Reason in the Age of Science

Gadamer's 1981 essays on hermeneutics, technology, and practical philosophy

Tradition: Philosophical hermeneutics / practical philosophy / philosophy of science and technology

Gadamer's 1981 essays — practical philosophy and hermeneutical reflection in the technological age

Published by MIT Press in 1981 in their Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought series, 'Reason in the Age of Science' collects Gadamer's late essays on the place of hermeneutical reflection in the age of technology and science. Translated and edited by Frederick G. Lawrence, the volume gathers essays composed across 1965-1979 — the period after 'Truth and Method' (1960) had established Gadamer's philosophical position and the period of the famous Gadamer-Habermas debate over ideology critique. Major essays include: 'What is Practice? The Conditions of Social Reason' (1974, on Aristotelian phronesis as model for practical reason); 'Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy' (1972, on the practical-philosophical character of hermeneutics); 'Notes on Planning for the Future' (1965, on the technocratic illusion); 'The Limits of the Expert' (1979, on the question of expertise in modern democracy); 'On the Philosophical Element in the Sciences and the Scientific Character of Philosophy' (1971); 'Hermeneutics and Social Science' (1975, the centrepiece of the Habermas-Gadamer engagement); 'Theory, Technology, Practice: The Task of the Science of Man' (1972); and 'Heidegger and the Greeks' (1972). Together the essays extend the Truth-and-Method programme into the philosophical conversations of the 1970s — particularly the debate with critical theory (Habermas), the philosophical critique of technocracy, and the broader Aristotelian-phronetic alternative to scientistic-technocratic reason. The book established Gadamer's mature position on contemporary social-philosophical questions and remains the principal English-language source for his late practical-philosophical work.