Negative Hermeneutics and the Question of Practice

How do words and images function hermeneutically? How does hermeneutic practice work? Answering these questions and more, Nicholas Davey develops the hermeneutical foundations of creative practice. In doing so, he not only uncovers the significance of philosophical hermeneutics for the arts and the humanities, but defends the humanities as a whole from the current scepticism inspired by deconstruction and post-structuralism. Taking Gadamer’s language ontology as its cue, this pioneering volume not only addresses certain weaknesses that Davey observes in Gadamer’s thought but further takes Gadamerian thinking beyond Gadamer himself. In particular, Davey investigates the productive value of negativity that is central to hermeneutics and to wider spheres of creative learning. Advocating a renewed confidence in hermeneutics and the humanities, Negative Hermeneutics and the Question of Practice reveals how hermeneutical thinking provides a map of the dynamics within creative practice, eliminating the need for an externally imposed ‘theory’ of the arts.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction: A Question of Attunement Part One: Negative Perceptions 1.1 Falling into Question: Hermeneutics and the Humanities 1.2 Hermeneutics in Question 1.3 Humanities in Question: Recalibrating the Question 1.4 Entr’ Acte No 1. Part Two: The Way of the Negative 2.1 Introduction. Negation’s Optimism 2.2 Hermeneutic Negativity 2.3 Deconstructive Negativity 2.4 The Negativity of Experience 2.5 Liminal Spaces 2.6 The Fore-conception of Completeness 2.7 Consider the Object 2.8 Images and Concepts and Going to Completion 2.9 The Anticipation of Completeness as a Driver of Practice 2.10 Thoughts on the Future of Hermeneutics 2.11. Entr’Acte No 2 Part Three: Hermeneutics: Towards A Poetics of Practice 3.0 Sprachlichkeit and Practice: Pre-figuring a Logic of Interaction 3.1 Introduction: The Forgotten Question of Practice 3.2 Practical Steps 3.3 Practice: A Historical Problematic: An Initial Orientation 3.4 Differential Space 3.5 Towards a Poetics of Hermeneutic Practice. 3.6 Hermeneutical Poetics and “The Turning Word” Part Four: The Provocations of Practice Introduction 4.1 Practice and the Instabilities of Understanding: Unattainable Completeness and Inevitable Failure 4.2 Practice and Repetition 4.3 Practice and Speculative Movement 4.4 The Negativity of Provocative Expectations 4.5 The Regulative Idea of Completion as a Mechanism of Hermeneutic Displacement 4.6 Regulative and Constituitive Completion 4.7 The Positivity of Negative Outcomes 4.8 The Confidence of Practice 4.9 Hermeneutic Defenestration 4.10 The Provoked Self 4.11 The Provocative Way of Hermeneutical Practice 4.12 Vectoring the Immeasurable 4.13 Reading as a Provocative Stratagem 4.14 The Returns of Aesthetic Completeness 4.15 The Dialectic of Word and Concept 4.16 Hermeneutical Openness as Praxis 4.17 Seeing Understandingly 4.18 Hermeneutical Praxis 4.19 The Transcendental Conditions of Hermeneutical Praxis 4.20 The Transcendental Basis of Negative Hermeneutics 4.21 Of First and Last Things Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Nicholas Davey is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dundee, UK. His previous publications include Unquiet Understanding (2006) and Unfinished Worlds (2014).

Review :
In this book Nicholas Davey convincingly demonstrates how the experience of the negative is the real force behind our ability not just for understanding but for a transformative understanding. The comprehensive scope of his analysis provides new insights, renewing the significance of hermeneutics for philosophy and the humanities.