Elucidates the major components of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics found in his later work.

Dealing extensively with Gadamer's later writings, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other shows neglected and widely misunderstood dimensions of Gadamer's hermeneutics: historicity, finitude, truth, the importance of the other, and the eminence of the poetic text.

In Gadamer's hermeneutics, interpretation is inseparable from the broader concern of making one's way in life. In this book, James Risser builds on this insight about the juxtaposition of human living and the act of understanding by tracing hermeneutics back to the basic experience of philosophy as defined by Plato. For Risser, Plato provides resources for new directions in hermeneutics and new possibilities for "the life of understanding" and "the understanding of life." Risser places Gadamer in dialogue with Plato, with the issue of memory as a conceptual focus. He develops themes pertaining to hermeneutics such as retrieval as a matter of convalescence, exile as a venture into the foreign, formation with respect to oneself and to life with others, the experience of language in hermeneutics, and the relationship between speaking and writing.

In this important new study, Paul Fairfield examines a number of issues of central importance to philosophical hermeneutics. His aim is less to reexamine the basic hypotheses of hermeneutics (Gadamer's hermeneutics in particular) than to understand it in relational terms, by bringing it into closer association with existentialism, pragmatism, critical theory, and postmodernism. Fairfield contends that there are important affinities and areas for critical exchange between hermeneutics and these four schools of thought which have, until now, remained underappreciated. Philosophical Hermeneutics Reinterpreted examines several of these connections by interpreting hermeneutics in relation to specific themes in the writings of key figures within each of these traditions. In so doing, he both clarifies some outstanding issues in hermeneutics and advances the subject beyond what Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur have given us.

The first book in English on Gadamer's relationship to Heidegger, this study illustrates the philosophical power Gadamer's thinking has achieved by departing from Heidegger's at certain crucial moments.

The inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics refers to the meaning that exceeds anything explicitly said. This explanation has been subsumed within metaphysical and theological parameters of interpretation with little regard for the implication of Gadamer’s turn to the living language for understanding the inner word. Through examining his phenomenology of the inner word, The Inner Voice in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics reveals its musical (rhythmic and tonal) dimensions and how they function to harmonize disparate orientations in the middle voice, above all for Gadamer, those that underlie modes of cognition in both the humanities and the sciences—a visual and auditory ethos. However, understood as constituting the music of language discernible in the middle voice, the inner word is also suppressed or forgotten by the technological extension of sight—that is, print—and thus requires a turn of the inner ear or auditory disposition. Andrew Fuyarchuk assesses theories of language in evolutionary and cognitive science in light of Gadamer’s insights into the nature of thought, and he employs them to account for a dimension of language that is inscribed in the lingual minds of our species. When recalled by the inner ear, this dimension enables us to think such opposites together as we find in the humanities and sciences together. This thinking together is expressed in a double account of an object of inquiry, such as the one Fuyarchuk puts forward about the inner word in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics.

This book confronts the challenges that hermeneutics brings to ethics and education by thematizing the critical influence which ethics and contemporary educational theory and practice have on the self-understanding of philosophical hermeneutics. In the hermeneutic spirit of commitment to cultivating lifelong habits of critical thinking, moral reflection, and articulate expression, the book presents many voices that illuminate a rich cultural diversity with the profound hope of nurturing the full-flourishing of human beings. The hermeneutics of education calls for diverse ways of thinking about education, which deeply cares for the common good of individuals, communities, and nations. This diversity promotes a genuine interest in different approaches to the event (Ereignis) of education. (Series: International Studies in Hermeneutics and Phenomenology - Vol. 8) [Subject: Hermeneutics, Ethics, Education]