Several prominent contemporary philosophers, including Jürgen Habermas, John Caputo, and Robert Bernasconi, have at times painted a somewhat negative picture of Gadamer as not only an uncritical traditionalist, but also as one whose philosophical project fails to appreciate difference. Against such claims, I argue that Gadamer’s reflections on art exhibit a genuine appreciation for alterity not unrelated to his hermeneutical approach to the other. Thus, by bringing Gadamer’s reflections on our experience of art into conversation with key aspects of his (...) philosophical hermeneutics, we are able to better assess the viability of Gadamer’s contributions to contemporary discussions of difference and alterity. -/- Sections two through six focus on key concepts in Gadamer’s account of art’s dynamic ontology and our experience of art. Such concepts include the play structure of art, hermeneutic identity, tarrying with a work, and contemporaneity. The opening sections provide not only a discussion of these central themes, but they also (1) draw attention to the various ways in which difference and otherness are integral to Gadamer’s account, and (2) utilize relevant musical examples that prepare the reader for a more focused discussion of a Gadamerian approach to free jazz in section seven. By highlighting how Gadamer’s understanding of art possesses a dialogical play structure, is characterized by identity and difference, requires actively engaged spectators and auditors, and is amenable to what many criticize as an unintelligible musical expression, viz. free jazz, Gadamer’s project is shown as other-affirming and open to ambiguity and dynamism. That is, the essential structures and concepts characterizing Gadamer’s reflections on art are likewise central to his overall hermeneutical project, and hence are not rightly described as un-attuned to difference or other-negating. Rather, Gadamer’s philosophical project upholds difference, since it requires a dialogical interplay between self and other that creates the possibility for a transformative experience. (shrink)

It is by way of the call that one is enabled to wake up to responsibility. What is the illocutionary mood of the ‘call’ of conscience, though? Is this transcendental enabler of responsibility an imposing demand or an invitational question? Both Levinas and Heidegger emphasize the impositional character of the call in conscience. The call seems to be the very essence of imperatives. I develop an apology for questioning by way of appeal to crumbs scattered throughout Jewish traditions as well (...) as throughout the works of Levinas and Heidegger. Perhaps we are invited to be rather than told to be. (shrink)

The concept of empathy in history education involves students in the attempt to think within the context of historical agents’ particular predicaments. Tracing the concept’s philosophical heritage to R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history and ‘re-enactment doctrine’, this article argues that our efforts in history classrooms to understand historical agents by their own standards are constrained by a tension that arises out of the need to disconnect ourselves from a present that provides the very means for understanding the past. Though (...) rather than serving to undermine the concept, it is proposed that the moderate hermeneutics of H.-G. Gadamer, through a positive conception of prejudice, tradition and temporal distance, transforms the factors typically seen as inhibitors to empathy’s operation into those that potentially enable it. The article aspires to shed new light on what is at play when history students engage in the intellectually demanding task of empathizing in history. (shrink)

Wolterstorff defends the claim not only that ‘God speaks’ through the Bible but also that the reader gains ever new insights upon subsequent readings of it. I qualify this project with the philosophical hermeneutics he rejects—namely that of Gadamer and Ricoeur. Wolterstorff thinks what he calls ‘authorial discourse interpretation’ provides warrant for religious communities believing that ‘God speaks’ to them through a text. In developing this hermeneutic, he dismisses the viability of Gadamer and Ricoeur's approach because, Wolterstorff asserts, their form (...) of interpretation is merely an operation performed on an artifact. While a cursory study of Gadamer and Ricoeur might support such dismissal, particularly Ricoeur's emphasis on writing's obliteration of dialogue, a closer study guided by the hermeneutic priority of questioning complicates Wolterstorff's caricature. If writing obliterates dialogue, what happens to questions and responses? My thesis is that dialogue with another is preserved through the hermeneutical arc. I demonstrate this through specifying distinct logics of question and answer that occur in the reading process, and I delimit these logics by way of appeal to contemporary literacy pedagogy and its taxonomies of questions. A voice does speak with and listen to a reader in the event of reading, in this case a God who is not behind but before the text. Isolating this other who speaks and listens provides reinforcement for constructive theological work aligned with Gadamer and Ricoeur's hermeneutics, and answers for the experience of hearing ‘God speak’ differently through sacred texts. (shrink)

The phenomenological attitude is essential for practising phenomenology. Many refer to wonder and wonderment as basic attitudes and ways of being present with and listening to phenomena. In this article a critical view is placed on the typically psychologically-loaded language and tonality that is used by phenomenological researchers in the human sciences in order to describe the wonder and openness they try to be a part of when doing phenomenology. With reference to the difference between Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s views on (...) Socratic dialectics the author points to an ontological dimension in the phenomenology of wonder that cannot be reached by taking only an emotional-bodily-oriented approach (the psychological approach) or an aesthetical-intuitiveoriented approach (the late Heidegger poeticised philosophizing). Instead this dimension must be reached through a Socratic questioning and Community of Wonder. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with Gadamer’s reflections on solidarity and practice as found in several of his later writings. While Gadamer offers a robust explanation of practice, practical reason, and how both are operative in solidarities, his investigations of solidarity are in no way systematic. He does, however, distinguish two aspects of solidarity, viz. what one might call “natural solidarity” and “avowed solidarity”. In contrast to natural solidarities, avowed solidarities require an intentional decision and commitment to act with others for (...) a common cause. Since Gadamer’s writings on solidarity are more sketches than detailed treatises, we will bring his work into dialogue with feminist and political philosopher Sally Scholz. Scholz has devoted significant research to the concept of political solidarity. Like Gadamer, Scholz too is concerned with how we engage natural others and how our present practices harm and exploit them. By bringing Scholz’s and Gadamer’s work into dialogue, we gain a better understanding of different facets and types of solidarity, how they interrelate and influence one other, and how their interrelations might help to effect positive social and political changes for all who inhabit this world. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the relevance of the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer for contemporary feminist scholarship on epistemic injustice and oppression. Specifically, I set out to argue for the Gadamerian notion of hermeneutical openness as an important hermeneutic virtue, and a potential remedy for existing epistemic injustices. In doing so I follow feminist philosophers such as Linda Martín Alcoff and Georgia Warnke that have adopted the insights of Gadamer for the purpose of social and feminist philosophy. Further, this (...) paper is positioned in relation to a recent book chapter by Cynthia Nielsen and David Utsler in which they argue for the complementarity, and intersecting themes and concerns of Gadamer's hermeneutics and Miranda Fricker's work on epistemic injustice. However, Nielsen and Utsler solely focus on Fricker's conception of epistemic injustice and the two forms of epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice, that she identifies. In this paper I expand their analysis by considering other forms of epistemic injustice such as wilful hermeneutical ignorance and contributory injustice. Thus, this paper contributes to the budding literature on the relevance of Gadamer's work for the debates pertaining to epistemic injustice and oppression by expanding such analysis to other forms of epistemic injustice, and by further arguing for the strength of Gadamer's work in terms of offering relevant insights for the reduction and remedy of existing epistemic injustices. (shrink)

This paper describes the first phase of an ongoing education and research project guided by three main intentions: (1) to create opportunities for phronesis in the classroom; (2) to develop new understandings about phronesis as it relates to nursing care generally and to caring for specific groups, like formerly incarcerated adults; and (3) to provide an opportunity for formerly incarcerated adults and graduate nursing students to participate in a dialectical conversation about ethical knowing. Gadamer's writings on practical philosophy, phronesis, and (...) the Socratic dialectic provide the philosophical foundation and framework for the project. The first phase in the project was a 4‐h class within a graduate‐level health promotion course during which 30 nursing students and three formerly incarcerated panelists engaged in a dialectic conversation about what it means to care for formerly incarcerated adults in a meaningful way. After the class, two focus groups were conducted, one with the students and one with the formerly incarcerated panelists. Findings articulated participants' prejudices and assumptions prior to the class, expanded sense of phronesis, and ability to consider nursing practice within a larger ethical framework. Panelists and students left the class with a deeper understanding of one another and expressed an openness towards continued dialectic conversations together. Use of the Socratic dialectic within nursing curricula reflects a current and critical trend in nursing education to bring non‐epistemologic forms of knowledge into the classroom. (shrink)

The philosophical orientation of Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenology is explored in this paper. Gadamer offers a hermeneutics of the humanities that differs significantly from models of the human sciences historically rooted in scientific methodologies. In particular, Gadamer proposes that understanding is first a mode of being before it is a mode of knowing; what this effectively offers is an alternative to the traditional way of understanding in the human sciences. This paper details why the work of hermeneutics is not to develop (...) a procedure for understanding, but to clarify the conditions of understanding. In this explication, the author examines the hermeneutic experience and, in the process, relates it to both the practical and the historical horizons of the lifeworld of health professionals, particularly nurses. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology<, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

There is a recent scholarly trend drawing similarities between Aristotle’s conceptions of ethics and demonstrative science. One such similarity has become widely and rightly recognized: for Aristotle both ethics and demonstrative science seek essential definitions of phenomena. The task of the paper is to show that German philosopher and classicist Hans-Georg Gadamer not only prefigured this interpretative trend, he also identified a problematic feature of Aristotle’s method so construed. The problematic feature is semantic. For Aristotle essential definitions must consist of (...) univocal terms, but such univocity cannot be maintained if the definienda and definientes are concepts to be usefully employed in everyday ethical judgements. Gadamer therefore points out a problematic tension in Aristotle’s ethics. On the one hand, ethical inquiry should have practical application, but, on the other hand, the semantic assumptions underlying inquiry imply that it cannot. (shrink)

One does not just live in a crisis: a crisis calls for action. Etymologically, from the Greek krisis, it is a turning point or a moment of decision. It not only alters perception; it alters the demands for living. It stands out from the everyday. If we follow Gail Weiss (2008), we could say that a crisis is a moment when the ground called “ordinary life” is interrupted in such a way that it no longer functions as an out-of-awareness backdrop (...) but itself becomes the visible figure. But what happens when the ground is already permeated by crises, large and small? How should we think about crisis when we cannot call upon a simple binary—times of crisis and somehow livable normal times? How to think, conceptually, about those communities who live with what is variously termed “slow death” (Berlant 2011), “slow violence,” (Nixon 2011) or “chronic crisis” (Vigh 2008) that make the everyday a source of such continual threat that crisis and non-crisis shade into one another? I ask these questions in the context of my twenty-year history of research in African American communities in which families are caring for children with disabilities and chronic illnesses. (shrink)

Within the Husserlian phenomenological philosophical tradition, description and interpretation co-exist. However, teaching the practice of phenomenological psychological research requires careful articulation of the differences between a descriptive and an interpretive relationship to what is provided by qualitative data. If as researchers we neglect the epistemological foundations of our work or avoid working through difficult methodological issues, then our work invites dismissal as inadequate science, undermining the effort to strongly establish psychology along qualitative lines. The first article in this two-part discussion (...) provides a Husserlian investigation of the meaning of ‘method’ for psychology as a human science. This investigation is undertaken in the light of some researchers’ appropriations of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in the service of non-methodical praxes. The second article will address some implications of the attempt to structure qualitative psychological research along ‘Gadamerian’ lines, taking seriously the references to Gadamer’s work made by researchers such as Van Manen and Smith. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 11, Edition 1 May 2011, 69-85. (shrink)

En su obra tardía Lukács investiga las categorías ontológicas materialistas que definen la “esencia genérica humana”. En ella arriba a la categoría de “reflejo”, un proceso cognoscitivo que incluye un movimiento recursivo entre el sujeto y el objeto, actualizado durante el trabajo, que permite al sujeto conocer el mundo objetivo e intervenir en él. El artículo plantea que, en tal movimiento, ocurre una estrategia interpretativa que corresponde con el “círculo de la interpretación” desarrollado por la tradición hermenéutica.

This essay argues that Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, Jürgen Habermas's communication theory, and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction all fit together within one philosophical paradigm: metamodernism. Metamodernism, as defined, is opposed to both modernism and radical forms of postmodernism. Within metamodernism, a political conundrum provides the key clue for understanding the relations among Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida as well as for elaborating the contours of the paradigm. Specifically, the political implications of the three philosophies are intransitive: they seem to shift around rather (...) than being in fixed relations to each other. So, for instance, Gadamer sometimes seems to the political right of both Habermas and Derrida, but then, at different times, he stands between them, and then again, at other times, he seems to be to the left of both. This political paradox suggests that the traditional political categories of liberalism and conservatism do not suitably reflect the critical positions within metamodernism. Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida are far more concerned with explaining the possibility and techniques of interpretive and social critique, while remaining true to the metamodernist paradigm, rather than fitting themselves into the traditional liberal or conservative political camps. (shrink)

A deeper understanding of the role embodied intelligence can play in social change is vitally important if we are to be successful in creating and maintaining a more just and sustainable world. A key component of any change process, peacebuilding being one example of such a process, is developing inwardly focused bodily intelligence. A phenomenologically oriented understanding of social change, and by extension peacebuilding, is one in which bodily felt recognition must take a special place. Change that is bodily recognized (...) has a different character and functions distinctly from the change that is experienced during a change of mind. A change of mind may stem solely from assimilating new information, (e.g. reading the latest book or professional journal), while bodily experienced change registers along broader lines than cognition alone. Although both processes are kinds of change, the embodied change, which is felt from the inside, is far more generative than change that involves merely altering or shuffling around existing schema or concepts. To assist in further exploration of peacebuilding as inherently both a personal and social event, I have developed an approach based in part on Gendlin’s philosophical works, in particular his Process Model (Gendlin, 1997). I refer to this approach as a process model for peacebuilding because this articulates how intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social agency can be framed as one movement, a single ongoing process of human life. However, it must be admitted that this approach with its emphasis on developing embodied knowledge and practices is not as yet readily associated with such externally focused work as that which is found in peace-building as an academic field or social action activity. Embodied interior intelligence as a theoretically rich concept, although known in phenomenology and recognized in emerging theories of cognition, is not as yet sensible to many of those working in the peace-building arena. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

This paper is about the interconnectedness of the realm of language with that of social interactions, constitutive of all human communities. Arguing against the traditional and still present primacy of the rationally based understanding of language, I wish to stress the possibility of another approach to language, strongly related to the question of the Other. Relying on the idea that the Other is a constitutive part of any linguistic situation, I wish to inspect how it is possible for the voice (...) of the Other to be suppressed or silenced, and if that is the case, how we should understand the silence of the Other. The main result of my findings is that the silence of the Other is not only meaningful, but that it can have positive social and political effects, including the enhancement of the sensitivity for the various modalities of the voice of the Other. (shrink)

Effective public health nursing relies on the development of responsive and collaborative relationships with families. While nurse–family relationships are endorsed by home visitation programs, training nurses to follow visit‐to‐visit protocols may unintentionally undermine these relationships and may also obscure nurses’ clinical understanding and situated knowledge. With these issues in mind, we designed a home‐visiting intervention, titled Listening with Care, to cultivate nurses’ relationships with teen mothers and nurses’ clinical judgment and reasoning. Rather than using protocols, the training for the intervention (...) introduced nurses to narrative methods and therapeutic tools. This mixed‐method pilot study included a quasi‐experimental design to examine the effect of the intervention on teen mothers’ depressive symptoms, self‐silencing, repeat pregnancy, and educational progress compared to teens who received usual care. Qualitative data were collected from the nurses to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and therapeutic tools. The nurses endorsed the therapeutic tools and expected to continue using them in their practice. Despite the lack of statistically significant differences in outcomes between groups, findings suggest that further study of the intervention is warranted. Future studies may have implications for strengthening hidden aspects of nursing that make a difference in the lives of teen mothers. (shrink)

The nature of time-consciousness is one of the central themes of phenomenology, and one that all major phenomenologists have addressed at length, except Hans-Georg Gadamer. This paper attempts to develop Gadamer’s account of time-consciousness by looking, firstly, at two essays related to the topic, and then turning to his discussion of experience in Truth and Method (1960/1991) before, finally, considering his discussion of the unique temporality of the festival in the essay “The Relevance of the Beautiful” (1977/1986). What we find (...) in Gadamer’s understanding of time is an emphasis on the epochal structure of timeconsciousness. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article uses Gadamer’s concept of play as a common lens through which both traditional church liturgy and imaginative evangelical practices of engaging with God can be understood. The category of play encompasses processes which exhibit a back-and-forth motion and functions in Gadamer’s aesthetics to describe the relationship between artwork and viewer. Through an aesthetics of play, Gadamer accounts for the presence of truth in art. As I demonstrate in this paper, liturgy displays the playful characteristics of artwork, allowing for (...) a theologically realist interpretation of divine presence. The final part of this paper considers the imaginative evangelical practices described by anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann, which I refer to as God-play. I argue that there is an unexpected commonality between God-play and traditional liturgy in the form of a functional similarity between the two and propose that God-play may be regarded as liturgy-like practice that has not been traditionalised. My evaluati... (shrink)

The conduct of research as guided by philosophical tenets of hermeneutics, in particular the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, is a complex and sophisticated endeavor. In this paper, we offer that one of the things that guides the inquiry is the topic and that most often topics for discovery arrive with the experience of an address. We discuss the notion of the address of the topic, how a researcher discerns a topic to be studied and, from this address, develops appropriate research (...) questions that help to inform how the study will be conducted. (shrink)

While philosophical hermeneutics has often been criticized for not engaging issues concerning the body and human finitude, Gadamer’s ‘Defense of Pain’ in his final public academic appearance is an underappreciated hermeneutic contribution to the way in which we experience and respond to the physical and existential demands of pain. In light of his criticism, that the modern medical community is occupied with the utter eradication of pain, Gadamer is concerned with the consequences of such a sensibility which does not appear (...) to focus on developing and fostering the patients’ own capacities and participation in the process of their own convalescence. For Gadamer, the patients’ active participation in the recovery from pain is an opportunity to experience the joys of recovery and to engage in their own vibrant rhythm of health. Yet more than this, pain is an opportunity to return to an existential and hermeneutic truth about one’s own finitude. Through reflections on the newborn’s cry at birth and the forgetfulness of our own mortality, we find in Gadamer’s presentation an intriguing account of pain as a deeply embodied and hermeneutic experience that furthers interpretation and understanding of our own intimate relationship with birth, death, and life. (shrink)

Perhaps it is not more than four or five decades that the hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer is recognized by the scholars, but during this short period, we have seen tempestuous critics and objections against their hermeneutical thoughts. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, after publication of Wahrheit und Methode in 1960, has met with many criticisms. One of the major areas in which Gadamer has sustained criticism is epistemology. Although the topic of epistemology is not the central point of TM, his hermeneutics (...) does call to mind the question, what can we know? And “how is understanding possible, not only in the humanities but in the whole of man’s experience of the world?” Does Gadamer’s hermeneutics lead to relativism, the very thing he appears quite ardently to fight in his critique of historicism? Pol Vandevelde1 is someone who has recently criticized Gadamer’s hermeneutics from the perspective of traditional hermeneutics. He published a book entitled: "The Task of the Interpreter: Text, Meaning, and Negotiation”. The first two chapters of this book, especially the second chapter, with the title “Interpretation as Event: A Critique of Gadamer’s Critical Pluralism,” is devoted to attacking some aspects of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. I will state the general schema of his book and his critiques of Gadamer as they have been put forward in the first 62 pages of his book. In my conclusion, I will raise five questions or contradictions in Vandeveld’s theory of interpretation. (shrink)

Within the variety of subjects considered by Heidegger after Being and time, the notion of ‘thinking’ stands out for its constant presence and for the central place it occupies in a large part of his later work. In fact, as a path towards overcoming metaphysics and as a means of rethinking the relationship between humans and being, distorted in the world of technique, Heidegger uses the exercise of thinking that is not only the heritage of philosophers, but is latent in (...) many of the habitual practices of individuals. This article aims to elaborate this notion in line with the concepts of forgetting and remembering, which are both human experiences and constitutive elements of being in its happening. The outlined thesis is thus that, in a world dominated by the entity, Heidegger ascribes to the ‘reminiscent thinking’ the task of restoring our relationship with being and thus widening the possibilities of meaning of our existence. (shrink)