The Responsibility to Understand: Hermeneutical Contours of Ethical Life - Paperback

by Theodore George (Author)

Few topics have received broader attention within contemporary philosophy than that of responsibility. Theodore George makes a novel case for a distinctive sense of responsibility at stake in the hermeneutical experiences of understanding and interpretation.

He argues for the significance of this hermeneutical responsibility in the context of our relations with things, animals and others, as well as political solidarity and the formation of solidarities through the arts, literature and translation.

Back Jacket

What is the significance of hermeneutics at the intersections of ethics, politics and the arts and humanities? Few topics have received broader attention within contemporary philosophy than that of responsibility. Theodore George makes a novel case for a distinctive sense of responsibility at stake in the hermeneutical experiences of understanding and interpretation. He argues for the significance of this hermeneutical responsibility in the context of our relations with things, animals and others, as well as political solidarity and the formation of solidarities through the arts, literature and translation. Theodore George is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University.

Author Biography

Theodore George is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel's Phenomenology (SUNY, 2006). He is co-editor of The Gadamerian Mind (Routledge, forthcoming) and Philosophers and their Poets: On the Poetic Turn in German Philosophy since Kant (SUNY, 2019). He is the translator of Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy by Günter Figal (SUNY, 2010).