Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy - Softcover

Vattimo, Gianni

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745617530 ISBN 13: 9780745617534

Publisher: Polity, 1997

Synopsis

This book by one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers is a concise and lucidly argued account of the meaning of hermeneutics for philosophy today. Vattimo argues that hermeneutics, understood in a general sense, has had a pervasive influence on contemporary philosophy and social thought. But its very generality is also a symptom of its malaise, for it threatens to leave hermeneutics empty of significance and wedded to a shallow relativism. In response to this danger, Vattimo proposes a radicalization of the relation of hermeneutics to its own historical roots in modernity and a rethinking of the relation between hermeneutics and nihilism - which involves, in Vattimo's account, a weakening of the strong structures of being, reality, subjectivity and above all, truth. Vattimo develops a new interpretation of hermeneutics that dispenses with the traditional bias toward aesthetic experience. His radical interpretation breaks the link between hermeneutics and metaphysical humanism, challenges the traditional opposition of the natural and human sciences, and opens new perspectives on ethics, art and religion. Beyond Interpretation will be welcomed by students and researchers in philosophy and social theory.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Hermeneutics has had a pervasive influence on contemporary philosophy, social and cultural theory, literary criticism, and aesthetics. It has become so widespread an instrument that its very meaning threatens to dissolve into vague generalities, empty of significance and wedded to a shallow relativism. In this book one of Europe’s foremost contemporary philosophers provides hermeneutics with a fresh relevance and a substantive account of its philosophical meaning for science, ethics, religion, and art.
Vattimo argues for a reading of hermeneutics that radicalizes it according to what the author calls its “nihilistic vocation,” a term referring to the interpretive character of truth and taken from Nietzsche’s statement that there are, in the modern period, no facts, only interpretations. Modernity, for Vattimo, is conceived as the advent of nihilism, and the central question of the book is to ask what it means to take this nihilistic vocation seriously. This involves not simply accepting the current status of hermeneutics, but evaluating why it appears when, and where, it does.
By way of a response to a number of questions only briefly treated in the text, as well as to broaden the author’s argumentation on various points, there is an appendix containing two previously published essays, “The Truth of Hermeneutics” and “The Reconstruction of Rationality.”

From the Back Cover:

“This is a very ambitious and very rich book. It led me to reconsider a lot of my previous views about the relations between science, ethics, religion, and art. Vattimo is a genuinely original, and very stimulating, philosopher.”—Richard Rorty, University of Virginia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Polity
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0745617530
• ISBN 13: 9780745617534
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144