Inheriting Gadamer ─ New Directions in Philosophical Hermeneutics

One of the seminal philosophies of the twentieth century - Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics - has had a profound influence on a wide array of fields, including classical philology, theology, the philosophy of the social sciences, literary theory, philosophy of law, critical social theory and the philosophy of art.

This collection takes Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics into yet new fields: the philosophy of medicine, biotechnology, political theory, feminism and the body. And while Gadamer's discussions with Heidegger, Habermas and Derrida are well known,Inheriting Gadamer sets him in dialogue with Gandhi, Waldenfels and others. It also updates the relation of philosophical hermeneutics to critical sociology and a hermeneutics of suspicion. In these ways, the volume holds fast to a Gadamerian virtue: cultivating our important philosophical traditions while embracing the constant need to re-think their meaning in new circumstances and in relation to new knowledge.

Georgia Warnke is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. She is also Director of the Center for Ideas and Society. She is the author ofGadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Polity, 1987), Justice and Interpretation (MIT Press, 1993),Legitimate Differences: Interpretation in the Abortion Controversy and Other Public Debates(University of California Press, 1999), After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2007) andDebating Sex and Gender (Oxford University Press, 2010).