Gadamer's Dialectical Hermeneutics (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780739138878)

Gadamer's Dialectical Hermeneutics contributes to the growing literature that takes seriously the significance of Plato for Gadamer's hermeneutics. What distinguishes this book is the way in which Lauren Swayne Barthold argues for a dialectic central to Gadamer's hermeneutics, one that recalls the Platonic chorismos, or separation, between the transcendent and sensory realms. Barthold demonstrates that Gadamer, too, insisted on the "in-between" nature of human understanding as characterized by Hermes: we are finite beings always striving for infinity--that which lies beyond being.

Such a dialectical reading brings clarity to several themes crucial to, and contested within, Gadamer's hermeneutics. First, we are helped to see that Gadamer affirms the roles of both theory and practice for hermeneutics. Second, we are able to appreciate the nature of truth as the event of understanding--that into which we enter as opposed to that which stands apart from us as a criterion. Third, we gain insight into the significance of dialogue for understanding, including the necessary role of the other. And finally, we are able to substantiate the meaning of the good-beyond-being, as a key component to understanding. Gadamer's Dialectical Hermeneutics presents a reading of Gadamer that avoids the labels of realism or essentialism, and shows his primary motivation is to uncover the ethical, indeed dialectically ethical, and practical nature of philosophy.

Author: Lauren Swayne Barthold
ISBN-10: 0739138871
ISBN-13: 9780739138878
Publisher: Lexington Books
Language: English
Published: 12/01/2009
Pages: 166
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 01/15/2010 pg. 21