Reviews for The linguistic turn in hermeneutic philosophy

The average rating for The linguistic turn in hermeneutic philosophy based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-01-12 00:00:00 Tamara Guentz Reading Heidegger is always a challenge and, for me lately, an activity filled with both joy and frustration. Heidegger is clearly a first rate philosophical thinker, and anyone who thinks his talents peaked in Being and Time are sorely mistaken. In the decades after B&T, after the so-called 'turn,' Heidegger takes up the themes of language and thinking in typically Heidegerrian manner. In reading that, one should not only construe the language and style Heidegger is known for (eg., de-familiarizing once seemingly familiar, even innocuous words) but also the rigor and penetration that he is known for in B & T (a work like What is Called Thinking? is definitely less technical than B&T but no less rigorous). That being said, Heidegger is not for those with a short attention span or those who easily lose the plot. Heiddeger takes scores of pages to unfold his thinking, yet rarely is there a climactic moment in his books. There are peaks and valleys of excitement but the task of understanding Being is not an Extreme Sport or anything that one should expect to be knocked on one's ass for. In fact, Heidegger's thinking can and perhaps should be contrasted with another no-less great German thinker for whom one might actually be able to say there is a definite violent energy in his works that is missing from Heidegger's, and that is Neitzsche. Heidegger himself read, taught, and wrote about Neitzsche after the turn. That difference in language, tone, style is discussed in this work. In fact, this book's title should have been Heidegger's Language and Thinking About Language and Thinking There is a lot more in this book though than just an explication of Heiddeger's language including addressing why one might find it both joyous and frustrating to read Heidegger, though the author does confine himself to only 3 of Heiddeger's works (Discourse on Thinking, What Is Called Thinking?, A Dialog on Language). You should read this in conjunction with those works, after having read those works, or, if you are a bad student like me, in lieu of those works. Here is an excerpt: ". . . For example, Heudegger notes that people become agitated because he keeps on raising the question of logic. Because of this cultivation of the problematic, the questioning and answering of genuine thinking are not those of one-track thinking. The latter asks in order pose problems, and answers in order to dispose, to eliminate or solve, the question. But here the questions remain; indeed, they more truly become questions. Consider the question, What is called thinking? Heidegger's answer to the question: maintains the question in its problematic. When we follow the calling, we do not free ourselves of what is being asked. The question cannot be settled, now or ever. If we proceed to the encounter of what is here in question, the calling, the question becomes in fact only more problmatical. When we are questioning within this problematic, we are thinking. . . . To answer the question "What is called thinking?" is itself akways to keep asking, so as to remain underway.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-06 00:00:00 Kyle Mcguire This is a thorough but convoluted argument against Wittgenstein (both early and late periods) and "Wittgensteinianism," Gellner's broadly generalized category, it seems, for everyone ever to agree, in part or wholly, with Wittgenstein. Gellner makes all his points in the first hundred pages, then goes on for another two hundred, becoming increasingly belligerent. Gilbert Ryle was right to call him abusive, and though Gellner often makes great points, the whole project suffers from extreme insensitivity and cockiness. With that said, Wittgenstein himself can be quite an agitation, and Gellner's final word on him captures my frustration with the Tractatus: "Philosophy is explicitness... That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak."