Elucidates the major components of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics found in his later work.

In Gadamer’s hermeneutics, interpretation is inseparable from the broader concern of making one’s way in life. In this book, James Risser builds on this insight about the juxtaposition of human living and the act of understanding by tracing hermeneutics back to the basic experience of philosophy as defined by Plato. For Risser, Plato provides resources for new directions in hermeneutics and new possibilities for "the life of understanding" and "the understanding of life." Risser places Gadamer in dialogue (...) with Plato, with the issue of memory as a conceptual focus. He develops themes pertaining to hermeneutics such as retrieval as a matter of convalescence, exile as a venture into the foreign, formation with respect to oneself and to life with others, the experience of language in hermeneutics, and the relationship between speaking and writing. (shrink)

On behalf of the 9th Annual Gulf Research Meetings at the University of Cambridge, this special issue of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy is the proceedings of the GRM Meeting on ‘The Rise of Modern Sp...

In June 2019, Dr. James Risser was the invited scholar for the Canadian Hermeneutic Institute, held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Dr. Risser is a professor of philosophy at Seattle University and the Senior Research Fellow at Western Sydney University. He is also the editor of the journal Research in Phenomenology. He has held philosophy Chairs and is a prolific writer of books and articles in the areas of continental philosophy and philosophical hermeneutics. This paper is the introduction to (...) the three-day event of the CHI, and his beginning introduction to his papers. It is followed by three papers entitled When Words Fail: On the Power of Language and Human Experience; Speaking from Silence: On the Intimate Relation Between Silence and Speaking; and Hearing the Other: Communication as Shared Life. (shrink)

This paper explores the place of Hegel in Gadamer's hermeneutics through an analysis of the idea of "infinite dialogue." It is argued that infinite dialogue cannot be understood as a limited Hegelianism, i.e., as the life of spirit in language that does not reach its end. Rather, infinite dialogue can be understood only by taking the Heideggerian idea of radical finitude seriously. Thus, while infinite dialogue has a speculative element, it remains a dialogue conditioned by the occlusion in temporal becoming. (...) This idea is developed further by contrasting Gadamer's position with that of Blanchot, who also stands under the shadow of Hegel. (shrink)

In the last decades of the twentieth century nature writing lost some of its enchantment with the idea of wilderness. It was criticized for its remoteness, separating the natural world from human life, for being out of step with the interests of Indigenous peoples, and for holding an otherwise dynamic natural world, static. Recently, however, writers have begun to rehabilitate the idea of wilderness, and call for increased wilderness conservation. The period of critique was helpful in clarifying both the nature (...) and need for wilderness conservation, as well as for other stewardship practices. I trace some of the disagreements, particularly between the traditional conservationist and those advocating bolder stewardship practices that do not so much conserve the natural world as they remake it. I doubt that we either do or must live in an exclusively post-wild engineered world, and find a place also for natural heritage and its conservation. (shrink)

This paper follows the implications of Gadamer’s hermeneutics after Truth and Method in which the forming of social life, and with it the idea of worldly understanding, receives greater attention. I argue that the emphasis in his later writings on worldly understanding draws less on the idea of the hermeneutic circle and problematic of the Geisteswissenschaften in which the concept of tradition is prominent than on the movement in language and the encounter with the other. As in the example of (...) translation, I argue that this movement has the character of passage from one place to another that holds within it an element of opacity. The development of this issue draws on a comparative analysis with the work of the Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant. From this analysis I show how Gadamer’s hermeneutics addresses the issue of understanding across cultures and in mixed cultures. (shrink)

The meaning and moral implications of voting and nonvoting in a representative democracy are outlined and discussed. A conception of voting as a forward-looking, conditional shared responsibility is developed and defended. This conception reflects an understanding of democratic politics in which the supreme strategic advantage is power to affect "the conflict of conflicts", that is, the ability to influence the shape and content of the dominant political agenda. This conception is also shown to support a consequentialist approach to distributive justice (...) and specifically, to require greater economic equality. (shrink)

The traditional reading of Plato’s criticism of the poets and painters in Book 10 of the Republic is that they merely imitate. In light of Plato’s own image-making, the critique of imitation requires a more careful examination, especially in regards to painting. This paper argues that it is insufficient to view Plato’s critique of image-making by the painter solely in terms of the image replication that does not consider the eidos. In view of the context of Plato’s argument within Book (...) 10 and elsewhere, other considerations, such as the ideas of measure and proportion, which pertain to the notion of the beautiful, are required for a complete understanding of the argument against the painter. In light of these further considerations I argue for a threefold distinction between mimesis as replication, mimesis as false resemblance, and mimesis as true resemblance. With respect to the third kind of mimesis, which directly pertains to Plato’s own image-making, one can see in Plato a different configuration of the relation between image and original portrayed in the image. (shrink)

This article provides a justification for holding complex organizations morally responsible and shows how this moral dimension is implicit in the concept of power. Several objections to organizational moral responsibility are addressed, and a new view of complex organizations as agents which are morally responsible, but do not possess moral rights, is defended.

This article is a response to comments made by Walter Brogan and Theodore George about my book, The Life of Understanding.

In her Massey lecture series "The Ethical Imagination," bioethicist Margaret Somerville argues that we humans have a moral duty to preserve what is most basic to being human, namely, the human form itself. We should not, therefore, tolerate the development and application of technologies in the life sciences in ways that would result in radically altering the human form. The concern, here, is not simply with human enhancement. The concern is more specific: we should not tolerate the development and application (...) of the technosciences, for either health or enhancement, that would alter the natural identity of the human species—as when, for example, an individual's germline cells are altered in the treatment of a condition, or when human bodies are integrated with technology to create cyborgs. With such alterations, over time the human form could be lost altogether in the creation of a posthuman form. (shrink)

This paper explores the way in which the art of weaving, as it is initially presented in Plato’s Statesman, serves to configure both the fundamental character ofdiscourse and the limit experience of discourse for Plato. The problem that arises in relation to this configuration pertains to the possible unity of discourse (and with it the acquisition of knowledge). In relation to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and his reading of Plato, it is argued that the unity of discourse follows “the (...) arithmos structure of the logos” with its distinctive dialectical character. It is concluded that this character expresses the finitude of knowing in which oppositions remain in tension. (shrink)

The participation of its citizens in the making of public policy is the defining feature of a democratic regime and represents popular sovereignity in action. There are a number of serious problems which threaten the quality or even the legitimacy of the democratic process. The focus of this entry is on four of the most important problems or flaws in democratic politics, particularly democratic politics in the U.S. These four are (1) political agenda formation, (2) the scope and bias of (...) the interest group system, (3) the power of elites, and (4) the disporportionate power of for-profit corporations. -/- . (shrink)

This paper attempts to define Dennis J. Schmidt’s distinctive contribution to philosophy and to contemporary hermeneutics in particular under the heading of an ethical hermeneutics. The idea of an ethical hermeneutics is considered in relation to four aspects: 1) the element of practice as the constitutive element of ethical hermeneutics; 2) the force of practice: finitude; 3) the idiom as the place of finitude; 4) ethical hermeneutics and the domain of the common. The fourth aspect constitutes the critical engagement with (...) the idea of an ethical hermeneutics, arguing that the notion of the common, which is underdeveloped in Schmidt’s writings, serves as a practical “concept” that takes the place of the theoretical concept in an ethical hermeneutics. (shrink)

This paper assesses the philosophical project of Charles Scott, beginning with his first book, Boundaries in Mind, and including his most recent work on “Bor­dered Americans.” The interpretive focus for the assessment concentrates on what Scott early on characterizes as boundary awareness: the appearing of difference in appearance. In this context, it is argued that what is fundamentally at issue in Scott’s philosophy is a sense of freedom other than that which is associated with subjectivity and its presumed autonomy.

In the phenomenological tradition, which took root in the first part of the twentieth century, the issue of intersubjectivity became prominent as a way of characterizing social life. But as seen in the work of Edith Stein, for example, this philosophy of intersubjectivity gives prominence to the subject, and as such it leaves open not only the question of the basic character of social life, but also the hermeneutic problem of understanding the other. The focus of my remarks in this (...) paper will explore the way in which Gadamer moves beyond a philosophy of subjectivity in his effort to establish the conditions for communicative understanding. For Gadamer, communicative understanding only occurs through a genuine way of being with another. It requires not just being in relation to the other but a form of participation that amounts to an idea of shared life. Gadamer establishes the precise character of this shared life in relation to his critical encounter with Karl Löwith’s version of the I-Thou relation. (shrink)

_Leading figures in Heidegger scholarship critically reflect on the dominant topics of Heidegger's thought during the 1930s._.

Allen Carlson has argued that a science-based model of appreciation is most appropriate in the aesthetic appreciation of nature. While I find his model of appreciation coherent and valuable, I reject his argument that this model ought to be preferred to others, such as an emotion-based or a formalist model of appreciation. Carlson's rejection of these other models is exclusionary and runs counter to pragmatist ideals. I argue for an alternative model, one which accommodates both cognitive and noncognitive models of (...) appreciation, which I call the aesthetic-attention model of appreciation. (shrink)

The issue of language and alterity is a central concern in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans‐Georg Gadamer. The key to the issue of language and alterity is to see exactly how language exists. In his discussion of language in Truth and Method and elsewhere, Gadamer is quick to point out that an instrumental view of language in which meaning functions in relation to a system of signs does not capture the way in which language actually exists. The linguisticality of understanding (...) that issues in communication means for Gadamer that through language there is the opening of shared life in which one is able to hear the voice of the other. While Gadamer refuses to characterize dialogical conversation in terms of intersubjectivity, he does employ a rich account of the interplay in dialogue in the language of an I‐thou relation. (shrink)