The Hermeneutic Nature Of Analytic Philosophy

Contemporary philosopher—analytic as well as continental tend to feel uneasy about Ernst Tugendhat, who, though he positions himself in the analytic field, poses questions in the Heideggerian style. Tugendhat was one of Martin Heidegger's last pupils and his least obedient, pursuing a new and controversial critical technique. Tugendhat took Heidegger's destruction of Being as presence and developed it in analytic philosophy, more specifically in semantics. Only formal semantics, according to Tugendhat, could answer the questions left open by Heidegger. Yet in doing this, Tugendhat discovered the latent "hermeneutic nature of analytic philosophy" its post-metaphysical dimension—in which "there are no facts, but only true propositions." What Tugendhat seeks to answer is this: What is the meaning of thought following the linguistic turn? Because of the rift between analytic and continental philosophers, very few studies have been written on Tugendhat, and he has been omitted altogether from several histories of philosophy. Now that these two schools have begun to reconcile, Tugendhat has become an example of a philosopher who, in the words of Richard Rorty, "built bridges between continents and between centuries." Tugendhat is known more for his philosophical turn than for his phenomenological studies or for his position within analytic philosophy, and this creates some confusion regarding his philosophical propensities. Is Tugendhat analytic or continental? Is he a follower of Wittgenstein or Heidegger? Does he belong in the culture of analysis or in that of tradition? Santiago Zabala presents Tugendhat as an example of merged horizons, promoting a philosophical historiography that is concerned more with dialogue and less with classification. In doing so, he places us squarely within a dialogic culture of the future and proves that any such labels impoverish philosophical research.

In Basic Concepts, Heidegger claims that "Being is the most worn-out" and yet also that Being "remains constantly available." Santiago Zabala radicalizes the consequences of these little known but significant affirmations. Revisiting the work of Jacques Derrida, Reiner Schürmann, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Tugendhat, and Gianni Vattimo, he finds these remains of Being within which ontological thought can still operate. Being is an event, Zabala argues, a kind of generosity and gift that generates astonishment in those who experience it. This sense of wonder has fueled questions of meaning for centuries-from Plato to the present day. Postmetaphysical accounts of Being, as exemplified by the thinkers of Zabala's analysis, as well as by Nietzsche, Dewey, and others he encounters, don't abandon Being. Rather, they reject rigid, determined modes of essentialist thought in favor of more fluid, malleable, and adaptable conceptions, redefining the pursuit and meaning of philosophy itself.

Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Karl Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings are buckling. Leaving aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution, hermeneutic communism relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. It motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala's work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the effective potential of Marxist thought.

Moving away from Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, and building on his experiences as a politician, Vattimo asks if it is still possible to speak of moral imperatives, individual rights, and political freedom. Acknowledging the force of Nietzsche's "God is dead," Vattimo argues for a philosophy of pensiero debole or "weak thinking" that shows how moral values can exist without being guaranteed by an external authority. His secularising interpretation stresses anti-metaphysical elements and puts philosophy into a relationship with postmodern culture.

30 years ago Richard Rorty argued that philosophers had developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation: comparing the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. The book now stands as a classic of 20th-century philosophy.

This book is P. A. Gorner's English translation of Ernst Tugendhat's major philosophical work.

This is the second volume in the series of American University Publi cations in Philosophy. It, like the first volume, moves significantly beyond what other books have done before it. The first volume's original ity lay in its bringing together essays that explored important new directions in the explanation of behavior, language, and religion. The originality of the present volume lies in its collecting, for the first time in book form, essays at the interface between analytic philosophy and phenomenology. In this volume there are essays about a number of the most seminally influential philosophers among both the analysts and the phenomenologists. Barry L. Blose, for the editors of American University Publications in Philosophy EDITOR'S PREFACE Philosophy inevitably creates divisions and this anthology deals with what is perhaps the central division in twentieth century Western philo sophy. The collection, originally the foundation for a seminar in com parative philosophy which I offered at The American University in 1971 and 1974, was sufficiently suggestive to students of both traditions to lead me to initiate its publication. The future development of Western philosophy is far from clear, but I am convinced that it will inevitably involve a more open conversation between phenomenologists and analytic philosophers, between the current dominant orientations among both European and Anglo-Saxon philosophers. This volume of essays is offered as an attempt to stimulate that conversation.

The concepts of particular and universal have become so familiar that their significance has become difficult to discern, like coins that have been passed back and forth too many times, worn smooth so their values can no longer be read. On the Genealogy of Universals seeks to overcome our sense of over-familiarity with these concepts by providing a case study of their evolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century, a study that shows how the history of these concepts is bound up with the origins and development of analytic philosophy itself. Understanding how these concepts were taken up, transfigured and given up by the early analytic philosophers, enables us to recover and reanimate the debate amongst them that otherwise remains Delphic - to interpret some of the early, originating texts of analytic philosophy that have hitherto baffled commentators, including Moore's early papers, to appreciate afresh the neglected contributions of philosophical figures that historians of analytic philosophy have mostly since forgot, including Stout and Whitehead, and to shed new light upon the relationships of Moore to Russell and Russell to Wittgenstein.