Herder's Hermeneutics

Kristin Gjesdal is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia. She is author of Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (Cambridge, 2009), editor of Key Debates in Nineteenth-Century European Philosophy (2016), and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (2015) and The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics (with Michael N. Forster, Cambridge, 2019).

• Introduction; 1. The future of philosophy; 2. Poetry, history, aesthetics; 3. Aesthetic value and historical understanding; 4. Human nature and human science; 5. Prejudice and interpretation; 6. Critique and Bildung; 7. Self and other; Conclusion.

'Herder's hermeneutic philosophy is an important contribution to our understanding of hermeneutics as a peculiarly historical mode of philosophical practice. Gjesdal lucidly demonstrates the implications that Herder's focus on the historical dimension of language and culture has for philosophy itself, with hermeneutics emerging as a way of philosophising with particular relevance for today.' Paul Redding, University of Sydney