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Heretics
by G. K. ChestertonIn Heretics, Gilbert K. Chesterton rails against what he sees as wrong with society. He points out how society has gone astray and how life and spiritually could be brought back into focus. It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. - G. K. Chesterton
Heritability of Intelligence: A Clarification From a Biological Point of View (essentials)
by Karl-Friedrich Fischbach Martin NiggeschmidtIs intelligence heritable? Karl-Friedrich Fischbach and Martin Niggeschmidt show that "heritability" means something different in biological terminology than in everyday language - which almost inevitably leads to misinterpretations. They explain why twin studies are controversial - and why genetic predictions of IQ and "educational attainment" must be treated with skepticism. This book is a translation of the original German 2nd edition Erblichkeit der Intelligenz by Karl-Friedrich Fischbach & Martin Niggeschmidt, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2019. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.The Authors:Prof. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Fischbach is a developmental biologist and neurogeneticist. He was professor of biophysics and molecular biology at the University of Freiburg from 1985 to 2013, including two years as executive director of the Institute of Biology III. Martin Niggeschmidt is an editor in Hamburg.
Heritage Knowledge in the Curriculum: Retrieving an African Episteme
by Joyce E. King Ellen E. SwartzMoving beyond the content integration approach of multicultural education, this text powerfully advocates for the importance of curriculum built upon authentic knowledge construction informed by the Black intellectual tradition and an African episteme. By retrieving, examining, and reconnecting the continuity of African Diasporan heritage with school knowledge, this volume aims to repair the rupture that has silenced this cultural memory in standard historiography in general and in PK-12 curriculum content and pedagogy in particular. This ethically informed curriculum approach not only allows students of African ancestry to understand where they fit in the world but also makes the accomplishments and teachings of our collective ancestors available for the benefit of all. King and Swartz provide readers with a process for making overt and explicit the values, actions, thoughts, and behaviors reflected in an African episteme that serves as the foundation for African Diasporan sociohistorical phenomenon/events. With such knowledge, teachers can conceptualize curriculum and shape instruction that locates people in all cultures as subjects with agency whose actions embody their ongoing cultural legacy.
Heritage, Culture, and Politics in the Postcolony
by Daniel HerwitzThe act of remaking one's history into a heritage, a conscientiously crafted narrative placed over the past, is a thriving industry in almost every postcolonial culture. This is surprising, given the tainted role of heritage in so much of colonialism's history. Yet the postcolonial state, like its European predecessor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, deploys heritage institutions and instruments, museums, courts of law, and universities to empower itself with unity, longevity, exaltation of value, origin, and destiny.Bringing the eye of a philosopher, the pen of an essayist, and the experience of a public intellectual to the study of heritage, Daniel Herwitz reveals the febrile pitch at which heritage is staked. In this absorbing book, he travels to South Africa and unpacks its controversial and robust confrontations with the colonial and apartheid past. He visits India and reads in its modern art the gesture of a newly minted heritage idealizing the precolonial world as the source of Indian modernity. He traverses the United States and finds in its heritage of incessant invention, small town exceptionalism, and settler destiny a key to contemporary American media-driven politics. Showing how destabilizing, ambivalent, and potentially dangerous heritage is as a producer of contemporary social, aesthetic, and political realities, Herwitz captures its perfect embodiment of the struggle to seize culture and society at moments of profound social change.
Heritage, Culture, and Politics in the Postcolony
by Daniel HerwitzThe act of remaking one's history into a heritage, a conscientiously crafted narrative placed over the past, is a thriving industry in almost every postcolonial culture. This is surprising, given the tainted role of heritage in so much of colonialism's history. Yet the postcolonial state, like its European predecessor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, deploys heritage institutions and instruments, museums, courts of law, and universities to empower itself with unity, longevity, exaltation of value, origin, and destiny. Bringing the eye of a philosopher, the pen of an essayist, and the experience of a public intellectual to the study of heritage, Daniel Herwitz reveals the febrile pitch at which heritage is staked. In this absorbing book, he travels to South Africa and unpacks its controversial and robust confrontations with the colonial and apartheid past. He visits India and reads in its modern art the gesture of a newly minted heritage idealizing the precolonial world as the source of Indian modernity. He traverses the United States and finds in its heritage of incessant invention, small town exceptionalism, and settler destiny a key to contemporary American media-driven politics. Showing how destabilizing, ambivalent, and potentially dangerous heritage is as a producer of contemporary social, aesthetic, and political realities, Herwitz captures its perfect embodiment of the struggle to seize culture and society at moments of profound social change.
Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman
by Michael JonikStudies of the writing of Herman Melville are often divided among those that address his political, historical, or biographical dimensions and those that offer creative theoretical readings of his texts. In Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman, Michael Jonik offers a series of nuanced and ambitious philosophical readings of Melville that unite these varied approaches. Through a careful reconstruction of Melville’s interaction with philosophy, Jonik argues that Melville develops a notion of the “inhuman” after Spinoza’s radically non-anthropocentric and relational thought. Melville’s own political philosophy, in turn, actively disassembles differences between humans and nonhumans, and the animate and inanimate. Jonik has us rethink not only how we read Melville, but also how we understand our deeply inhuman condition.
Herman Wouk: The Novelist as Social Historian
by Arnold BeichmanArnold Beichman's comprehensive study of the writings of Herman Wouk, one of America's leading writers, shows how Wouk's plays and novels exemplify an extraordinary and often highly perceptive preoccupation with American society in war and in peace. Situating Wouk in the same literary tradition as Cervantes, Richardson, Balzac, and Dickens, Beichman demonstrates that Wouk's novels have strong plots, moralist outcomes, and active--essentially positive--characters. The new introduction serves to bring Wouk's work over the past two decades into the reckoning.Making extensive use of Wouk's personal papers and manuscripts as well as personal interviews with him, Beichman's focus is on the social and literary qualities of Wouk's work. In particular, he examines eight novels including War and Remembrance and The Winds of War; The Traitor, one of his three plays; and two moral tracts on Judaism. Wouk has written four more novels, including his latest, A Hole in Texas, his twelfth.Beichman portrays Wouk as one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue, and sees his work as against the mainstream of contemporary American novelists. These, he argues, have eschewed such elements of the traditional novel as invention, coincidences, surprises, suspense, and a moral perspective more presumed than examined.
Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism: The Enchantment of the Public Sphere (New Jewish Philosophy and Thought)
by Paul E. NahmeHermann Cohen (1842–1918) is often held to be one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the nineteenth century. Paul E. Nahme, in this new consideration of Cohen, liberalism, and religion, emphasizes the idea of enchantment, or the faith in and commitment to ideas, reason, and critique—the animating spirits that move society forward. Nahme views Cohen through the lenses of the crises of Imperial Germany—the rise of antisemitism, nationalism, and secularization—to come to a greater understanding of liberalism, its Protestant and Jewish roots, and the spirits of modernity and tradition that form its foundation. Nahme’s philosophical and historical retelling of the story of Cohen and his spiritual investment in liberal theology present a strong argument for religious pluralism and public reason in a world rife with populism, identity politics, and conspiracy theories.
Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism: The Enchantment of the Public Sphere (New Jewish Philosophy and Thought)
by Paul E. NahmeA fresh look at a nineteenth-century Jewish philosopher whose theology offers a beacon in an illiberal twenty-first century world: “Recommended.” —ChoiceHermann Cohen is often held to be one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the nineteenth century. Paul E. Nahme, in this new consideration of Cohen, liberalism, and religion, emphasizes the idea of enchantment, or the faith in and commitment to ideas, reason, and critique—the animating spirits that move society forward.Nahme views Cohen through the lenses of the crises of Imperial Germany—the rise of antisemitism, nationalism, and secularization—to come to a greater understanding of liberalism, its Protestant and Jewish roots, and the spirits of modernity and tradition that form its foundation. Nahme’s philosophical and historical retelling of the story of Cohen and his spiritual investment in liberal theology present a strong argument for religious pluralism and public reason in a world rife with populism, identity politics, and conspiracy theories.
Hermann Hellers demokratischer Konstitutionalismus (Staat – Souveränität – Nation)
by Oliver W. Lembcke Verena FrickVon Haus aus Jurist und Staatsrechtslehrer, vertritt Hermann Heller einen demokratischen Konstitutionalismus, der die Wirklichkeit der Demokratie mit der Normativität des Rechts zusammendenkt. Was Hellers Werk dabei in besonderer Weise fruchtbar erscheinen lässt, ist die Verbindung von Staatsrechtslehre, Politikwissenschaft und Soziologie, die erst die komplexe Wirklichkeit der Demokratie erfahrbar macht. In seinen späten Weimarer Schriften – etwa zum Autoritären Liberalismus – zeigt sich Heller als Analytiker der Krise, der uns heute den Blick für die Herausbildung autoritärer Politikstrukturen insbesondere auf europäischer Ebene schärft. Neben dieser kritischen Perspektive auf die Konstellationen und Dynamiken der (zum Teil schleichenden) Autokratisierung politischer Prozesse lassen sich auf Grundlage des Hellerschen Werkes auch die Voraussetzungen gelingender demokratischer Stabilität benennen. Die Rekonstruktion dieses Ansatzes eines dezidiert demokratischen Konstitutionalismus steht im Zentrum des geplanten Sammelbandes.
Hermann Weyl: Raum · Zeit · Materie (Klassische Texte der Wissenschaft)
by Erhard Scholz Domenico GiuliniHermann Weyls Raum · Zeit · Materie gehört zu den herausragendsten und gleichzeitig ungewöhnlichsten Texten der gesamten physikalisch-mathematischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Entstanden ist Raum · Zeit · Materie aus Vorlesungen, die der Autor im Sommersemester 1917 an der Eidgenössisch-Technischen-Hochschule in Zürich hielt. Es war das erste systematische Lehrbuch der gerade erst durch Albert Einstein ersonnenen Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie, entwickelte sich aber rasch innerhalb der 5 Jahre zwischen 1918 und 1923 zu einem Klassiker, der die Zeiten überdauern sollte. Auch nach 100 Jahren setzt die Weylsche Darstellung eines der anspruchsvollsten Gebiete der Physik einen Maßstab an Verständlichkeit ohne Aufgabe der Strenge, der seither nur selten wieder erreicht wurde. Damit richtet sich das Buch auch heute noch an alle, die ein tieferes Verständnis der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie anstreben und insbesondere nachvollziehen wollen aus welchen physikalischen Fragestellungen heraus sich diese bis heute so bewährte wie bewunderte Theorie entwickelt hat, auf welchen Grundprinzipien sie beruht und insbesondere, wie es zu den mathematischen Begriffsbildungen kam, derer sie sich bedient.In dieser neuen Ausgabe wird der Originaltext der 5. Auflage von 1923 mit manchen Ergänzungen aus vorherigen Auflagen abgedruckt. Ausführliche Kommentare der Herausgeber erläutern die historischen, mathematischen und physikalischen Hintergründe und ordnen den Weylschen Text in die heutige Forschungslandschaft ein.
Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx
by Gianni Vattimo Santiago ZabalaCommunism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism, having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, but Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance, drawn from the hermeneutical thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty, that relies on interpretation rather than truth and is more flexible in different contexts. "Hermeneutic communism" leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution. It motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities, yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala's well-known weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought.
Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)
by Gianni Vattimo Santiago ZabalaHaving lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty.Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala's well-known work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought.
Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat
by Santiago ZabalaContemporary philosophers--analytic as well as continental--tend to feel uneasy about Ernst Tugendhat, who, though he positions himself in the analytic field, poses questions in the Heideggerian style. Tugendhat was one of Martin Heidegger's last pupils and his least obedient, pursuing a new and controversial critical technique. Tugendhat took Heidegger's destruction of Being as presence and developed it in analytic philosophy, more specifically in semantics. Only formal semantics, according to Tugendhat, could answer the questions left open by Heidegger. Yet in doing this, Tugendhat discovered the latent "hermeneutic nature of analytic philosophy"--its post-metaphysical dimension--in which "there are no facts, but only true propositions." What Tugendhat seeks to answer is this: What is the meaning of thought following the linguistic turn? Because of the rift between analytic and continental philosophers, very few studies have been written on Tugendhat, and he has been omitted altogether from several histories of philosophy. Now that these two schools have begun to reconcile, Tugendhat has become an example of a philosopher who, in the words of Richard Rorty, "built bridges between continents and between centuries."Tugendhat is known more for his philosophical turn than for his phenomenological studies or for his position within analytic philosophy, and this creates some confusion regarding his philosophical propensities. Is Tugendhat analytic or continental? Is he a follower of Wittgenstein or Heidegger? Does he belong in the culture of analysis or in that of tradition? Santiago Zabala presents Tugendhat as an example of merged horizons, promoting a philosophical historiography that is concerned more with dialogue and less with classification. In doing so, he places us squarely within a dialogic culture of the future and proves that any such labels impoverish philosophical research.
Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Education: Method and Practice (Practice of Research Method #4)
by Norm Friesen Tone Saevi Carina HenrikssonHermeneutic phenomenology is a combination of theory, reflection and practice that interweaves vivid descriptions of lived experience (phenomenology) together with reflective interpretations of their meanings (hermeneutics). This method is popular among researchers in education, nursing and other caring and nurturing practices and professions.
Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Sociology of Art: An Approach to Some of the Epistemological Problems of the Sociology of Knowledge and the Sociology of Art and Literature (Routledge Library Editions: Continental Philosophy #4)
by Janet WolffThis book, first published in 1975, is an examination of the theoretical foundation of the sociology of art and literature and an in-depth study in the sociology of knowledge. In discussing and clarifying some of the important philosophical issues in this field, the constant underlying reference is to the creative and artistic-expressive areas of knowledge – so that the better understanding of the social nature and genesis of all knowledge may point the way towards a similar comprehension of art and society.
Hermeneutic Realism
by Dimitri GinevThis study recapitulates basic developments in the tradition of hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of science. It focuses on the ways in which scientific research is committed to the universe of interpretative phenomena. It treats scientific research by addressing its characteristic hermeneutic situations, and uses the following basic argument in this treatment: By demonstrating that science's epistemological identity is not to be spelled out in terms of objectivism, mathematical essentialism, representationalism, and foundationalism, one undermines scientism without succumbing scientific research to "procedures of normative-democratic control" that threaten science's cognitive autonomy. The study shows that in contrast to social constructivism, hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific research makes the case that overcoming scientism does not imply restrictive policies regarding the constitution of scientific objects.
Hermeneutics As Politics (Second Edition)
by Stanley Rosen Robert B. PippinA critique of postmodern thought, reissued in a special 15th anniversary edition. In a new foreword, Robert Pippin argues that the book has rightfully achieved the status of a classic. Rosen illuminates the underpinnings of postmodernist thought, providing valuable insight as he pursues two arguments: first, that postmodernism, which regards itself as an attack upon the Enlightenment, is in fact merely a continuation of Enlightenment thought; and second, that the extraordinary contemporary emphasis upon hermeneutics is the latest consequence of the triumph of history over mathematics and science.
Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur
by Scott Davidson Marc-Antoine ValléeHermeneutics and Phenomenology inPaul Ricoeur: Between Text and Phenomenon calls attentionto the dynamic interaction that takes place between hermeneutics andphenomenology in Ricoeur's thought. It could be said thatRicoeur's thought is placed under a twofold demand:between the rigor of the text and the requirements of thephenomenon. The rigor of the text calls for fidelity to what the textactually says, while the requirement of the phenomenon is established by theHusserlian call to return "to the things themselves. " These two demands areinterwoven insofar as there is a hermeneutic component of the phenomenologicalattempt to go beyond the surface of things to their deeper meaning, just asthere is a phenomenological component of the hermeneutic attempt to establish acritical distance toward the world to which we belong. For this reason,Ricoeur's thought involves a back and forth movement between the text and thephenomenon. Although this double movement was a theme of many of Ricoeur'sessays in the middle of his career, the essays in this book suggest thathermeneutic phenomenology remains implicit throughout his work. The chaptersaim to highlight, in much greater detail, how this back and forth movementbetween phenomenology and hermeneutics takes place with respect to manyimportant philosophical themes, including the experience of the body, history,language, memory, personal identity, and intersubjectivity.
Hermeneutics and Reflection
by Kenneth Maly Friedrich-Wilhelm von HerrmannFriedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann is known as a major figure in phenomenological and hermeneutics research: he was Martin Heidegger's personal assistant for the last ten years of Heidegger's life, and assistant to Eugen Fink, who in turn was primary assistant to Edmund Husserl. However, his own philosophical commentaries and readings of Heidegger's work are not familiar to many in the English-speaking world.Von Herrmann's Hermeneutics and Reflection, translated here from the original German, represents the most fundamental and critical reflection in any language of the concept of phenomenology as it was used by Heidegger and by Husserl. It provides a careful rendition of Husserl's essential contribution to phenomenology, then draws a clear demarcation between Husserl's reflective phenomenology and Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology. While showing the fullest respect for Husserl's phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Reflection offers a full-fledged critique of Husserl from the perspective of Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology.
Hermeneutics and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding (Routledge Revivals)
by Zygmunt BaumanOriginally published in 1978, this important work, by one of the leading European social theorists, is arguably the best introduction to the hermeneutic tradition as a whole. It is designed to help students of sociology and philosophy place the problems of "understanding social science" in their historical and philosophical context. It does so by presenting the major current in sociological thought as responses to the challenge of hermeneutics. The idea that true knowledge of social life can be attained only if human conduct is seen as meaningful action whose meaning is accordingly grasped has been presented as a discovery of recent sociology. In fact its history is long and its connections plentiful, reaching beyond the boundaries of sociology itself. Yet it is in sociology that the hermeneutic tradition has attracted most interest but most misinterpretation. The debate is in full swing and there is no attempt to offer "correct" solutions - the emphasis instead is upon revealing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the main approaches. However it is Bauman's view that the theory of understanding may achieve valid results only if it treats the problem of understanding as an aspect of the ongoing process of social life.
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
by Paul Ricoeur John B. Thompson Ricoeur, Paul and Thompson, John B.This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines.
Hermeneutics as Critique: Science, Politics, Race, and Culture (New Directions in Critical Theory #72)
by Lorenzo C. SimpsonHermeneutics has frequently been dismissed as useful only for literary and textual analysis. Some consider it to be Eurocentric or inherently relativistic and thus unsuited to social critique. Lorenzo C. Simpson offers a persuasive and powerful argument that hermeneutics is a valuable tool not only for critical theory but also for robustly addressing many of the urgent issues of today.Simpson demonstrates that hermeneutics exhibits significant interpretive advantages compared to competing explanatory modalities. While it shares with pragmatism a suspicion of essentialism, an understanding that disagreements are situated, and an insistence on the dialogical nature of understanding, it nevertheless resolutely rejects the relativistic accounts of rationality that are often associated with pragmatism. In the tradition of Gadamer, Simpson firmly establishes hermeneutics as a resource for both philosophy and the social sciences. He shows its utility for unpacking intractable issues in the philosophy of science, multiculturalism, social epistemology, and racial and social justice in the global arena. Simpson addresses fraught questions such as why recent claims that “race” has a biological basis lack grounding, whether female genital excision can be critically addressed without invidious ethnocentrism, and how to lay the foundations for meaningful cross-cultural dialogue and reparative justice. This book reveals how hermeneutics can be a worthy partner with critical theory in achieving emancipatory aims.
Hermeneutics as a General Methodology of the Sciences of the Spirit (Law and Politics)
by Emilio BettiWith a Foreword by Lars Vinx, this book is the first complete English translation of the Italian jurist, Emilio Betti’s classic work Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften, originally published in 1962. Betti’s hermeneutical theory is presented here as a ‘general methodology of the sciences of the spirit’, such as to allow the achievement of objectivity, however relative it might be. Its central focus is the tension between an object, to be considered in its autonomy, and the subjectivity of the interpreter, who can understand the object only by means of his or her own categories, historical-cultural conditions, and interests. Set against the work of Bultmann and Gadamer, Betti is concerned to limit the arbitrariness of subjectivity without diminishing the place of interpretation. Detailing the principles that govern, and therefore, guide any interpretation, Betti traces how interpretation in art and in literature, as well as in the fields of science, jurisprudence, sociology, and economy, can be said to be objective, albeit only ever in a relative sense. This summa of Betti’s key contribution to hermeneutic theory will be of interest across a range of disciplines, including legal and literary theory, philosophy, as well as the history and sociology of law.
Hermeneutics at the Intersection of Medical Technology: Interpretation Reimagined
by Jan Kyrre FriisThis book explores the crucial role of interpretation in medical radiology and beyond, emphasizing its pervasive influence on medical knowledge. Friis examines radiological analysis through hermeneutics, cognition, and visual perception studies. He argues that interpretation is inherently embodied and essential to human action, particularly in radiology, where technology extends vision beyond the human eye&’s limits. Yet, interpretation varies among radiologists. Can it be too relative, shaped by subjective factors irrelevant to the task? Attempts to eliminate cognitive bias through psychophysical and cognitivist approaches have failed. Interpretation is an active, context-dependent process, inseparable from human experience. Friis contends that the only solution is to expand cognitive reach through collaborative interpretative practices, integrating diverse perspectives. Radiology, like all medical fields, benefits from shared expertise, where multiple viewpoints refine diagnostic accuracy and mitigate individual bias. By fostering structured cooperation among radiologists, clinicians, interpretative reliability can be strengthened. The key is not to eliminate subjectivity but to harness it constructively through interdisciplinary dialogue, collective reasoning, and continuous knowledge exchange.