In this latest work, Caputo claims that we are not born into this world hard-wired to know Being, Truth or the Good, and we are not vessels of a Divine, or other omnipotent supernatural force. We have not been chosen as earthly instruments and there is no supreme Secret to which some have been given privileged access: we make our way through the world searching for meaning and structure in hope of finding meaning in our factical lives. But this is not all bad news. According to Caputo, the necessity of interpretation is the absolute and unconditional secret that radicalizes hermeneutics, opens interpretations and perspectives, and prevents the dominance of any one point of view. Focusing on how various contemporary philosophers - Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, Cornell, Marion, Gadamer and Heidegger - develop aspects of this fragmented view of the life world in areas such as madness, friendship, democracy, gender, science, the "end of ethics", religion and mysticism, this animated study by one of America's leading continental philosophers equally tears down and resuscitates religion and philosophy.
Table of Contents:
Preliminary
Introduction: Hermeneutics and the Secret
Part 1: On Not Knowing Who We Are: Toward a Felicitous Non-Essentialism
1. On Not Knowing Who We Are: Madness, Hermeneutics, and the Night of Truth in Foucault
2. How to Prepare for the Coming of the Other: Gadamer and Derrida
3. Who is Derrida's Zarathustra? Of Fraternity, Friendship, and a Democracy to Come
4. Parisian Hermeneutics and Yankee Hermeneutics: The Case of Derrida and Rorty
Part 2: Passions of Non-Knowledge: Gender, Science, Ethics
5. Dreaming of the Innumerable: Derrida, Drucilla Cornell, and the Dance of Gender
6. Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences: Heidegger, Science, and Essentialism
7. The End of Ethics: A Non-Guide for the Perplexed
Part 3: On the Road to Emmaus: In Defense of Devilish Hermeneutics
8. Holy Hermeneutics versus Devilish Hermeneutics: Textuality and the Word of God
9. Undecidability and the Empty Tomb: Toward a Hermeneutics of Belief
10. The Prayers and Tears of Devilish Hermeneutics: Derrida and Meister Eckhart
Conclusion without Conclusion
Notes
Index
About the Author :
John D. Caputo holds the David R. Cook Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University. He is author of The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida; Against Ethics; Demythologizing Heidegger; and Radical Hermeneutics (all published by Indiana University Press). He is editor of Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida and co-editor (with Michael J. Scanlon) of God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (published by Indiana University Press).
