Syllabus
Weekly schedule:
1. Ideal of Objectivity vs. Hermeneutical Circle.
2. “Bildung”, Sensus Communis, Judgment, Taste.
3. Elements of a Theory of Hermeneutic Experience: (I) Prejudices, (II) Authority.
4. Elements of a Theory of Hermeneutic Experience: (III) Temporal Distance, (IV) Principle of History of Effect (Wirkungsgeschichte).
5. Natural and Human Sciences. The Problem of Methodology of the Human Sciences.
6. Language and Hermeneutics. Art.
7. Ricœur’s Interconnection of Hermeneutics and Structuralism.
8. To Explain vs. To Understand.
9. Discourse. Speaking and Writing.
10. Metaphor and Symbol.
11. Time and Narrative.
12. Reception Aesthetics. Literature: Gadamer, H.-G., Truth and Method, transl. J. Weinsheimer, D. G. Marshall, Bloomsbury Academic, London-New York
2004. ––––––, “The Problem of Historical Consciousness,” in “H.-G. Gadamer,” special issue, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 5:1 (1975), pp. 8–52. ––––––, The Relevance of the Beautiful and other Essays, transl. N. Walker, Cambridge University Press, Cambrigde
1987. Ricœur, P., Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Texas Christian University Press, Texas
1976. ––––––, The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling, Critical Inquiry 5, 1978, č. 1, Special Issue on Metaphor, s. 143–159. ––––––, The Conflict of Interpretation: Essays in Hermeneutics, edited by John Hide. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin, Robert Sweeney et al., Northwestern University Press, Evanston
1974. ––––––, The Rule of Metaphor, Routledge Classics, London
1978. Grondin, J., Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, Yale University Press, London
1994.
Annotation
The goal of the course is to outline main issues of modern hermeneutics of H.-G. Gadamer and P.
Ricœur. Key texts are as follow: Gadamer’s major work Truth &Method (Wahrheit und Methode) and Ricœur’s writings concerning hermenetutics from his Essays in Hermeneutics I (The Conflict of Interpretation) and Essays in Hermeneutics II (From Text to Action).
Additionally, the focus will be held on aesthetic topics from The Relevance of the Beautiful, The Rule of Metaphor and Time and Narrative in order to consider the decisive effect of hermeneutics on reception aesthetics.