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Reviewed Work(s): Reason in the Age of Science. by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Frederick
G. Lawrence; Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on language, action, and
interpretation. by Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson
Review by: W. G. Regier
Source: MLN, Vol. 98, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1983), pp. 1312-1315
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2906078
Accessed: 21-03-2017 20:46 UTC
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1312 REVIEWS
These eight essays by Gadamer (b. 1900) and eleven by Ricoeur (b. 1913)
address different audiences from the standpoint of hermeneutics. In
1979, Jurgen Habermas complimented Gadamer for his bridge-building
between disciplines. Ricoeur is no less an engineer: his essays connect
hermeneutics to psychoanalysis, critical theory, history, narratology, phe-
nomenology, and several other forms of philosophy. Both Ricoeur and
Gadamer present hermeneutics as an essential medium if the discrete
disciplines are to understand themselves or speak to one another. Their
appeal to students of comparative literature has attracted comparatists like
Hans-Robert Jauss and Gerald Bruns. What are their attractions?
First, fine examples of good old hermeneutic epidictic, including over-
tures to students of the arts. "Hermeneutic philosophy begins with the
experience of art," says Ricoeur (HHS 117). Gadamer says more:
It is no exaggeration to say that we find the great novels of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, together with the other kinds of art works from this epoch
of bourgeois culture, closer [than modern philosophy] to the old tasks of phi-
losophy and look upon them as the custodians of philosophy's great heritage.
(RAS 146; cf. Hegel's Dialectic (U. of California Press, 1976), 100.)
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M L N 1313
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1314 REVIEWS
NOTES
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M L N 1315
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