Self-Understanding and Lifeworld: Basic Traits of a Phenomenological Hermeneutics

442 Pages·2017·3.858 MB·English

by  Hans-Helmuth Gander, Ryan T. Drake, Joshua Rayman

SELF
UNDERSTANDING
ALIFEWORLD
N
D
STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
John Sallis, editor
Consulting Editors
Robert Bernasconi James Risser
John D. Caputo Dennis J. Schmidt
David Carr Calvin O. Schrag
Edward S. Casey Charles E. Scott
David Farrell Krell Daniela Vallega-Neu
Lenore Langsdorf David Wood
SELF
UNDERSTANDING
ALIFEWORLD
N
D
BASIC TRAITS OF A PHENOMENOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS
HANS-HELMUTH GANDER
TRANSLATED BY
RYAN DRAKE AND JOSHUA RAYMAN
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
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Published in German as Hans-Helmuth Gander, Selbstverständnis und Lebenswelt
© 2001 by Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main
English translation © 2017 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gander, Hans-Helmuth, 1954- author.
Title: Self-understanding and lifeworld : basic traits of a
phenomenological hermeneutics / Hans-Helmuth Gander ;
translated by Ryan Drake and Joshua Rayman.
Other titles: Selbstverst?andnis und Lebenswelt. English
Description: 1st [edition]. | Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Series:
Studies in Continental thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017013831 (print) | LCCN 2017030883 (ebook) | ISBN
9780253026071 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253025555 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938. | Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. |
Hermeneutics—History. | Phenomenology—History. | Life—History.
Classification: LCC B3279.H94 (ebook) | LCC B3279.
H94 G3613 2017 (print) | DDC 193—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013831
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
It is a rule of life that we can and must learn from all people. There are seri-
ous things in life that we can pick up from charlatans and bandits; there are
philosophical insights that make fools of us; there are lessons in consistency and
adherence to law that surface by chance and originate from chance. Everything
lies resolved in all things.
Fernando Pessoa
Work in philosophy—in many ways like work in architecture—is actually
more like work on oneself. On one’s own perception. On how one sees things.
(And what one demands from them).
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Only he who understands this art of existing, treating in his acting the par-
ticular thing apprehended as the utterly unique and being just as clear about
the finitude of his acting, only he understands finite existence and can hope to
complete something in it.
Martin Heidegger

In Memory of
Jürgen von Kempski Rakoszyn

CONTENTS
Translators’ Introduction xiii
Preface xix
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. E xposition of the Connection between Selfhood,
Lifeworld, and History 1
§ 2. Conception and Outline of the Treatise with an Excursus
on the Paratextual Functions of Remarks 7
PART ONE
IN THE NETWORK OF TEXTS: TOWARD THE PERSPECTIVE
CHARACTER OF UNDERSTANDING
§ 3. I nception and Beginning: Toward a Forestructure of
Understanding 21
§ 4. Approaching the Question of Interpretation:
On the Relation of “Author-Text-Reader” 28
§ 5. O n the Relation of Writing and Reading to Self-Formation 29
§ 6. Th e Text as a Connection of Sense in the Horizon of the
Occurrence of Tradition as Effective History 32
§ 7. In the Governing Network of Discourse 36
§ 8. The Sense-Creating Potential of Texts:
The Modification of the World 44
§ 9. Excursus on the Metaphor of the “Book of the World” 51
§ 10. In the Network of Tradition: On Understanding as an
Incursion into the Current of Texts 53