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Overview
Hermeneutics as Politics, perhaps the most important critique of post-modern thought ever written, is here reissued in a special fifteenth anniversary edition. In a new foreword, Robert B. Pippin argues that the book has rightfully achieved the status of a classic. Rosen illuminates the underpinnings of post-modernist thought, providing valuable insight as he pursues two arguments: first, that post-modernism, which regards itself as an attack upon the Enlightenment, is in fact merely a continuation of Enlightenment thought; and second, that the extraordinary contemporary emphasis upon hermeneutics is the latest consequence of the triumph of history over mathematics and science."Perhaps the most original and philosophically important critical account of hermeneutics-of its philosophical status and historical development-to appear since Gadamer's Truth and Method."-Choice
"A philosophical polemic of the highest order written in a language of unfailing verve and precision. . . . It will repay manyfold the labour of a slow and considered reading."-J. M. Coetzee, Upstream
Presenting hermeneutics as a fundamentally political phenomenon, Rosen combines exemplary scholarship with analytic precision to illuminate current critical thinking.
Synopsis
A new multidisciplinary series, ODEON will serve as a transfer point—much as the station ODEON in the Paris metro—for the many provocative lines of thought that enliven contemporary cultural criticism. ODEON will publish original works and translations that enhance the intellectual exchange between Europe and the English-speaking world in the areas of literature, criticism, philosophy, and historical and political reflection.
Combining exemplary scholarship and analytic precision, Stanley Rosen illuminates the underpinnings of post-modernist thought, providing valuable insight as he pursues two arguments: first, that post-modernism, which regards itself as an attack upon the Enlightenment, is in fact the penultimate stage of the Enlightenment itself; and second, that the extraordinary contemporary emphasis upon hermeneutics is the latest consequence of the triumph of history over mathematics within the unstable essence of the Enlightenment. Hermeneutics is consequently at bottom a political phenomenon. In developing these arguments, Rosen demonstrates the paradigmatic status of Kant for a proper understanding of post-modernism, analyzes Derrida's influential critique of Platonism as well as his defense of writing, explains the political dimension of the quarrel between the ancients and moderns by studying the hermeneutics of Leo Strauss and Alexander Kojève, and shows how the modern notion of "theory" is intrinsically relativized by the triumph of history over mathematics into the notion of interpretation. A wide-ranging exploration into current critical thinking, Hermeneutics as Politics will generate considerable debate among scholars interested in post-modernism, the Enlightenment, hermeneutics, the relation of philosophy and politics, deconstruction, and the history of philosophy.