Abstract
In 1993, Alejandro published Hermeneutics, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere, which is one of the first studies in English that questioned the common interpretation that Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics is the expression of a conservative political project. This is a book we read with great enthusiasm and used considerably while working on Hermeneutic Communism. It is rare to find a political theorist interested in hermeneutics, but as his other books indicate (Nietzsche and the Drama of Historiobiography and The Limits of Rawlsian Justice), he always maintained a direct interest in hermeneutic thinkers and problems. This is also evident in his contribution, which critically questions a number of arguments, problems, and views we develop. In the limited space we have, our response will focus on the political consequences of hermeneutics as they seem to be the central issues which Alejandro questions.
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It seems to me completely absurd that today the Black Notebooks are treated like something new – and that some colleagues even attempt to sublimate Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and the rest of his dull resentments into the history of being! On the other hand, I’m still convinced that the arguments of Being and Time, if read with the eyes of Kant and Kierkegaard, retain an important place in the history of philosophy. In spite of the political ambivalence of the style, I regard this work as a result of the long history of detranscendentalizing the Kantian subject: by appropriating the methods of Husserlian phenomenology in his own way, Being and Time also digests an important legacy of American pragmatism, German historicism and the kind of philosophy of language that originates from Wilhelm von Humboldt. (Michaël Fœssel, “Critique and communication: Philosophy’s missions: A conversation with Jürgen Habermas,” in Esprit 8-9/2015. Also in Eurozine: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2015-10-16-habermas-en.html).
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Vattimo, G., Zabala, S. (2017). Response to Alejandro. In: Mazzini, S., Glyn-Williams, O. (eds) Making Communism Hermeneutical. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59021-9_34
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