'In effect the book constitutes an elaborate defense of the hermeneutical approach to philosophy through its carefully crafted elaboration of how hermeneutical thought grows out of the project of idealism. One of its real strengths is its development of certain key ideas in Hegelian thought and its attempt to take Hegel seriously while nonetheless avoiding his mistakes. In Bubner's interpretation hermeneutical thought thus completes the idealist project in a way analogous to that in which Hegel claimed to have completed the projects of his idealist predecessors … It has few counterparts in either the German or English language literature on the subject. It is far more philosophically sophisticated than the older intellectual histories of the subject.' Terry Pinkard, Northwestern University and author of Hegel: A Biography