The Responsibility to Understand
Hermeneutical Contours of Ethical Life
- Discusses how hermeneutics offers ways to develop an ethics
- Makes the case for the relevance of contemporary hermeneutics for current scholarly discussions of responsibility within continental European philosophy
- Contributes a new, ethically inflected approach to current debate within post-Gadamerian hermeneutics
- Extends his analysis to the practice of living and covers animals, art, literature and translation
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.
Acknowledgements
Preface. The Unbearable Lightness of Ethics
Introduction. Contemporary Hermeneutics and the Question of Responsibility
Part I. The Responsibility to Understand
1. The Responsibility to Understand
2. The Capacity for Displacement
Part II. I and Thou
3. Things
4. Animals
5. Others
Part III. I and We
6. Solidarity
7. Arts and Literature
8. Translation
Theodore George’s book The Responsibility to Understand: Hermeneutical Contours of Ethical Life is a sensitive, thoughtful, and insightful invocation to rehabilitate connection and the relational capacity of our lives. This book not only invites an internal reflection of the ways I live in the world and keep in relationship to others in it, but it deeply connects to the work we do in practice professions. Like Gadamer, George offers us a sophisticated practice philosophy that resonates and coalesces with our human endeavours of understanding each other in the context of urgent social and global concerns and fundamental human experiences of suffering, pain, joy, loss, and love.
A sensitive, thoughtful, and insightful invocation to rehabilitate connection and the relational capacity of our lives. This book not only invites an internal reflection of the ways I live in the world and keep in relationship to others in it, but it deeply connects to the work we do in practice professions. Like Gadamer, George offers us a sophisticated practice philosophy that resonates and coalesces with our human endeavours of understanding each other in the context of urgent social and global concerns and fundamental human experiences of suffering, pain, joy, loss, and love.
George’s book is both excellent and illuminating [...] As a reader one feels guided by someone who wants to hold together multiple strands of thought and yet remain himself in the process. More than this, however, the reader is led by someone who has immersed himself in the works and words of the tradition, and someone who is at home there.
In this excellent contribution to both ethics and hermeneutics, George offers a clear argument why present-day discussions on responsibility should engage with the insights of philosophical hermeneutics. The hermeneutic emphasis on understanding, as this study convincingly argues, is to be understood as a responsibility to understand.
