"Rationality To-day" was a colloquium held in Canada in 1979. It has the merit of puting together great names of contemporary philosophy, such as Habermas, Apel, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Dupre, Perelman, and many others, in great papers and antological discussions. A must have for any serious student of philosophy.

Gadamer's _Truth and Method_ is both very profound and very readable; it is a vast improvement over other more widely-read philosophical texts from the same region and time period (such as Heidegger's _Being and Time_ and Husserl's _Crisis of the European Sciences_). Unlike the aforementioned philosophers, Gadamer is actually willing to stick his neck out and reveal to us the true nature of his own personal spiritual beliefs. Believe it or not, Gadamer has the audacity to tell us that we "must take the Old Testament literally" (!) That's right, folks. Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, Moses, Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-Joseph-ect. We have to take all of that literally. Now I've been to north-Georgia, backcountry, hillbilly Baptist churches where they didn't believe in that stuff anymore. And that is precisely what makes Gadamer's philosophy so revolutionary. The age of reason has quite literally come full circle. People were completely caught off guard by this shocking new assertion, that we must once again turn to the literal interpretation of the Old Testament in order to explain the dawn of temporal conciousness in man.
It seems as though modern phenomenolgy has uncovered far more new questions than it has answers. Hegel was one of the first to attempt an in-depth systemization on how and why the "spirit enters into time". Heidegger was one of the first with a specific answer, stating that the phenomenon of spirit is attributable to a type of "care" and "being-unto-death". Sarte countered that this phenomenology is in fact a result of "being-unto-other". But if we believe Gadamer's historical theory, we may have a concrete solution to all of these problems. Rather than be stuck with a narrow and one-dimensional theory of the phenomenon of soul (which could easily be diluted with other contingencies and unforeseen contributing factors) Gadamer brings us back to a very viable, believable, and comprehesive system of the historical birth of the spirit. Granted, it is impossible to empirically prove the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, but Gadamer points out this historic text's uncanny ability to account for and eliminate every possible obstacle to the coming-into-being of spirit. Once we understand Gadamer's system, we realize that not only is the Old Testament a sensible, fitting, and believable way to account for our existence, it is actually one of the most solid and inarguable existential theories out there. Yes, it does seem shocking and surprising at first, but the more you think about it, the more believable you will find the Old Testament to be. Apparently, the modern philosopher must go down every dead-end, back-alley historical theory known to man before he can finally come to terms with the wisdom of the ancients.
So the only question remaining is, should you buy this book? If you are open minded enough to at least consider the possibility of the historical theory described above, then you will probably find this book to be interesting and intellectually stimulating. If, on the other hand, you are horrified and appauled by what I just said, maybe you should instead ask your college professor for his latest recommendation.

Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method is a result of sixty years of reflection on the nature of the hermeneutic experience and an exemplary document of lucid and fascinating scholarship. The purpose of the treatise on understanding is 'what takes place above our thinking and doing', in other words, the constitutive events in art, literature and ethics.
As Gadamer's examination of the romantic human sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften, is constantly referred back onto the tradition and the sources from which it emerges and supports itself, some background knowledge is required, particularly of classical philosophy, Hegel and Heidegger.
The project of Truth and Method opens by engaging the reader to a critique of Kantian aesthetic exposition, and uses it as a starting-point for an examination of hermeneutics, the art of understanding. In the course of the examination Gadamer does not, however, engage in a dialogue only with the philosophical tradition, but by continuously exploring the universality of the hermeneutic experience demonstrates its relevance and presence in history, study of languages, legal theory and theology.
For a reader coming from the analytic-linguistic tradition, the final section on the hermeneutic character of language should be of particular interest. In it Gadamer outlines his conception of language as the horizon through which the experience of the world is understood. But as throughout the book, the horizon of understanding is not determined solely on the basis of the grammatical or the logical structure present; indeed, the horizon itself is a constant possibility for the historically effected consciousness to gain further self-knowledge through its experience in language as a historically and temporally defined phenomenon.
The style of the book is thoroughly lively and engaging; despite the abstract subject-matter the argument is never lost from sight and Gadamer's sense of clarity in terms of expression makes the book a pleasure to read and come back to.

I recommend this book whole-heartedly, not as a conclusive and total life-philosophy, but as an exploration and fascination of the possibilities of human potential in its recurring activity of living and perpetuating, its own culture, tradition and being.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. It is Gadamer's masterpiece - published when he was sixty years old, and the result of a life time of scholarship. T&M is a critique of romantic hermeneutics -a doctrine that holds that the meaning of a text is identical with the intention of its author. On this account, the purpose of interpretation is to reconstruct the author's intention, the experience they had while writing it that is held in the text. To this Gadamer contrasts his own theory of historically effected consciousness. Gadamer claims that 'understanding a text' involves understanding the tradition of which it (and you) are a part. In the course of doing so, Heidegger ranges over the history of aesthetic theory, phenomenology, and hermenutics, biblical interpretation, as well as examining the nature of all human understanding.

Gadamer is a student of Heidegger. In this book he is interested in demonstrating the way a Heideggerian account of consciousness (and being in the world) can help us make sense of the act of interpretation. He is also interested in demonstrating that one can use Heidegger without being a Nazi or obsessed with anxiety and being-towards-death.

This book is highly technical, the prose if difficult, and demanding (it helps to have read Being and Time, Kant's Critique of Judgement, some Augustine and Aquinas, etc etc etc.). For people who can get into the work, however, it promises a comprehensive theory of human being, the history of philosophy (and indeed, western thought as a whole) and a holistic worldview of unmatched death and detail. And that's no small potatoes.

For those interested in in reading Gadamer but not ready to tackle T&M, I recommend some of the shorter volumes of his speeches and writings. One of these, _Philosophical Hermeneutics_, is (relatively) accessible and generally considered by Gadamerphiles to be 'Truth and Method Lite'.

Professor Dostal has assembled a useful collection of essays for this volume. The best contributions are by Jean Grondin (shrewd and astute, as always) and Fred Lawrence and someone named Gunter Figal.

Unfortunately, Richard J. Bernstein's piece on Gadamer/Habermas/Derrida is a bit thin, while J.M. Baker Jr.'s essay on lyric poetry seems endless.

Professor Dostal's essay on Gadamer and Heidegger (always a thorny subject) is especially good.

Recommended.

Very interesting work focusing on the cultural background to the Pauline era. It investigates some new angles and approaches to the traditional stance often employed by New Testament scholars, thus envoking original and valid arguments based around Paul.

This book book is superior to much of what is avaible in English on this topic.

Concerning the rational structure of the Absolute, Hegel, following the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, argued that "what is rational is real and what is real is rational." This must be understood in terms of Hegel's further claim that the Absolute must ultimately be regarded as pure Thought, or Spirit, or Mind, in the process of self-development. The logic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel's thought has been analyzed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Although Hegel tended to avoid these terms, they are helpful in understanding his concept of the dialectic. The thesis, then, might be an idea or a historical movement. Such an idea or movement contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of the conflict a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis and antithesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion the process of intellectual or historical development is continually generated. Hegel thought that Absolute Spirit itself (which is to say, the sum total of reality) develops in this dialectical fashion toward an ultimate end or goal. For Hegel, therefore, reality is understood as the Absolute unfolding dialectically in a process of self-development. As the Absolute undergoes this development, it manifests itself both in nature and in human history. Nature is Absolute Thought or Being objectifying itself in material form. Finite minds and human history are the process of the Absolute manifesting itself in that which is most kin to itself, namely, spirit or consciousness. In The Phenomenology of Mind Hegel traced the stages of this manifestation from the simplest level of consciousness, through self-consciousness, to the advent of reason.

"Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Re-reading Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics," by James Risser, is, on the whole, a well-written and accessible text. As the book's subtitle indicates, it is a look at the work of 20th century thinker Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose 1960 book "Truth and Method" looms large in academia. In his introduction, Risser notes that the "aim of this book [...] is to treat philosophical hermeneutics in a more encompassing way, in a way that takes account of the complexity and breadth of the project of philosophical hermeneutics."

Risser reflects on the relationship of Gadamer's work to the work of such related thinkers as Heidegger, Kant, Husserl, Kierkegaard, and Derrida. He addresses the concerns of Gadamer critics John Caputo and Richard Bernstein. Risser looks at some specific controversies surrounding Gadamer's work, such as the debate over Gadamer's concept of "prejudice."

I found one of the more interesting parts of the book to be Risser's look at the relevance of "Buber's distinction between an I-It relation and an I-Thou relation" to Gadamer's work. I was also intrigued by Risser's thoughts on "the concept of play" ("Spiel" in German) in Gadamer's work.

If you're turned off by phrases like "an Aristotelico-Hegelian metaphysics of infinity," you might want to avoid this book. But on the whole I found Risser's prose quite engaging. My main disappointment with the book stems from my expectations regarding the book's title. Risser talks about the voice of the "other," but I didn't see anything in the book which really explored what makes an "other" an "other." In particular, I finished the book wondering what relevance Risser's work (and Gadamer's by extension) has on postmodern debates over difference in race, gender, class, etc. Significantly, such terms as "race," "gender," etc. don't even appear in the index. My advice: supplement your reading of this book with Adrienne Rich's "Blood, Bread, and Poetry" or Audre Lorde's "Sister Outsider."

Risser's prose gets a bit "touchy-feely" towards the end, as he reflects on commonalities between poetry and philosophy and waxes poetic himself on such concepts on grace, kindness, friendship, and the "radiant word." (But I admit: I liked the "touchy-feely" stuff.) Not a wholly satisfying book, but nonetheless an admirable achievement.

This book had a great combination of Gadamer's hermeneutical approach to understanding language and the issue of power in Foucalt's understanding. It shows the basis for the understanding of power is based within the language system of the agent. A very good read for anyone interested in social philosophy.

The author of this thick biography, Jean Grondin, has always been one of the most astute and informed commentators on the subject of philosophical hermeneutics.

Prospective readers need not be put off by this volume's bulk (478 pages) since almost 140 pages are devoted to scholarly apparatus which most of us will ignore. That leaves only 338 pages of actual text to read (plus a few pages of pictures to enjoy). In this era of bloated biographies, we can be thankful for Professor Grondin's restraint. The average intelligent reader will probably find herself skimming chapters 2 - 5 (Gadamer's ancestry and youth) and chapters 10 - 12 (academic politics in the mid-twentieth century) thereby shortening this book by an additional 115 pages. That leaves about 200 pages of interesting reading about Gadamer, Heidegger, Nazis, poets, Habermas, Derrida, Plato, phenomenology, human finitude, etc.

Not surprisingly, Professor Grondin does a fine job of sorting out the influences of others in the formation of Gadamer's conception of hermeneutics and in communicating the gist of his major work, TRUTH AND METHOD. Unfortunately, Grondin never gets around to telling us much about his subject's life-long enthusiasm for the arts (Why did Gadamer love Rilke's poetry? What visual artists was Gadamer excited about?).

In short, this is a good biography of an important twentieth century philosopher, but not a great one (for a great one order Ray Monk's WITTGENSTEIN : THE DUTY OF GENIUS).