Hans-Georg Gadamer

""Gadamer's Repercussions is a terrific collection of essays. While Gadamer is not the most precise of philosophers, he turns out, in this book at least, to be among the most generative. The essays prove that Gadamer's idealizing of dialogue can actually be put in practice by careful attention to the frameworks he addresses. I was most impressed by the essays that situate his ethics, his aesthetics, his relation to romanticism, his understanding of the relation of law and morality, his engagements with Fascism, and several aspects of his vexed relationship with postmodern thinking, especially on the possibility of dialogue."--Charles Altieri, author of "The Particulars of Rapture

"Gadamer is well known for his insistence that every reading is a new reading and every act of understanding a pathway to new understanding. Krajewski's carefully assembled volume applies these maxims to the understanding of Gadamer himself. By focusing on his intellectual and political background as well as his long-range influence and repercussions, the book opens new vistas for assessing one of the philosophical giants of the twentieth century."--Fred Dallmayr, author of "Dialogue Among Civilizations

Having thought out the Enlightenment project of individualism, privacy, and autonomy to its end, Anglo-American ethical theory now finds itself unable to respond to the collapse of community in which the practices justified by this project have resulted. In the place of reasonable deliberation about the goals to be chosen and the means to them, we now, it seems, have only what MacIntyre has aptly called ôinterminable debateö among ôrivalö positions, debate in which each party merely contends with the others for its own advantage. And this circumstance MacIntyre himself seems unable to escape despite his best efforts. In further elaborating Hans-Georg GadamerÆs hermeneutical reception of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Hegel, and in referring simultaneously to Edmund BurkeÆs parallel political rhetoric, among other tradition-oriented arguments in the English language, this book seeks a recollection of shared ethical principles, a recollection which alone, it is argued, might prevent the devolution of discussion into war with words and make possible some measure of consensus, however provisional and shadowed by dissent it will be.

Contemporary Continental Philosophy outlines the main philosophical views on epistemology and ontology. It provides a detailed assessment and outline by comparing the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida and Foucault.

ôCarefully documented, broadly informed and well written. Highly recommended.ö -Choice This book argues that a basic problem in thinking about understanding, temporality, and selfhood is due to ôimitativeö modes of thought found in much traditional Western philosophy and theology. Given this, the book examines the complex role that ôimageö and ôimitationö play in understanding and its world of meaning, the import of language and narrative for configuring human temporality, and the existence of self. The authorÆs contention is that when critically understood, mimesis, with its roots in performative enactment, holds resources for reconsidering these basic dimensions of human life beyond imitative paradigms of thought.