The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer (b. 1900) is widely recognized as the leading exponent of philosophical hermeneutics. The essays in this collection examine Gadamer’s biography, the core of hermeneutical theory, and the significance of his work for ethics, aesthetics, the social sciences, and theology. There is full consideration of Gadamer’s appropriation of Hegel, Heidegger and the Greeks, as well as his relation to modernity, critical theory and poststructuralism.

• The dominant figure in twentieth-century philosophical hermeneutics • Read widely outside philosophy in such fields as literary and religious studies

1. Introduction Robert J. Dostal; 2. Gadamer: the man and his work Robert J. Dostal; 3. Gadamer’s basic understanding of understanding Jean Grondin; 4. Getting it right: relativism, realism and truth Brice Wachterhauser; 5. Hermeneutics, ethics and politics Georgia Warnke; 6. The doing of the thing itself: Gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology of language Günter Figal; 7. Gadamer on the human sciences Charles Taylor; 8. Lyric as paradigm: Hegel and the speculative instance of poetry in Gadamer’s hermeneutics J. M. Baker, Jr.; 9. Gadamer, the hermeneutic revolution, and theology Fred Lawrence; 10. Hermeneutics in practice: Gadamer on ancient philosophy Catherine H. Zuckert; 11. Gadamer’s Hegel Robert B. Pippin; 12. Gadamer’s relation to Heidegger and phenomenology Robert J. Dostal; 13. The constellation of hermeneutics, critical theory and deconstruction Richard J. Bernstein.