Now online a new article for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology by John Arthos (Indiana University, USA).
John Arthos – “A Hermeneutics for the Human Barnyard: The Nascent Political Radicality of Gadamer’s Theory of Experience”
JBSP (Received 02 Sep 2024, Accepted 13 Dec 2024, Published online: 03 Jan 2025).
Abstract: Gadamer offered a paradigm of hermeneutic experience and understanding as a humanist alternative to the scientific rationality that dominates Western modernity. He derived his perspective in great part from the philosophy of his mentor, Martin Heidegger, but he was grounded less in ontology than in his own humanistic training in classical philosophy, art, and literature. It was only somewhat late (in his debates with Habermas) that he grappled with the political relevance of his theory, but even in that context, he continued to insist on its universal applicability. This paper takes the position that Gadamer’s account of hermeneutic understanding provides an inadequate approach to the political dimensions of modernity, but that there is a radical kernel in his theory of experience that is relevant to political engagement. I suggest a way to reconfigure his model of hermeneutic experience that highlights this radical feature as the basis for viable political hermeneutics.
Full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2024.2446394
John Arthos, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
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