ensaio conclui com uma análise das implicações positivas da noção de 'possível' (como posse e possest) para uma nova compreensão do Deus da escatologia. (shrink)

In its most venal manifestation, scholarly writing betrays the anxiety of influence by claiming to offer a radically new solution to age-old conundrums. The goal is to make a clean break from a traditional path of thought that has become trapped in a cul-de-sac, to make progress by finding a new way forward. Not so with Jean Porter’s work, and particularly her most recent book. Professor Porter demonstrates that thinking through an established tradition – one that has responded to numerous (...) challenges within very different contexts over several millennia – can sometimes offer the most productive response to contemporary dilemmas. She rejects the Sirens’ lure to make a sharp break from received traditions. Instead, she chooses to engage the natural law philosophy of the early Scholastic period from our contemporary perspective and its attendant problems. This provides helpful resources to deal with these contemporary dilemmas, but it also opens new possibilities for the development of natural law thinking. The resulting book, Ministers of the Law, is erudite, artfully presented, and provocative. In this article I view Professor Porter’s successful resuscitation of a plausible account of natural law through a particular lens. My thesis is that we can productively extend her work by more strongly acknowledging the hermeneutical and rhetorical nature of law. This may seem paradoxical, if not incoherent, in light of the common understanding that contemporary hermeneutical and rhetorical philosophy participates in the postmodern critique of rationality. Although many might assume that natural law is wholly at odds with hermeneutical philosophy and rhetorical theory, I argue that the case is just the opposite. Professor Porter acknowledges that rhetorical persuasion is at the center of the practices that gird the natural law tradition, but we should strengthen this acknowledgment to the point of embracing fully the theoretical commitments of contemporary hermeneutical and rhetorical theorists. My discussion is divided into three parts. First, I survey Professor Porter’s argument and establish that she regards hermeneutical and rhetorical practices as critical features of her natural law account. Next, I adumbrate a hermeneutical-rhetorical understanding of natural law that builds on my previous work. Finally, I explore how this account expands and deepens Professor Porter’s natural law account of legal authority. I conclude that we should recognize law’s hermeneutical and rhetorical nature, but that Porter has demonstrated the necessity of taking into account the Scholastics’ natural law philosophy as part of this project. (shrink)