This book examines the distinctive contribution that the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer make to democratic theory. Walhof argues that Gadamer’s hermeneutical philosophy enlarges our perspective by shifting our view away from individual citizens to what exists between citizens, thereby allowing us to envision political realities that are otherwise hard to see. These realities include the disclosure of truth in democratic politics; achieving common ground in democratic dialogue, even amidst significant disagreement and diversity; the public and political nature of the religious traditions that make claims on and shape citizens; and the solidarities that connect us to each other and enable democratic action. The author argues that bringing these dimensions to awareness enriches our theories of democracy and is particularly crucial in an era of hyper-partisanship, accelerating inequality, and social conflicts involving racial, sexual, and religious identities.

This book changes the narrative regarding democratic deliberation. It does so by bringing to bear insights into the nature of morality and discourse associated with one of the twentieth century's foremost philosophers of history, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Tradition and the Deliberative Turn thus reframes the discussion about deliberative democracy with a robust historical sensibility, which has largely been missing from this conversation. Gadamer's "rehabilitation" of tradition shows how the concrete ethical life does not merely occlude but also facilitates moral understanding, providing a particular vantage point from which we perceive the world. What other scholars have overlooked is that such a perspective is therefore always limited. Drawing on Gadamer's practical philosophy, an underappreciated element in his corpus, Ryan R. Holston argues for the need to cultivate these historically-rooted and local relationships and the shared meanings to which they give life.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is one of the leading philosophers in the worldtoday. His philosophical hermeneutics has had a major impact in awide range of disciplines, including the social sciences, literarycriticism, theology and jurisprudence. Truth and Method, his majorwork, is widely recognised to be one of the great classics oftwentieth-century thought. In this book Georgia Warnke provides a clear and systematicexposition of Gadamer's work, as well as a balanced and thoughtfulassessment of his views. Warnke gives particular attention to theways in which Gadamer's work has been taken up and criticised byliterary critics, social theorists and philosophers, such asHirsch, Habermas and Rorty. She thus provides an introduction toGadamer which demonstrates the relevance of his work to currentdebates in a variety of disciplines. This book will be invaluable to students and specialists throughoutthe humanities and social sciences, as well as to anyone who isinterested in the most important developments in contemporarythought.

The most convenient and accessible guide to Gadamer currently available.

This book describes how civic dialogue can serve as an antidote to a polarized public square. It argues that when pervasive polarization renders rational and fact-based argumentation ineffective, we first need to engage in a way that builds trust. Civic dialogue is a form of structured discourse that utilizes first-person narratives in order to promote trust, openness, and mutual understanding. By creating a dialogic structure that encourages listening and reflection, particularities and differences about fraught identities can be expressed in such a way that leads to the possibility of connecting through our fundamental, shared, and deeply felt humanity. Drawing on Plato, Buber, Gadamer, Dewey, cognitive bias research, as well as the work of dialogue practitioners, Lauren Swayne Barthold provides a sustained defense of civic dialogue as an effective strategy for avoiding futile political arguments and for creating pluralistic democratic communities.

Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur were two of the most important hermeneutical philosophers of the twentieth century. Gadamer single-handedly revived hermeneutics as a philosophical field with his many essays and his masterpiece, Truth and Method. Ricoeur famously mediated the Gadamer-Habermas debate and advanced his own hermeneutical philosophy through a number of books addressing social theory, religion, psychoanalysis and political philosophy. This book brings Gadamer and Ricoeur into a hermeneutical conversation with each other through some of their most important commentators. Twelve leading scholars deliver contemporary assessments of the history and promise of hermeneutical philosophy, providing focused discussion on the work of these two key hermeneutical thinkers. The book shows how the horizons of their thought at once support and question each other and how, in many ways, the work of these two pioneering philosophers defines the issues and agendas for the new century.

In Gadamer’s Hermeneutics Robert J. Dostal provides a comprehensive and critical account of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical philosophy, arguing that Gadamer’s enterprise is rooted in the thesis that “being that can be understood is language.” He defends Gadamer against charges of linguistic idealism and emphasizes language’s relationship to understanding, though he criticizes Gadamer for too often ignoring the role of the prelinguistic in our experience. Dostal goes on to explain the concept of the "inner word" for Gadamer’s account of language. The book situates Gadamer’s hermeneutics in three important ways: in relation to the contestability of the legacy of the Enlightenment project; in relation to the work of his mentor, Martin Heidegger; and in relation to Gadamer’s reading of Plato and Aristotle. Dostal explores both Gadamer’s claim on the Enlightenment and his ambivalence toward it. He considers Gadamer’s dependence on Heidegger’s accomplishment while pointing out the ways in which Gadamer charted his own course, rejecting his teacher’s reading of Plato and his antihumanism. Dostal points out notable differences in the philosophers’ politics as well. Finally, Dostal mediates between Gadamer’s hermeneutics and what might be called philological hermeneutics. His analysis defends the civic humanism that is the culmination of the philosopher’s hermeneutics, a humanism defined by moral education, common sense, judgment, and taste. Supporters and critics of Gadamer’s philosophy will learn much from this major achievement.

In this sweeping look at political and philosophical history, Linda M. G. Zerilli unpacks the tightly woven core of Hannah Arendt’s unfinished work on a tenacious modern problem: how to judge critically in the wake of the collapse of inherited criteria of judgment. Engaging a remarkable breadth of thinkers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leo Strauss, Immanuel Kant, Frederick Douglass, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Martha Nussbaum, and many others, Zerilli clears a hopeful path between an untenable universalism and a cultural relativism that forever defers the possibility of judging at all. Zerilli deftly outlines the limitations of existing debates, both those that concern themselves with the impossibility of judging across cultures and those that try to find transcendental, rational values to anchor judgment. Looking at Kant through the lens of Arendt, Zerilli develops the notion of a public conception of truth, and from there she explores relativism, historicism, and universalism as they shape feminist approaches to judgment. Following Arendt even further, Zerilli arrives at a hopeful new pathway—seeing the collapse of philosophical criteria for judgment not as a problem but a way to practice judgment anew as a world-building activity of democratic citizens. The result is an astonishing theoretical argument that travels through—and goes beyond—some of the most important political thought of the modern period.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) is one of the most important philosophers of the post-1945 era. His name has become all but synonymous with the philosophical study of hermeneutics, the field concerned with theories of understanding and interpretation and laid out in his landmark book Truth and Method. Influential not only within continental philosophy, Gadamer’s thought has also made significant contributions to related fields such as religion, literary theory, and education. The Gadamerian Mind is a major survey of the fundamental aspects of Gadamer’s thought, with contributions from leading scholars of Gadamer and hermeneutics from around the world. 38 chapters are divided into six clear parts: Overviews Key concepts Historical influences Contemporary encounters Beyond philosophy Legacies and questions. Although Gadamer’s work addresses a remarkable range of topics, careful consideration is given throughout the volume to consistent concerns that orient his thought. Important in this respect is his relation to philosophers in the Western tradition, from Plato to Heidegger. An indispensable resource for anyone studying and researching Gadamer, hermeneutics, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy, The Gadamerian Mind will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as religion, literature, political theory, and education.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) is widely recognized as the leading exponent of philosophical hermeneutics. The essays in this volume examine Gadamer's biography, the core of hermeneutical theory, and the significance of his work for ethics, aesthetics, the social sciences, and theology. There is full consideration of Gadamer's appropriation of Hegel, Heidegger and the Greeks, as well as his relation to modernity, critical theory and poststructuralism. This revised edition includes several new chapters on aspects of Gadamer's work, as well as updated chapters from the first edition and the most comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Gadamer available in the English language.