L'A. fait reference a l'hermeneutique de Gadamer pour reviser la distinction entre la pol... more L'A. fait reference a l'hermeneutique de Gadamer pour reviser la distinction entre la politique et la critique litteraire etablie par S. Fish dans son ouvrage intitule «L'exactitude professionnelle : les etudes litteraires et le changement politique» (1995). Inscrivant la politique et la litterature dans le domaine de la connaissance pratique selon Rorty, l'A. mesure la pertinence du debat politique et du debat litteraire au regard de l'inegalite economique.
1. Dissent. 1994 Fall;41(4):466-73. Surrogate mothering and the meaning of family. Warnke G. PMID... more 1. Dissent. 1994 Fall;41(4):466-73. Surrogate mothering and the meaning of family. Warnke G. PMID: 11660790 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]. MeSH Terms. Adoption; Commodification; Contracts*; Economics; Emotions; Family ...
We "BELONG" TO TRADITION, Gadamer says, (1) and he insists, "The conceptual world ... more We "BELONG" TO TRADITION, Gadamer says, (1) and he insists, "The conceptual world in which philosophizing develops has already captivated us in the same way that the language in which we live conditions us." (2) The historical and cultural traditions in which we participate orient us toward our world and form the bases for our assumptions and expectations about how that world works. Understanding is always preoriented; we anticipate the meanings things have for us and we already possess a language for what we understand before we consider it more explicitly. At the same time, Gadamer emphasizes the importance of experiences that thwart our expectations and undermine our assumptions. In this negative sense of experiences, one "has" them; something surprises us in our normal routines and leads us to reconsider the possibilities of the situation in which we find ourselves. Likewise, experiences of historical tradition provoke us to rethink our views and al...
For many deliberative theorists, the importance of a public exchange of reasons lies in its capac... more For many deliberative theorists, the importance of a public exchange of reasons lies in its capacity to improve the quality of democratic decision making. The 1831-1832 debate over abolishing slavery in Virginia in the state’s House of Delegates raises the question of whether it can do so on its own. The bigotry of those opposing the abolition of Virginian slavery was matched only by the prejudice of those advocating for its end. This paper examines James Bohman’s sophisticated defense of deliberative democracy but argues for the value of negative and disclosive experience.
Georgia Warnke began her career by studying the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the foremost contempo... more Georgia Warnke began her career by studying the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the foremost contemporary proponent of hermeneutics, a philosophical approach that centers on interpretation as dialogue across times and cultures. In this book, she traces the myriad ways in which interpretive perspectives have come to prominence in modem political philosophy. Focusing on the work of John Rawls, Michael Walzer, Ronald Dworkin, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jurgen Habermas, Warnke finds an increasing concern with the grounding of political norms in communal values rather than on abstract, universal principles.Warnke develops the implications of this hermeneutic turn in political philosophy, identifying and defining a range of unresolved problems and suggesting a new model of democracy that takes free and equal discussion and mutual education as its primary values.Georgia Warnke is Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Riverside.
Over at least the past quarter century, observers, historians, and journalists have painted a dam... more Over at least the past quarter century, observers, historians, and journalists have painted a damning picture of the treatment that African Americans have received from their government and fellow citizens, not only during slavery and the era of segregation but far into the twentieth century. Yet many of these observations and reports have simply been ignored and, although others received some attention for a time, none has become part of the country’s standard public history. My premise is that the continued failure in the United States to incorporate these observations and reports into its standard history has a profound effect on its political culture. I therefore begin by briefly recalling some aspects of post-Civil War African American history and consider the American antipathy to confronting this history by looking at Charles Mills’s account of “white ignorance.” While some theorists have tried to supplement Mills’s realist framework with a more sophisticated one indebted to ...
Modern hermeneutics begins with F. D. E. Schleiermacher who systematized hermeneutics, developing... more Modern hermeneutics begins with F. D. E. Schleiermacher who systematized hermeneutics, developing it from a group of disparate disciplines meant to apply to different fields of discourse to a set of procedures applicable to all. Schleiermacher also insists on a methodical practice of interpretation including grammatical interpretation, which attends to an author’s language, and psychological or technical interpretation, which attends to an author’s intentions. In moving to philosophical hermeneutics, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer refocus away from the procedures conducive to understanding and towards the conditions under which understanding occurs: namely, in the context of our ongoing projects and purposes and the interrelations they involve. For Gadamer, these conditions lead to a rethinking of the Enlightenment’s criticism of tradition and prejudice. The context of understanding is a historically developed one. Indeed, Heidegger and Gadamer conceive of the so-called her...
AT THE START OF HIS ACCOUNT of hermeneutic experience, Gadamer quotes Heidegger's Being and T... more AT THE START OF HIS ACCOUNT of hermeneutic experience, Gadamer quotes Heidegger's Being and Time: "Our first, last and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves." (1) Both Heidegger and Gadamer stress the extent to which understanding is part of our practical immersion in our world. For Heidegger, fore-having, foresight, and fore-conception constitute fore-structures of understanding, while Gadamer refers to fore-meanings and fore-projections. Both sets of terms signify our practical preunderstanding and ongoing engagement with the things themselves, for which we might also try to articulate more explicit interpretations. Yet, if the fore-structure of understanding already reflects an engagement with and preunderstanding of "the things themselves," how can we work these fore-structures out in terms of them? How can we come to recognize that fancies and popular conceptions have presented these fore-structures to us or distinguish between fancies and popular conceptions and the things themselves? Gadamer claims to take his answer to this question from Heidegger and to appeal, like him, to the hermeneutic circle. However, in this paper, I want to argue that Gadamer takes the question more seriously than Heidegger does and supplements recourse to the hermeneutic circle with an appeal to dialogue. I also want to explore some concerns about this supplement. Gadamer conceives of understanding as a dialogue in which we test our fore-meanings against those of others and come to a consensus with others about a subject matter (Sache). Yet, what if dialogue just as easily reinforces or even exaggerates our fore-meanings? And what if consensus is as easily to be feared as sought? I Being and Time revises the German hermeneutic tradition by conceiving of understanding not primarily as a rule-bound procedure for the correct comprehension of texts, but rather as our practical capacity to cope with the world. (2) Indeed, Heidegger's paradigmatic cases of understanding are not texts, but activities, such as opening doors and hammering. In these activities, we do not first see the door or a hammer and then discover its properties. Instead, understanding is, first of all, knowing how--whether knowing how to hammer, knowing how to do what I am doing, or knowing how to be. For Heidegger, we make this sort of knowing how explicit in an interpretation by understanding something as something in the context of our ongoing projects and purposes, as part of a set of functional interrelationships. We see the thing as something, a hammer, a door, and so on. As Heidegger puts this point, "That which is disclosed in understanding--that which is understood--is already accessible in such a way that its 'as which' can be made to stand out explicitly. The 'as' makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is understood. It constitutes the interpretation." (3) In Heidegger's terminology, the context of purposes, projects, and interrelations that allows us to interpret something as something constitutes the fore-structure of understanding, composed of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. Fore-having signals our immersion in the practical activities that constitute the arena for our interpretation. Our fore-sight indicates the perspective this immersion opens up for us, while our fore-conception fixes the range of possible meanings of that which we are trying to grasp. (4) To be sure, this fore-structure does not precede interpretation; it is rather part of it insofar as interpretations realize and articulate the possibilities that are disclosed in understanding as aspects of the activities in which we are engaged. Yet, if interpretations already involve an understanding of that which they are interpreting, how do they add to or, indeed, possibly correct our store of knowledge? …
L'A. fait reference a l'hermeneutique de Gadamer pour reviser la distinction entre la pol... more L'A. fait reference a l'hermeneutique de Gadamer pour reviser la distinction entre la politique et la critique litteraire etablie par S. Fish dans son ouvrage intitule «L'exactitude professionnelle : les etudes litteraires et le changement politique» (1995). Inscrivant la politique et la litterature dans le domaine de la connaissance pratique selon Rorty, l'A. mesure la pertinence du debat politique et du debat litteraire au regard de l'inegalite economique.
1. Dissent. 1994 Fall;41(4):466-73. Surrogate mothering and the meaning of family. Warnke G. PMID... more 1. Dissent. 1994 Fall;41(4):466-73. Surrogate mothering and the meaning of family. Warnke G. PMID: 11660790 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]. MeSH Terms. Adoption; Commodification; Contracts*; Economics; Emotions; Family ...
We "BELONG" TO TRADITION, Gadamer says, (1) and he insists, "The conceptual world ... more We "BELONG" TO TRADITION, Gadamer says, (1) and he insists, "The conceptual world in which philosophizing develops has already captivated us in the same way that the language in which we live conditions us." (2) The historical and cultural traditions in which we participate orient us toward our world and form the bases for our assumptions and expectations about how that world works. Understanding is always preoriented; we anticipate the meanings things have for us and we already possess a language for what we understand before we consider it more explicitly. At the same time, Gadamer emphasizes the importance of experiences that thwart our expectations and undermine our assumptions. In this negative sense of experiences, one "has" them; something surprises us in our normal routines and leads us to reconsider the possibilities of the situation in which we find ourselves. Likewise, experiences of historical tradition provoke us to rethink our views and al...
For many deliberative theorists, the importance of a public exchange of reasons lies in its capac... more For many deliberative theorists, the importance of a public exchange of reasons lies in its capacity to improve the quality of democratic decision making. The 1831-1832 debate over abolishing slavery in Virginia in the state’s House of Delegates raises the question of whether it can do so on its own. The bigotry of those opposing the abolition of Virginian slavery was matched only by the prejudice of those advocating for its end. This paper examines James Bohman’s sophisticated defense of deliberative democracy but argues for the value of negative and disclosive experience.
Georgia Warnke began her career by studying the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the foremost contempo... more Georgia Warnke began her career by studying the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the foremost contemporary proponent of hermeneutics, a philosophical approach that centers on interpretation as dialogue across times and cultures. In this book, she traces the myriad ways in which interpretive perspectives have come to prominence in modem political philosophy. Focusing on the work of John Rawls, Michael Walzer, Ronald Dworkin, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jurgen Habermas, Warnke finds an increasing concern with the grounding of political norms in communal values rather than on abstract, universal principles.Warnke develops the implications of this hermeneutic turn in political philosophy, identifying and defining a range of unresolved problems and suggesting a new model of democracy that takes free and equal discussion and mutual education as its primary values.Georgia Warnke is Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Riverside.
Over at least the past quarter century, observers, historians, and journalists have painted a dam... more Over at least the past quarter century, observers, historians, and journalists have painted a damning picture of the treatment that African Americans have received from their government and fellow citizens, not only during slavery and the era of segregation but far into the twentieth century. Yet many of these observations and reports have simply been ignored and, although others received some attention for a time, none has become part of the country’s standard public history. My premise is that the continued failure in the United States to incorporate these observations and reports into its standard history has a profound effect on its political culture. I therefore begin by briefly recalling some aspects of post-Civil War African American history and consider the American antipathy to confronting this history by looking at Charles Mills’s account of “white ignorance.” While some theorists have tried to supplement Mills’s realist framework with a more sophisticated one indebted to ...
Modern hermeneutics begins with F. D. E. Schleiermacher who systematized hermeneutics, developing... more Modern hermeneutics begins with F. D. E. Schleiermacher who systematized hermeneutics, developing it from a group of disparate disciplines meant to apply to different fields of discourse to a set of procedures applicable to all. Schleiermacher also insists on a methodical practice of interpretation including grammatical interpretation, which attends to an author’s language, and psychological or technical interpretation, which attends to an author’s intentions. In moving to philosophical hermeneutics, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer refocus away from the procedures conducive to understanding and towards the conditions under which understanding occurs: namely, in the context of our ongoing projects and purposes and the interrelations they involve. For Gadamer, these conditions lead to a rethinking of the Enlightenment’s criticism of tradition and prejudice. The context of understanding is a historically developed one. Indeed, Heidegger and Gadamer conceive of the so-called her...
AT THE START OF HIS ACCOUNT of hermeneutic experience, Gadamer quotes Heidegger's Being and T... more AT THE START OF HIS ACCOUNT of hermeneutic experience, Gadamer quotes Heidegger's Being and Time: "Our first, last and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves." (1) Both Heidegger and Gadamer stress the extent to which understanding is part of our practical immersion in our world. For Heidegger, fore-having, foresight, and fore-conception constitute fore-structures of understanding, while Gadamer refers to fore-meanings and fore-projections. Both sets of terms signify our practical preunderstanding and ongoing engagement with the things themselves, for which we might also try to articulate more explicit interpretations. Yet, if the fore-structure of understanding already reflects an engagement with and preunderstanding of "the things themselves," how can we work these fore-structures out in terms of them? How can we come to recognize that fancies and popular conceptions have presented these fore-structures to us or distinguish between fancies and popular conceptions and the things themselves? Gadamer claims to take his answer to this question from Heidegger and to appeal, like him, to the hermeneutic circle. However, in this paper, I want to argue that Gadamer takes the question more seriously than Heidegger does and supplements recourse to the hermeneutic circle with an appeal to dialogue. I also want to explore some concerns about this supplement. Gadamer conceives of understanding as a dialogue in which we test our fore-meanings against those of others and come to a consensus with others about a subject matter (Sache). Yet, what if dialogue just as easily reinforces or even exaggerates our fore-meanings? And what if consensus is as easily to be feared as sought? I Being and Time revises the German hermeneutic tradition by conceiving of understanding not primarily as a rule-bound procedure for the correct comprehension of texts, but rather as our practical capacity to cope with the world. (2) Indeed, Heidegger's paradigmatic cases of understanding are not texts, but activities, such as opening doors and hammering. In these activities, we do not first see the door or a hammer and then discover its properties. Instead, understanding is, first of all, knowing how--whether knowing how to hammer, knowing how to do what I am doing, or knowing how to be. For Heidegger, we make this sort of knowing how explicit in an interpretation by understanding something as something in the context of our ongoing projects and purposes, as part of a set of functional interrelationships. We see the thing as something, a hammer, a door, and so on. As Heidegger puts this point, "That which is disclosed in understanding--that which is understood--is already accessible in such a way that its 'as which' can be made to stand out explicitly. The 'as' makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is understood. It constitutes the interpretation." (3) In Heidegger's terminology, the context of purposes, projects, and interrelations that allows us to interpret something as something constitutes the fore-structure of understanding, composed of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. Fore-having signals our immersion in the practical activities that constitute the arena for our interpretation. Our fore-sight indicates the perspective this immersion opens up for us, while our fore-conception fixes the range of possible meanings of that which we are trying to grasp. (4) To be sure, this fore-structure does not precede interpretation; it is rather part of it insofar as interpretations realize and articulate the possibilities that are disclosed in understanding as aspects of the activities in which we are engaged. Yet, if interpretations already involve an understanding of that which they are interpreting, how do they add to or, indeed, possibly correct our store of knowledge? …
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