T. W. Adorno's philosophy of music aims to show that music is a source of important insights into the nature of modern society. This position leads, though, to a series of methodological difficulties, some of which can be alleviated by using resources from Heidegger's hermeneutics. The essay takes the key notion of `judgementless synthesis' from Adorno's unfinished book on Beethoven and connects it to Heidegger's account of pre-propositional under-standing and to Kant's notion of schematism. This connection is shown to have (...) consequences for how we conceive of both the meaning of music and meaning in more general terms, especially with regard to analytical philosophy. The essay argues that, despite its many important insights, Adorno's account of the meaning of music in modernity depends too much on his analogy between Hegel's claim to achieve the final philosophy and Beethoven's establishment of new forms of integration for musical material. (shrink)

Gadamer and Habermas both argue that some earlier theorists of interpretation in the human sciences, despite recognizing the meaningful character of social reality, still succumb to objectivism because they fail to conceive the relation of interpreters to their subjects in terms of cross-cultural normative “dialogue.” In particular, Gadamer and Habermas claim that the most prominent nineteenth-century philosopher of the human sciences, Wilhelm Dilthey, fell prey to a misleading Cartesian outlook which sought to ground the objectivity of interpretation on complete transcendence (...) of the interpreter’s present cultural and historical situation. This article challenges Gadamer’s and Habermas’s claim by arguing that new research on nineteenth-century hermeneutic thought reveals Dilthey to be much more aware of the reflexive, present-centered nature of historical research than they maintain and further that their own “dialogical” model of interpretation suffers from notable obscurities which Dilthey’s work itself helps expose. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a rehabilitation of early German Romanticism in philosophy, including a renewed interest in Romantic ethics. Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) is acknowledged as a key figure in this movement. While significant work has been done on some aspects of his thought, his views on ethics have been surprisingly overlooked. This essay aims to redress this shortcoming in the literature by examining the core themes of Schlegel’s ethics during the early phase of his career (1793–1801). I argue that Schlegel’s (...) position stands out against both the dominant Kantianism of his era, as well as against some of fellow Romantics. I show how Schlegel anticipates contemporary philosophers such as Bernard Williams, Harry Frankfurt, John McDowell, and Stanley Cavell in both his criticisms of traditional moral theory and in his attempts to develop a positive position. (shrink)