Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur were two of the most important hermeneutical philosophers of the twentieth century. Gadamer single-handedly revived hermeneutics as a philosophical field with his many essays and his masterpiece, Truth and Method. Ricoeur famously mediated the Gadamer-Habermas debate and advanced his own hermeneutical philosophy through a number of books addressing social theory, religion, psychoanalysis and political philosophy. This book brings Gadamer and Ricoeur into a hermeneutical conversation with each other through some of their most important commentators. Twelve leading scholars deliver contemporary assessments of the history and promise of hermeneutical philosophy, providing focused discussion on the work of these two key hermeneutical thinkers. The book shows how the horizons of their thought at once support and question each other and how, in many ways, the work of these two pioneering philosophers defines the issues and agendas for the new century.

Author Biography

George H. Taylor is Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is the editor of Paul Ricoeur's Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (Columbia University Press, 1986). Francis J. Mootz III is William S. Boyd Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. His publications include Law, Hermeneutics and Rhetoric (Ashgate, forthcoming 2010), Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory (University of Alabama Press, 2006) and On Philosophy in American Law (CUP, 2009).