Montaigne's of Cruelty and the Emergence of Hermeneutic and Intercultural Modernity: Three Rival Readings

Abstract

While classical interpretations of hermeneutics have often identified themselves with Montaigne, others have contested not only whether Montaigne is committed to an account of a hermeneutic self, but whether a hermeneutics of traditional or self-identity (or differentiation) is either possible or desirable. This article will investigate the continuing viability of hermeneutics through contested interpretations of Montaigne undertaken from the varying standpoints of phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), psychoanalysis (Lacan), and critical theory (Horkheimer). These interpretations have shed significant light on Montaigne's work and have in turn been further illuminated by it; they reveal not only something about the hermeneutics of Montaigne's work, but about consciousness, and the timeliness of hermeneutics itself.