Philosophical Hermeneutics

Gadamer's 1976 essay collection — extending Truth and Method's hermeneutics to language, aesthetics, and practical philosophy

Tradition: Philosophical hermeneutics

Gadamer's 1976 English-language essays — the hermeneutical programme applied to language, art, and practice

Published by University of California Press in 1976, 'Philosophical Hermeneutics' is the major English-language essay collection introducing Gadamer's hermeneutics to Anglophone readers in the years after 'Truth and Method' (1960) had been translated into English (1975). Translated and edited by David E. Linge with extensive editorial introduction and notes, the volume contains thirteen essays composed across 1957-1974, including major pieces such as: 'The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem' (1966); 'On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection' (1967, part of Gadamer's response to Jürgen Habermas's critique of hermeneutic philosophy in the so-called Habermas-Gadamer debate); 'The Phenomenological Movement' (1963, a survey of phenomenology from Husserl through Heidegger); 'On the Problem of Self-Understanding' (1962); 'The Continuity of History and the Existential Moment' (1965); 'The Philosophical Foundations of the Twentieth Century' (1962); 'Hermeneutics as a Theoretical and Practical Task' (1974); 'Heidegger and the Language of Metaphysics' (1968); and essays on Hegel, the German Romantics, and aesthetic experience. Together the essays extend the Truth-and-Method programme into the philosophical conversations of the 1960s and 1970s — particularly the debate with critical theory (Habermas), the reception of Heidegger, the relations of hermeneutics to social science, and the role of hermeneutics in the contemporary philosophical situation. Together with the 1981 'Reason in the Age of Science' and the 1986 'The Relevance of the Beautiful', the book established Gadamer as a major figure in Anglophone philosophy beyond the narrow community of continental specialists.