This book reassesses Gadamer’s hermeneutics by bringing it into a dialogue with John McDowell’s minimal empiricism. It employs the resources of McDowell’s minimal empiricism to address the transcendental and ontological presuppositions for objective experience and understanding, while retaining Gadamer’s emphasis on the historicity of understanding. By means of the dialogue with McDowell, the book develops a hermeneutical conception of objectivity and perceptual experience, which also entails reinterpretations of Gadamer’s notions of tradition, practical wisdom and meaning. The book explores the philosophical space beyond the analytic-Continental divide and demonstrates that hermeneutics is not limited to a reflection on understanding as it is practiced in the human sciences, but can be revived as a distinct and cogent philosophical approach with a transcendental and ontological dimension. Thaning's book is a richly detailed, well-argued and coherent presentation of a defensible, and potentially very important, philosophical position. It demonstrates an impressively deep understanding of the literature both from the phenomenological tradition and from the part of the analytical tradition, inspired by Wilfred Sellars, to which John McDowell belongs. Being a substantial philosophical achievement in its own right, the book raises far-reaching questions that will be of interest to a wide audience. Dr. Steven Crowell, Rice University, Houston (USA) Morten Thaning’s book is an important contribution to the discourse of philosophical hermeneutics. Thaning extensively discusses a topic, which recent debates have touched upon, but which up to now has not been the subject matter of concentrated scholarly work: the relation between Gadamer’s hermeneutics and McDowell’s empiricism. With Thaning’s interpretation Gadamer’ work can be read anew as concerning the problem of hermeneutical objectivity. Prof. Dr. Günter Figal, University of Freiburg (Germany)

This book reassesses Gadamer's hermeneutics by bringing it into a dialogue with John McDowell's minimal empiricism. It employs the resources of McDowell's minimal empiricism to address the transcendental and ontological presuppositions for objective experience and understanding, while retaining Gadamer's emphasis on the historicity of understanding. By means of the dialogue with McDowell, the book develops a hermeneutical conception of objectivity and perceptual experience, which also entails reinterpretations of Gadamer's notions of tradition, practical wisdom and meaning. The book explores the philosophical space beyond the analytic-Continental divide and demonstrates that hermeneutics is not limited to a reflection on understanding as it is practiced in the human sciences, but can be revived as a distinct and cogent philosophical approach with a transcendental and ontological dimension. Thaning's book is a richly detailed, well-argued and coherent presentation of a defensible, and potentially very important, philosophical position. It demonstrates an impressively deep understanding of the literature both from the phenomenological tradition and from the part of the analytical tradition, inspired by Wilfred Sellars, to which John McDowell belongs. Being a substantial philosophical achievement in its own right, the book raises far-reaching questions that will be of interest to a wide audience. Dr. Steven Crowell, Rice University, Houston (USA) Morten Thaning's book is an important contribution to the discourse of philosophical hermeneutics. Thaning extensively discusses a topic, which recent debates have touched upon, but which up to now has not been the subject matter of concentrated scholarly work: the relation between Gadamer's hermeneutics and McDowell's empiricism. With Thaning's interpretation Gadamer' work can be read anew as concerning the problem of hermeneutical objectivity. Prof. Dr. Günter Figal, University of Freiburg (Germany).

This book focuses on the problematic issues arising when translating and interpreting classical Arabic texts, which represent a challenging business for many scholars, especially with regards to religious texts. Additionally, the reception of these interpretations and translations not only informs the perception of Muslims and their awareness of the outside world, but also impacts the vision and perception of non-Muslims of Islam and the Muslim world. Consequently, this book reconsiders the concepts of understanding and interpretation, and their nexus in the mechanism of translation, and proposes a novel, hermeneutic method of translating, interpreting, and understanding traditional and classical Arab texts. Handling the issues of understanding from a hermeneutical perspective is shown here to remove the possibility of translation and interpretation rendering a distorted translated text. Drawing on the powerful interpretive theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger, the hermeneutic method of translation starts from a premise that the meaning of a classical text cannot be deduced solely by linguistic analysis of its words, but requires in-depth investigation of the invisible, contextual elements that control and shape its meaning. Traditional texts are seen in this model as ‘travelling texts’ whose meaning is transformed across time and space. The hermeneutic method of translation allows the translator to identify those elements from the real-world that informed a classical text at the time of its writing, so that it can be adapted and made relevant to its contemporary context. Traditional texts can enlighten our minds and cultivate our souls; religious texts can elevate our behavior and thinking, and help refine our confused contemporary lives. When texts become isolated from their world, they lose this lofty goal of enlightenment and elevation.

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 infl uential. 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 fi gures 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.

Gadamer’s Truth and Method: A Polyphonic Commentary offers a fresh look at Gadamer’s magnum opus, Truth and Method, which was first published in German in 1960, translated into English in 1975, and is widely recognized as a ground-breaking text of philosophical hermeneutics. The volume features essays from fourteen scholars—both established and rising stars—each of which cover a portion of Truth and Method following the order of the text itself. The result is a robust, historically and thematically rich polyphonic reading of the text as a whole, valuable both for scholarship and teaching.

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

What would happen if structures, forms, and other stand-alone entities thought to comprise our intellectual toolkit-words, meanings, signs-were jettisoned? How would a work written in a purportedly dead language, like The Iliad, or penned in a foreign tongue be approached if deemed legible without structures such as meaning-bearing signs or grammatical rules? A New Philosophy of Discourse charts a novel course in response to these questions, coining an original concept of discourse, or talk!, that Joshua Kates presents as more fundamental than language. In Kates' conception of discourse, writing and speech take shape entirely as events, situated within histories, contexts, and traditions themselves always in the making. Combining literary theory, literary criticism, and philosophy, to reveal a new perspective on discourse, Kates focuses on literary criticism, literary texts by Charles Bernstein and Stanley Elkin, and the philosophical writings of Stanley Cavell, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Donald Davidson and Martin Heidegger. This ground-breaking study bridges the analytical/continental divide, by working through concrete problems using novel and extended interpretations with wide-ranging implications for the humanities.

The position and role of the business school and its educational programmes have become increasingly prominent, yet also questioned and contested. What management education entails, and how it is enacted, has become a matter of profound concern in the field of higher education and, more generally, for the development of the organized world. Drawing upon the humanities and social sciences, The Routledge Companion to Reinventing Management Education imagines a different and better education offered to students of management, entrepreneurship and organization studies. It is an intervention into the debates on what is taught and how learning takes place, demonstrating both the potential and the limits of what the humanities and social sciences can do for management education. Divided into six sections, the book traces the history and theory of management education, reimagining central educational principles and outlining an emerging practice-based approach. With an international cast of authors, The Routledge Companion to Reinventing Management Education has been written for contemporary and future educators and for students and scholars who seek to make a difference through their practice.