The Philosophy of Gadamer

includes index and biblioraphy

1 The Problem of Method and the Project of a Hermeneutics of the Human Sciences 17
The problem of the beginning according to Rilke: where does our power to live in a world come from? 17
Understanding and event: being rather than consciousness 19
The destruction of aesthetics in the name of the humanist tradition 22
The Kantian turning-point 28
From the aesthetics of taste to that of genius 31
The abstraction of aesthetic consciousness 35
2 Truth after Art 39
The critique of subjectivism in modern aesthetics: the game of art is elsewhere 39
Metamorphosis and recognition 42
The temporality of the work of art and the exemplary status of tragedy 46
The presentation of truth in the non-performing arts 48
Hermeneutic consequences of truth rediscovered in art 52
3 The Destruction of Prejudices in Nineteenth-Century Aesthetics and Epistemology
The critique of Romantic hermeneutics 55
Self-effacement in the historical school 61
The three aporiae ofDilthey and historicism 65
The phenomenological opening 70
4 Vigilance and Horizon in Hermeneutics 79
The constellation of understanding 79
Prejudices and things themselves: which aporia? 84
Help from temporal distance? 88
The silent work of history 90
The vigilance of a historically effective consciousness 93
The immemorial canonicity of tradition and of the classical 96
The ethical vigilance of application 100
The mirages of reflexion and the bugbear of relativism 111
5 The Dialogue that We Are 123
Towards the uncanny nearness of language 123
From Platonic forgetfulness of language to its Augustinian recall 130
The conceptualization and the universality of rhetoric 137
Conclusion 143
The truth of the word 143
The speculative truth of language 146
The universal aspect of hermeneutics: the universality of aspect or offinitude 148
Hermeneutics as metaphysics of finitude 150