PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS - PHIL 6850
Mr. Westphal, Spring 2011
Philosophical hermeneutics is a mode of epistemology. It is reflection on the nature and limits of human understanding insofar as understanding is understood as interpretation (seeing-as, construal), an activity not limited to what we do to texts in some academic disciplines but basic to many if not all modes of human understanding. While it has important roots in Schleiermacher and Dilthey, as well as Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, as a twentieth century tradition in philosophy it takes the Heidegger of Being and Time as its point of departure and counts Gadamer and Ricoeur as its main figures. After a brief look at the origins up to and then in the work of Heidegger, the focus will be on the latter two thinkers.
Required texts:
OO Westphal, Overcoming Onto-theology
WC Westphal, Whose Community? Which Interpretation?
BT Heidegger, Being and Time
TM Gadamer, Truth and Method (be sure to get the 2004 version of the 2nd edition)
PH Philosophical Hermeneutics
HHS Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences
Written assignment: a term paper of not more than 20 pages.
ASSIGNMENT FOR FIRST CLASS: Westphal, ch. 3, 6, and 8.
READING SCHEDULE
* TM x/y = TM 1991/2004
J 25 OO, ch. 3, 6, 8
F 1 BT, ¶¶ 13, 18, 29-23
F 8 HHS, ch, 1, 3, 4
F 15 HHS, ch, 5, 8
F 22 TM*, xxi-81/xx-70
M 1 TM, 81-169/70-161
M 8 TM, 173-264/175-254
M 15 SPRING BREAK
M 22 TM, 265-300/268-299
M 29 TM, 300-362/299-355
A 5 TM, 362-405/356-406
A 12 TM, 405-91/406-484
A 19 TBA
A 26 TBA
M 3 TBA TERM PAPER DUE
M 10 TBA
