McDowell and the Hermeneutic Tradition (Routledge Studies in American Philosophy)

This volume explores the connections between John McDowell’s philosophy and the hermeneutic tradition. The contributions not only explore the hermeneutical aspects of McDowell’s thought but also ask how this reading of McDowell can inform the hermeneutical tradition itself.

John McDowell has made important contributions to debates in epistemology, metaethics, and philosophy of language, and his readings of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein have proved widely influential. While there are instances in which McDowell draws upon the work of hermeneutic thinkers, the hermeneutic strand of McDowell’s philosophy has not yet been systematically explored in depth. The chapters in this volume open up a space in which to read McDowell himself as a hermeneutic thinker. They address several research questions: How can McDowell’s recourse to the hermeneutical tradition be understood in detail? Besides Gadamer, does McDowell’s work implicitly convey and advance motives from other seminal figures of this tradition, such as Heidegger and Dilthey? Are there aspects of McDowell’s position that can be enhanced through a juxtaposition with central hermeneutic concepts like World, Tradition, and Understanding? Are there further, perhaps yet unexplored aspects of McDowell’s infl uences that ought to be interpreted as expressing hermeneutic ideas?

McDowell and the Hermeneutic Tradition will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in American philosophy, Continental philosophy, hermeneutics, history of philosophy, philosophy of language, and epistemology.

Daniel Martin Feige is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. His research focuses on topics in philosophical aesthetics and philosophical anthropology in their relation to topics in theoretical and practical philosophy. His latest book is Die Natur des Menschen: Eine dialektische Anthropologie (Berlin: Suhrkamp 2022).

Thomas J. Spiegel is Humboldt/JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Waseda University. He studied philosophy in Berlin, London, Tokyo, Pittsburgh, and Leipzig. He received his PhD in 2017 from the University of Leipzig under the supervision of Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer and Robert Brandom.