Introduction: Contemporary Hermeneutics and the Question of Responsibility

Abstract

The concern of The Responsibility to Understand is to contribute to the rehabilitation of the philosophical study of ethical life through consideration of the sense of responsibility at issue in hermeneutical experience. After a consideration of the scope and limits of this project for the discipline of ethics, the “Introduction” situates inquiry into the responsibility to understand within current research in hermeneutics. Inquiry into the responsibility to understand takes shape as a post-Gadamerian approach within hermeneutics that eschews postmodern positions, such as that forwarded by Gianni Vattimo, and builds on more recent, realistic positions that focus on factical life, such as those developed by Günter Figal, Donatella di Cesare, and James Risser. In this, I argue that inquiry into the responsibility to understand calls for a reconsideration of Gadamer’s attempt to advance (and perhaps advance beyond) Heidegger’s ontological turn in hermeneutics and, with it, his emphasis on the hermeneutics of facticity.