More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are

In these spirited essays, John D. Caputo continues the project he launched with Radical Hermeneutics of making hermeneutics and deconstruction work together. Caputo claims that we are not born into this world hard-wired to know Being, Truth, or the Good, and we are not vessels of a Divine or other omnipotent supernatural force. Focusing on how various contemporary philosophers develop aspects of this fragmented view of the life world in areas such as madness, friendship, democracy, gender, science, the "end of ethics," religion, and mysticism, this animated study by one of America's leading continental philosophers shakes the foundations of religion and philosophy, even as it gives them new life.

In these spirited essays, John D. Caputo continues the project he launched with Radical Hermeneutics of making hermeneutics and deconstruction work together. Caputo claims that we are not born into this world hard-wired to know Being, Truth, or the Good, and we are not vessels of a Divine or other omnipotent supernatural force. Focusing on how various contemporary philosophers develop aspects of this fragmented view of the life world in areas such as madness, friendship, democracy, gender, science, the "end of ethics," religion, and mysticism, this animated study by one of America's leading continental philosophers shakes the foundations of religion and philosophy, even as it gives them new life.

John D. Caputo holds the David R. Cook Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University. He is author of The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida; Against Ethics; Demythologizing Heidegger; and Radical Hermeneutics (all published by Indiana University Press). He is editor of Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida and co-editor (with Michael J. Scanlon) of God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (published by Indiana University Press).