Volume 18, No. 2, Fall 2023

FORTHCOMING

Phenomenology and Transcendence

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Robert J. Dostal | Bryn Mawr College

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Understanding in Tension: Language, Intuition, and the Meaning of Humanism
Theodore George | Texas A&M University

It is a mainstay of Gadamerian hermeneutics that the achievement of understanding is mediated by language—a claim that, per Dostal, allows Gadamer’s approach to be grasped as a matter of dialectic. Yet, as Dostal argues, Gadamer’s hermeneutics is also meant to remain based in the concern of classical Husserlian phenomenology, namely to return to the things themselves, die Sachen selbst, as they are given directly through intuition, or noesis. This article aims to examine Dostal’s position. It is thereby focusing, in particular, on the consequences of his approach for Gadamer’s conceptions of humanism, education (Bildung), and some important aspects of Gadamer’s relation to Heidegger.

Keywords: Gadamer, Hans-Georg; Heidegger, Martin; language; intuition; Sache; Humanism; Education; Bildung.

Robert Dostal, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and the Challenge of Phenomenology
David Vessey | Grand Valley State University

A central theme of Robert Dostal's book is Hans-Georg Gadamer's relation to classical phenomenology; where a key concern is that Gadamer cannot answer, in Dostal's words, "the Phenomenological Challenge"—that is, the hermeneutics fails to appreciate the philosophical significance of one's direct contact with the world. Dostal tries to answer this challenge by showing the places where Gadamer speaks of a pre-linguistic, immediate contact with the world. I argue that one should embrace Gadamer's proximity to John McDowell's views and draw upon them in order to clarify Gadamer's criticisms of classical phenomenology and to show how they do not leave him susceptible to the phenomenology challenge.

Keywords: Ricoeur, Paul; Husserl, Edmund; Scheler, Max; McDowell, John; phenomenology; hermeneutics; linguistic idealism.

The Good Life: Comments on Robert J. Dostal, Gadamer's Hermeneutics
Mirela Oliva | University of St. Thomas

Robert Dostal's book examines, among other topics, how Gadamer adopts Aristotle's paradigm of the good life. Dostal argues that Gadamer balances the practical and theoretical life and emphasizes the practical. My comments present Dostal's view on Gadamer's version of the Aristotelian paradigm. I show, first, that Dostal explains these modifications with Gadamers' fundamental rejection of modern subjectivism. Second, I present Dostal's compelling analysis of Gadamer's use of phronesis as a bridge between the theoretical and the practical. One of the merits of Dostal's book resides precisely in working out the phronetic character of understanding.

Keywords: Aristotle; Gadamer, Hans Georg; the good life; phronesis; Enlightenment.

Dialogic Solidarity
Georgia Warnke | University of California, Riverside

Robert Dostal's Gadamer's Hermeneutics illuminates three important aspects of Hans-Georg Gadamer's remarks on solidarity: it is part of his critique of subjectivism; it is not based on shared identities; and it is connected to dialogue and conversation. This review discusses and expands on Dostal's account. Whereas Dostal claims that conversation for Gadamer can bond participants into a common view that makes both friendship and solidarity possible; I claim that for Gadamer solidarity just is conversation, a commitment to discuss issues together in a sincere search for their solution.

Keywords: Dostal, Robert; Gadamer, Hans-Georg; Rorty, Richard; solidarity; conversation; identity; technology.

What is Anti-Hermeneutics? Jaspers, Gadamer, and the COVID-19 Hermeneutic Crisis
Alexander Crist | Pensacola State College

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth a crisis in rational public discourse and trust in authoritative institutions. Given its many issues related to language, communication, and solidarity, this crisis can be considered a hermeneutic crisis. This essay turns to Karl Jaspers’ lecture series, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time, and to several works from Hans-Georg Gadamer, in order to develop a diagnostic concept of anti-hermeneutics. While Gadamer often discusses what it means to live hermeneutically, he rarely offers an explicit account of what it would mean to live anti-hermeneutically, namely, in a way that resists cultivating and acting from basic hermeneutic virtues. Jaspers’ notion of anti-reason (Widervernunft) offers a model for thinking about what anti-hermeneutics would look like in Gadamer’s hermeneutic project. Ultimately, the concept of anti-hermeneutics contributes to diagnosing the contemporary hermeneutic crisis as it has emerged over the last few years since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Jaspers, Karl; Gadamer, Hans-Georg; hermeneutics; solidarity; language; anti-reason; infodemic; COVID-19.

Transcending Tribalism
Hugh F. Kelly | Fordham University

Tribalism is perhaps the most salient feature of the contemporary social landscape in the United States, affecting our sense of community, our sense of self, and even our sense of truth. Political factionalism dates back to the United States' earliest days, even warranting a warning from George Washington. Often, our divisions stem from competing understandings of the terms "liberty" and "freedom," disagreements which already surfaced in the colonial era. Both Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt challenge us to think and act beyond either/or discourse in our politics, drawing on their experiences in twentieth Century Europe (Nazism) and the United States (racism). Rather than accepting a kind of tribalism which insists on dominance, both of them challenge us to transcend the win/lose option. Lincoln's Second Inaugural crystalizes such a transcending political vision.

Keywords: Arendt, Hannah; Jaspers, Karl; Lincoln, Abraham; liberty; factionalism; transcendence; post-truth; politics.

Dialectics of Collective Guilt: Karl Jaspers' Question of German Guilt Revisited
Michael Steinmann | Stevens Institute of Technology

Jaspers' small volume Die Schuldfrage was written shortly after the Second World War to provide much-needed clarifications for the discussion of Germany’s guilt. The distinctions between criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical guilt that he introduced are still helpful today, for example, regarding the analysis of Western societies' involvement in slavery and genocide. While for Jaspers, moral guilt can only be individual, the essay argues that there can be collective moral guilt. Despite his moral sincerity, the public acceptance of collective guilt often ends in a contradictory stance. The essay reconstructs some of the dialectical structures that arise when the question is asked what the acceptance of collective guilt is for, whether it is possible for someone to want to be guilty, and who is entitled to attribute guilt. The essay also discusses the blind spots in Jaspers' approach, which stem from his adherence to the idea of the nation as an organic whole.

Keywords: Morality; guilt; conscience; crime; nation; limit situation; Holocaust; colonialism; slavery; dialectics.

Transcendence and Existential Solidarity as Antidotes to Political Rupture
Jörn W. Kroll | Petaluma, California

This essay is exploring the veiled yet probable cause of the current political crisis in the United States of America. Jaspers’ fundamental distinction between existence (Dasein) and Existenz provides the main conceptual tool for this inquiry, which is guided by the question: How can the lived experience of transcendence elevate society and politics to a level of human interaction that is aligned with and mirrors Existenz? Existence (Dasein) and Existenz are diametrically opposed modes of being in the world. Each mode of world orientation tends to predetermine the purposes of everyday living and the character and depth of interpersonal relations and communication. Existenz, the lived experience of transcendence, has intrinsic value. Additionally, Existenz naturally supports a loosening of consciousness and a relaxation of identifications with ideologies or fixed beliefs. As a result, bitter political hostility may transform into respectful and principled political contest. Jaspers sketches a possible scenario without any predictions for its realization.

Keywords: existence (Dasein); political rapture; transcendence; Existenz; experience of suspension; loosening of consciousness; relaxation of identifications; existential solidarity; loving struggle.

Transcendence in the Russian Cultural Paradigm. Limitations of the German Schuldfrage in Building Authentic Moral Consciousness
Lydia Voronina | Boston, MA

Since the Russian military invasion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022 dozens of the Russian intellectuals are engaged in lively discussions as to whether the Russian people could be viewed as guilty of allowing Vladimir Putin to expand an oppressive regime that led to this war. They revitalized the post-war German Schuldfrage as a reflective mirror in an attempt to understand the hundreds of Russians who were forced to emigrate, the thousands of Russians who fled the country, and the millions of Russians who seemingly support the war. But classic tools of formations of moral consciousness implied in this conceptual cluster turned out not to be applicable to the present Russian cultural conditions. Drawing on Alan Olson's interpretation of Karl Jaspers’ various types of guilt, Christina Schues' interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt's relational and immanent morality, and Tomako Iwasawa's phenomenological study of the source of morality in Japanese mythology, I analyze basic cultural dispositions in Russian moral consciousness. One can view the weak moral response of various social groups of the Russian population as a case of post-traumatic behavior after a prolong political oppression. But I claim that combination of cultural factors—domestic and global—contributed to it: changes in formation of self-identity, national identity, civic duties, state allegiance, as well as shifts in global cultural fabrics. I conclude that Jaspers’ notion of transcendence which is the key element in constitution of one's independent autonomous Self, the carrier of primordial universal guilt, and the agent of moral awareness should be culturally pre-conditioned. The notion of paradigmatic transcendence could clarify variants of moral authentic human behavior in different cultures.

Keywords: Russian invasion of Ukraine; Putin's political regime; Russia as a state; Russian people; Russian public; Russian national self-identity as discussed by the Russian media pandits.

An Epistemology of Communitarian Contextualism
M. Ashraf Adeel | Kutztown University, Pennsylvania

Karl Jaspers argued that the Axial Age in human history provides a basis for human unity. Simultaneous intellectual, philosophical, and religious attainments of this period in three different and apparently disconnected regions of the world point to some kind of a deeper unity to human history and destiny. This idea of a unified human history and destiny has powerful ethical and epistemological implications. In this paper we take human unity as given and explore the implications of this idea for epistemic justice for communities and groups in the context of contemporary virtue epistemology. Unity of mankind, obviously, implies that truth be pursued and told in an even-handed fashion and epistemic justice ensured for the epistemic experiences and traditions of all.

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