Book description
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.
"More than enriching or clarifying issues in current debates,
James Risser's work pushes hermeneutics toward a genuinely new stage
of development." -Theodore George, Texas A&M University
James Risser is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He
is the author of Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Re-reading
Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics and editor of Heidegger Toward
the Turn: Essays on the Work of the 1930s. He is editor (with Walter
Brogan) of American Continental Philosophy: A Reader (IUP, 2000).
