Hermeneutics as Politics

Hermeneutics as Politics PDF

Author: Stanley Rosen

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0195061616

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This, the first of four volumes in the new Odeon series on continental philosophy, is an attempt to construe the interpretation of texts (ie the art of hermeneutics) as a political answer to a given historical situation. Professor Rosen views interpretation as the result neither of changing fashion nor of innocent playfulness, but rather as a self-conscious (even if disguised or concealed) political strategy. In this book, he discusses the German hermeneutical tradition, the Alexander Kojeve-Leo Straus relationship, and current leading continental and American philosophers such as Derrida and.

Political Hermeneutics

Political Hermeneutics PDF

Author: Robert R. Sullivan

Publisher: Penn State University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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A distinct logic to Gadamer's early writings makes them more than mere precursors to the mature thought that appeared in Truth and Method. They contain their own, new and different, "philosophical hermeneutics" and are worth reading with a fresh eye. The young Gadamer began his publication career by arguing that Plato's ethical writings did not "express" doctrine but rather depended upon the "play" of language among speakers in an ethical discourse community. This was the key idea of Plato's Dialectical Ethics, Gadamer's first book. Following the classical formula of seeing politics as the continuation of ethics, Gadamer's writings in the 1930s and 1940s concentrated on the Platonic idea of the state and argued two key points. First, the exiling of poets from the city was a way of banishing monologue and clearing the way for a dialogue as the language form appropriate to political discourse communities. Second, the Platonic state's defining task was the educational one of shaping the soul, and this could not be achieved monologically but rather had to take place as a dialogical play between the educator and the soul. The mature philosophical hermeneutics of Truth and Method is a metaphor taken from the literary experience of constructing textual meaning out of the play of parts and whole. The philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer's early writings rests on a play between the ethical whole initially the Gestalt figure of the "Platonic Socrates" but later the Platonic state and the individual soul in need of ethical guidance. There is no conflict between the early and the later hermeneutics, but the early hermeneutics retain a freshness of spirit and boldness of interpretation that is characteristic of the Weimar culture of Gadamer's Marburg youth.From beginning to end, Gadamer's early writings remind us that Plato's dialogues really do record the conversational essence of Western philosophy at its birth.

Hermeneutics as Critique

Hermeneutics as Critique PDF

Author: Lorenzo C. Simpson

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0231551851

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Hermeneutics has frequently been dismissed as useful only for literary and textual analysis. Some consider it to be Eurocentric or inherently relativistic and thus unsuited to social critique. Lorenzo C. Simpson offers a persuasive and powerful argument that hermeneutics is a valuable tool not only for critical theory but also for robustly addressing many of the urgent issues of today. Simpson demonstrates that hermeneutics exhibits significant interpretive advantages compared to competing explanatory modalities. While it shares with pragmatism a suspicion of essentialism, an understanding that disagreements are situated, and an insistence on the dialogical nature of understanding, it nevertheless resolutely rejects the relativistic accounts of rationality that are often associated with pragmatism. In the tradition of Gadamer, Simpson firmly establishes hermeneutics as a resource for both philosophy and the social sciences. He shows its utility for unpacking intractable issues in the philosophy of science, multiculturalism, social epistemology, and racial and social justice in the global arena. Simpson addresses fraught questions such as why recent claims that “race” has a biological basis lack grounding, whether female genital excision can be critically addressed without invidious ethnocentrism, and how to lay the foundations for meaningful cross-cultural dialogue and reparative justice. This book reveals how hermeneutics can be a worthy partner with critical theory in achieving emancipatory aims.

George Santayana's Political Hermeneutics

George Santayana's Political Hermeneutics PDF

Author: Katarzyna Kremplewska

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-01-31

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 9004506349

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The first comprehensive study of Santayana’s political thought as connected to his cultural criticism. It ranges over topics such as Santayana’s political ontology, his criticism of democracy, liberalism, and communism, his views on freedom and forms of human servitude.

Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation

Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation PDF

Author: Jesse S. Cohn

Publisher: Susquehanna University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9781575911052

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"Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation is intended to provide readers of literary criticism, art history, political philosophy, and the social sciences with a fresh perspective from which to revisit dead-end theoretical debates over concepts such as "agency," "essentialism," and "realism" - and, at the same time, to offer a new take on anarchism itself, challenging conventional readings of the tradition. The anarchism that emerges from this reinterpretation is neither a musty rationalism nor a millenarian irrationalism, but a living body of thought that points beyond the sterile antinomies of post-modern and Marxist theory."--BOOK JACKET.

Towards a Post-Modern Understanding of the Political

Towards a Post-Modern Understanding of the Political PDF

Author: A. Bielskis

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2005-08-19

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0230508340

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While claiming that liberalism is the dominant political theory and practice of modernity, this book provides two alternative post-modern theoretical approaches to the political. Concentrating on Nietzsche's and Foucault's work it offers a novel interpretation of their genealogical projects. It argues that genealogy can be applied to analyze different forms of cultural kitsch vis-à-vis the dominant political institutions of consumer capitalism. The problem with consumer capitalism is not so much that it exploits individuals, but that it fosters cheap human existence saturated with the artefacts of kitsch. Contrasting genealogy with hermeneutic philosophy, it calls for a renewal of hermeneutics within the Thomistic tradition.

Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions

Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions PDF

Author: Christian K. Wedemeyer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0195394348

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This volume comprises papers presented at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Joachim Wach's death, and the centennial of Mircea Eliade's birth. Its purpose is to reconsider both the problematic, separate legacies of these two major twentieth-century historians of religions, and the bearing of these two legacies upon each other. Shortly after Wach's death in 1955, Eliade succeeded him as the premiere historian of religions at the University of Chicago. As a result, the two have been associated with each other in many people's minds as the successive leaders of the so-called Chicago School in the history of religions. In fact, as this volume makes clear, there never was a monolithic Chicago School. Although Wach reportedly referred to Eliade as the most astute historian of religions of the day; the two never met, and their approaches to the study of religions differed significantly. Several dominant issues run through the essays collected here: the relationship between the two men's writings and their lives, and in Eliade's case, the relationship between his political commitments and his writings in fiction, history of religions, and autobiography. Both men's contributions to the field continue to provoke controversy and debate, and this volume sheds new light on these controversies and what they reveal about these two `scholars' legacies.

Hermeneutics, Scriptural Politics, and Human Rights

Hermeneutics, Scriptural Politics, and Human Rights PDF

Author: M. Salih

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-03-15

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0230105955

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This book articulates the relationships involving hermeneutics and scriptural politics in the complex fields of religious freedom and human rights, with particular focus on women and minorities in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Hermeneutic Communism

Hermeneutic Communism PDF

Author: Gianni Vattimo

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011-10-18

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0231528078

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Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala's well-known work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought.