Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas
Professor of religious studies and history at Ohio State
24 lectures
Uniformly rave reviews from people with good academic background in Early Christianity and comparative religion

Reviewed Works: Texts in Context: Revisionist Methods for Studying the History of Political Theory by David Boucher; The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance, and the History of Ideas by Conal Condren
Review by: John G. Gunnell
The American Political Science Review
Vol. 80, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 631-639

Interpretation and the History of Political Theory: Apology and Epistemology
John G. Gunnell
The American Political Science Review
Vol. 76, No. 2 (Jun., 1982), pp. 317-327 -- Recent challenges to traditional approaches and purposes for studying the history of political theory have raised questions about its constitution as both a subject matter and subfield of political science. Methodological arguments advocating what is characterized as a more truly historical mode of inquiry for understanding political ideas and recovering textual meaning have become increasingly popular. The relationship of these hermeneutical claims about historicity, such as that advanced by Quentin Skinner, to the actual practice of interpretation is problematical. Such claims are more a defense of a certain norm of historical investigation than a method of interpretation, and the implications of this norm for the reconstitution of the history of political theory require careful consideration. -- interesting collection of references re hermeneutics debates- Not just Anglo but eg Gadamer -- downloaded via iPhone to DBOX

History and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 4, Theme Issue 33: Proof and Persuasion in History (Dec., 1994), pp. 26-52 -- Classical scholarship played a vital role in the intellectual concerns of early 19thC Germany. ... Greek mythology in particular was expected to shed light on the origins of civilization. In the search for the true nature of myth, the hermeneutic problems involved in historical understanding were intensified. As myth was held to be of a different nature than rationality, to read the sources was to look for a completely different referent of the texts than was the case in historical reconstruction. In the quests for a scientific mythology, K. O. Müller (1797-1840) was often regarded as an opponent of F. Creuzer (1771-1858). Yet an analysis of their published work and of their private documents shows that they had much in common -- deeply Romantic views on the religious origin of culture, in Müller's case inspired by Pietism, in Creuzer's by neo-Platonism. -- Müller differed from Creuzer in his views on the relationship of myth to history. Myth was not the reflection of a universal religion, sustained by a priestly class (as Creuzer had claimed), but the outcome of the encounter between the mental endowment of a people and local, historical circumstances. In the case of the Amazons, however, Müller assessed the connection of myth to history in defiance of his own theory, guided by his views on gender difference and on sexual morality. -- downloaded pdf to Note

History and Theory, Vol. 50, No. 3 (October 2011), pp. 358-372 -- Intellectual historians often make empirical claims, but can never know for certain if these claims are right. Uncertainty is thus inevitable for intellectual historians. But accepting uncertainty is not enough: we should also act on it, by trying to reduce and report it. We can reduce uncertainty by amassing valid data from different sources to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of competing explanations, rather than trying to "prove" an empirical claim by looking for evidence that fits it. Then we should report our degree of certainty in our claims. When we answer empirical questions in intellectual history, we are not telling our readers what happened: we are telling them how strong we think our evidence is—a crucial shift of emphasis. For intellectual historians, then, uncertainty is subjective, as discussed by Keynes and Collingwood; the paper thus explores three differences between subjective and objective uncertainty. Having outlined the theoretical basis of uncertainty, the paper then offers examples from actual research: Noel Malcolm's work shows how to reduce and report uncertainty about composition, and David Wootton's work shows how to reduce and report uncertainty about beliefs. -- VERY Anti Straussian based on extensive bibliography -- downloaded pdf to Note

Fulltitle -- MYTH IN HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AS MYTH: ON THE AMBIVALENCE OF HANS BLUMENBERG'S INTERPRETATION OF ERNST CASSIRER'S THEORY OF MYTH, History and Theory, Vol. 50, No. 3 (October 2011), pp. 328-340 This essay explores the different interpretations proposed by Ernst Cassirer and Hans Blumenberg of the relation between Platonic philosophy and myth as a means of bringing to light a fundamental divergence in their respective conceptions of what precisely myth is. It attempts to show that their conceptions of myth are closely related to their respective assumptions concerning the historical significance of myth and regarding the sense of history more generally. Their divergent conceptions of myth and of history, I argue, are at the same time not simply matters of abstract speculation, but spring from fundamental presuppositions concerning myth's political significance. The present elucidation aims not only to set in relief one or another of the ways in which Cassirer or Blumenberg understood myth, nor even to present Blumenberg's critical reception of Cassirer's theories, but above all to contribute to the interpretation of the political implications of myth and of its historical potency in our contemporary epoch. -- most ftnts to Blumenberg in German, especially Work on Myth -- downloaded pdf to Note

History and Theory, Vol. 50, No. 4, THEME ISSUE 50: Historical Distance: Reflections on a Metaphor (December 2011), pp. 81-103 -- we begin by suggesting an intuitive model of time embodying a notion of temporal distance that we claim is at work in Gadamer's hermeneutics, while it is rejected in Collingwood's theory of interpretation. To show this, after a brief review of the influence of Collingwood on Gadamer and of their disagreement over the possibility of recovering an author's intention, we examine in turn their answers to the problem of transposition, upon which the philosophy of Dilthey supposedly foundered. We show that Gadamer embraced the idea of temporal distance in his solution, which consisted in claiming that the distance between an author from the past and us is filled in by tradition, which opens access to the text for us, while Collingwood considered explanations of the actions of historical agents, and by extension understanding of a text, in intentional or rational terms. Furthermore, he thought that such explanations are not causal, and that the thoughts involved in them do not stand within the flow of physical time, which is involved in any notion of temporal distance. This is why Collingwood felt entitled to anti-relativistic conclusions about the recovery of authorial intentions, conclusions that prompted Gadamer to claim that "the dimension of hermeneutical mediation which is passed through in every act of understanding" escaped him. We then discuss the underlying notions of time at work in both Gadamer and Collingwood, showing that Ricoeur had a better appreciation of the issue, since he saw that Collingwood's moves parallel, up to a point, Heidegger's critique of "vulgar time," albeit with an entirely different result. We also point to the importance in Collingwood's thinking of his notion of "incapsulation." -- downloaded pdf to Note

“The Lives of Great Religious Books,” a promising new series from Princeton University Press, debuted this month with three titles—Martin E. Marty’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, Donald Lopez’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography, and Garry Wills’ Augustine’s Confessions. On March 24, I had the opportunity to discuss “The Lives of Great Religious Books” with Professor Marty, Professor Lopez, and Vanessa Ochs, another author in the series, who is currently working on a biography of the Passover Haggadah. Above all, our conversation centered on the metaphor of a text’s biography, its purchase and limitations. Just as we might think of a human biography as a series of contexts linked together by a single individual, so too is the biography of a text a series of contexts linked by the text itself. We also weighed the importance of the series to the changing disciplinary purview of Religious Studies. For many years, Religious Studies was defined as a hermeneutical discipline based upon great texts, but the typical disciplinary approach was to treat the texts as hermetic, self-contained wholes upon which the scholar expounds and expands. With this series, however, we are witnessing a new willingness on the part of scholars in Religious Studies to approach the dynamic relationship between theological treatises and their social environments, between texts and contexts, as it were. -- downloaded pdf to Note and in folder "Biographies of Religious Texts - PUP series" with the Immanent Frame posts on the 3 recently published "biographies" Waldron mentions

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University of Toledo College of Law -- In this Symposium Essay, I summarize originalism’s promise and limits. Part II succinctly explains originalism’s promise. Part III briefly describes originalism’s limits. Part IV then suggests that originalism’s limits contribute to its promise. -- PDF File: 20 -- Keywords: constitutional interpretation, originalism, nonoriginalism, normatively attractive, judicial capacity, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas -- saved to briefcase

Whereas legal philosophers offer “analyses” that aim to be general, abstract, and timeless, legal historians offer “thick descriptions” of what is particular, concrete, and time-bound. But surface appearances can deceive. Perhaps unlike other areas of philosophy, the subject matter of jurisprudence is at least partially (if not entirely) a social phenomenon. Courts, legislatures, judicial orders, and statutes are the products of human efforts, both collective and individual, and they only exist as legislatures, courts, and the like insofar as they possess the meaning they do in the eyes of at least some social group. For this reason, legal philosophers since at least H.L.A. Hart have recognized their task to be a “hermeneutic” one—one which aims to discern or make explicit the “self-understanding” of legal actors. At the same time, legal historians aim not simply to record legal rules that existed at some given point in history, but to unearth the meaning that actual people—judges, lawyers, politicians, and ordinary citizens—have attached to law. When they do so, they might be seen as uncovering evidence of those same “self-understandings” that philosophers claim constitute law. Perhaps, then, philosophical and historical inquiries about law do not differ so radically from each other after all. -- downloaded pdf to Note

So, I’ve been thinking of NOMA this past week. Probably because the Yankees have been hitting like a high school team (until last night, let’s hope it lasts)…

Christians confess the Bible as “God’s word,” which means (among other things) that God had something to do with the production of it–though, the honest person…

LA RATIONALITÉ DU RELIGIEUX SELON MAX WEBER - L'Année sociologique (1940/1948-), Troisième série, Vol. 51, No. 1 (2001), pp. 9-50 -- One of the most striking features of Weber's writings on religion is the frequency with which he uses the word rationality. This derives from the metatheory grounding in his mind the interpretative method. This metatheory asserts that the meaning to an individual of his beliefs should be seen as the main cause explaining why he endorses them. Weber's religion sociology owes its strength to this theoretical framework. His « rational » conception of religious beliefs does not imply that these beliefs derive from deliberation. They are rather transmitted to the social subject in the course of his socialisation. But they are accepted only if they are perceived by the subject as grounded. These principles inspire Weber's pages on magical beliefs, on animism, on the great religions, on the diffusion of monotheism, on theodicy or the world disenchantment. He shows that religious thinking cares on coherence, tends to verify and falsify religious dogmas by confronting them with observable facts. He develops a complex version of evolutionism, explaining the cases of irreversibility registered by the history of religions, but avoiding any fatalism. He rejects any depth psychology and any causalist psychology in his sociology of religion, the common rational psychology being the only one that can be easily made compatible with the notion of "Verstehende Soziologie", i.e. of « interpretative sociology ». Weber analyses the evolution of religious ideas supposing that they follow the same mechanisms as the evolution of ideas in other domains, as law, economics or science. -- downloaded pdf to Note

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts. The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues. This book was first published in 1984 by Routledge. -- Research Interests: Ethics, Political Theory, Continental Philosophy, Max Weber (Philosophy), Social and Political Philosophy, and Max Weber

King's College London - Department of Political Economy -- This paper compares and contrasts the hermeneutic turn advocated by Don Lavoie in this 1985 essay on "The Interpretive Dimension of Economics" with the ontological turn that was gathering momentum amongst other groups of heterodox economists at about the same time. It is argued that an explicit focus on ontological issues can complement and support the ‘interpretive turn’, most notably by helping to show that the charge of nihilism that are sometimes levelled against Lavoie and his followers is unwarranted. The argument is illustrated by a case study of one of the inspirations of, and contributors to, Lavoie’s project, namely Ludwig Lachmann. -- Number of Pages in PDF File: 20 -- Keywords: Austrian economics, hermeneutics, social order, nihilism, social ontology, emergence, Ludwig Lachmann, Don Lavoie. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Fascinating re both Grevill's history writing - his discussion of Sir Philip Sidney in publishing his work (Arcadia) not only influenced Sidney reception but framed Queen Elizabeth as a wise ruler in contrast with the Stuarts. Discussion of how, given "nothing new under the sun" and constancy of human nature, poetry, drama and prose could all be read as speaking to current events -- e, g. Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex rebellion. Greville treatment of Sidney as in retrospect prophetic re foreign relations especially with Dutch, forms of government -- Greville using Aristotle and Polybius re patterns of historical change. Greville in both his history and prose writing and his poetry and plays was always looking to readers after his death. Suggestive re development of an increasingly sophisticated historiography in 17thC that wrestled with tensions in using history as exemplary vs informing practical reason for contingencies of statecraft as well as hermeneutics for readers in the present and future. Provides a publication history of Greville's works during Commonwealth and Restoration, how it was used politically at different moments, including Exclusion_Crisis. Worden has published articles or chapters in collections that look at the generation of Sidney and Greville as some proto classical republican writings. Also may be useful for Bolingbroke's treatment of Elizabeth as model in Remarks and Study and Uses -- downloaded pdf to Note

Dalia Nassar's assemblage of engaging and significant essays on some of the resurgent philosophers of early German romanticism emphasizes their contemporary philosophical relevance. "For it is a specifically philosophical revival, motivated by philosophical questions". Nassar demarcates this relevance into four general kinds. In the first part of the book, consisting of a fascinating debate between two of the heaviest hitters in this revival, Manfred Frank and Frederick Beiser, the question revolves around the very identity of early German philosophical romanticism. What counts as a work of this kind? What makes these works significantly different from works by practitioners of German idealism? Or can the two areas be so clearly distinguished? The next three sections are less global in their ambitions, but all of them touch on important facets of this period's enduring philosophical provocation. The second section features essays on the question of culture, language, sociability, and education, while the third turns to matters aesthetic, and the fourth and concluding section takes up the question of science.

Reviewed by Jocelyn Benoist, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne This is the English translation by Stephen Adam Schwartz of Vincent Descombes’ Les Institutions du Sens (Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1996). It is the sequel to The Mind’s Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism, also translated into English by Schwartz (Princeton University Press, 2001; French original version: La Denrée Mentale, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1995). The two books should be considered together as a whole, to which the author himself gave the title of The Disputes of Mind. -- This impressive work is indeed a major contribution to the philosophy of mind. Perhaps the cognitivist wave is not as powerful today as it was twenty years ago, which may render the ‘dispute’ less intense nowadays, but the concept of mind provided by the author is no less topical. --. It is clear that this book is a milestone in the contemporary philosophy of mind and should absolutely be read by every philosopher or scientist interested in the nature of the mind today. It pursues an intense debate with contemporary cognitivism and with Continental theories and ‘deconstruction’ of mind, and develops a totally unique perspective at the crossroads of the Analytic and French traditions. Maybe, like every polemical work, it depends a bit too much on what it criticizes. However, beyond the polemic, it seems to me that this book does indeed promise a new philosophy of mind that defines the mind by itself and no longer by any transcendent principle — either ‘the Subject’ or ‘Society’ — that in a sense would not already be mindful. Thus, it seems to me that we should read this book as a plea for the non-metaphysical irreducibility of the mind. And what do we need more today than a non-metaphysical (I have not said: anti-metaphysical) anti-reductionism?

Published posthumously -- preface on hermeneutics, not just biblical, and principles of interpreting texts from another era, context -- Downloaded pdf to Note

University of the Pacific - McGeorge School of Law -- This chapter will appear in a forthcoming book on hermeneutics. After providing a hermeneutical phenomenology of legal practice that locates legal interpretation at the center of the rule of law, the chapter considers three important hermeneutical themes: (1) the critical distinction between a legal historian writing aboout a law in the past and a judge deciding a case according to the law; (2) the reinvigoration of the natural law tradition against the reductive characteristics of legal positivism by construing human nature as hermeneutical; and. (3) the role of philosophical hermeneutics in grounding critical legal theory rather than serving as a quiescent acceptance of the status quo, as elaborated by reconsidering the famous exchanges between Gadamer, Ricoeur and Habermas. -- I argue that these three important themes are sufficient to underwrite Gadamer's famous assertion that legal practice has exemplary status for hermeneutical theory. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Introduction gives a brief biography and discusses each of the papers in the issue, plus a short "further reading" -- Contents *--* Community, Prereflective Virtue, and the Cyclopean Power of the Fathers: Vico's Reflections on Unexpected Consequences (pp. 495-515) Edmund E. Jacobitti. *--* The Significance of Tacitus in Vico's Idea of History (pp. 517-535) Alexander U. Bertland. *--* Vico and the End of History (pp. 537-558) Patrick H. Hutton. *--* Vico, Rhetorical Topics and Historical Thought (pp. 559-585) Catherine L. Hobbs. *--* Situating Vico Between Modern and Postmodern (pp. 587-617) Sandra Rudnick Luft. *--* Interpretations and Misinterpretations of Vico (pp. 619-639) Cecilia Miller -- Introduction and all papers downloaded to Note and in separate folder in Dropbox

In the wake of the "hermeneutical turn" two approaches to textual interpretation have come to wield considerable disciplinary influence in North American political theory circles: those of Leo Strauss and Quentin Skinner. Their respective approaches to texts in the history of political thought are generally regarded as competitor endeavors; indeed, the view that these approaches are downright antithetical enjoys the status of a disciplinary commonplace. I interrogate this commonplace and attempt to clarify what exactly is at stake in the differences between these two thinkers' interpretative approaches. Such efforts are repaid, I believe, by a more nuanced methodological self-awareness that discloses a more cooperative, and less antagonistic, view of the relationship between the two thinkers' hermeneutical understandings. -- check bibliography on jstor information page -- paywall

NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 10-84 -- Using as an exemplar, the 2007 "Evangelical Declaration against Torture," this paper examines the role of religious argument in public life. -- It argues for an absolute ban on the use of torture deploying unashamedly Christian rhetoric, some of it quite powerful and challenging. -- The present paper considers whether there is any affront to the duties of political civility in arguing in these terms. There is a line of argument, associated with John Rawls's book, "Political Liberalism," suggesting that citizens should refrain from discussing issues of public policy in religious or deep-philosophical terms that are not accessible to other citizens. The present paper challenges the conception of inaccessibility on which this Rawlsian position is based. It argues, with Jurgen Habermas, that all sides in a modern pluralist society have a right to state their views as firmly and as deeply as they can, and all sides have the duty to engage with others, and to strain as well as they can to grasp others' meanings. It is not enough to simply announce that one can not understand religious reasons, especially if no good faith effort has been made, using the ample resources available in our culture, to try. Of course, many peoeple will not be convinced by the reasons that are offered in religious discourse; but to argue for their rejection - which is always what may happen in respectable political deliberation - is not to say that the presentation of those reasons was offensive or inappropriate. (This paper was originally presented as the 2010 Meador Lecture at the University of Virginia Law School). -- Number of Pages in PDF File: 25 -- Keywords: Absolute Principles, Pluralism, Public Reason, Rawls, Religious Reasons, Torture

Modern legal positivism developed in response to a belief in the possibility and the value of having a quasi-scientific descriptive theory of law. In recent decades, legal positivism has moved in a different direction, due to the influence of H.L.A. Hart's work, which introduced hermeneutic elements into legal positivism. This article examines the hermeneutic turn in legal theory, and its implication for legal positivism in particular, and analytical jurisprudence in general. Some critics have argued that the hermeneutic element introduced by Hart undermines the possibility of having a purely descriptive theory of law, or even that it undermines the ability of theorists to criticize the legal systems they are studying. These possibilities are considered, in the course of evaluating the views of Joseph Raz, John Finnis, Stephen Perry, H. Hamner Hill, and others. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Thomas Aquinas *--* Descartes *--* Spinoza *--* The Cambridge Platonists *--* Berkeley *--* Kant *--* Schleiermacher *--* Cousin *--* Comte *--* Mansel *--* Lotze *--* Martineau *--* Janet *--* Ritschl -- each author introduced by brief essay but more interesting intellectual framework of the editors comes out in their footnotes -- not exactly a companion to Caldecott history of British and American philosophy of religion, since his history covers a large number of thinkers and doesn't include Continental except as needed to explain the Anglo-American authors, but still useful for the intellectual framework of increasingly confident academic approach to philosophy of religion as distinct from theology -- downloaded pdf to Note

Donatella Di Cesare has written a wonderfully self-reflexive book. What does it mean to claim to have created a portrait of Hans-Georg Gadamer as a philosopher, given that Gadamer regarded the experience of art, and particularly the experience of viewing a portrait, as having profound significance for hermeneutical philosophy? Gadamer emphasized that the portrait necessarily moves beyond pure representation because the meaning of the subject of the portrait is augmented through the play that occurs while viewing the portrait. Di Cesare’s portrait of Gadamer succeeds because it exemplifies, amplifies and exceeds our previous understanding of Gadamer, working from the readers' starting points and stimulating them with new insights. The emerging portrait is at once challenging and provocative; of course, Gadamer would argue that a portrait should be nothing less.

Michael Forster, After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2010, 482pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199228119. -**- Michael Forster, German Philosophy of Language: From Schlegel to Hegel and Beyond, Oxford University Press, 2011, 350pp., $85.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199604814. -**- Reviewed by Fred Rush, University of Notre Dame

Opposes Rorty claim of unity of method of inquiry for both natural and social sciences, though Rorty also advocated diversity of objectives. Topper sees pragmatism and hermeneutics as congenial approaches for social sciences -- didn't download

Richard A. Etlin’s In Defense of Humanism (Cambridge University Press, $39.95) is notable not only for its passion, but for the way it supplies a new take on familiar problems. -- Etlin, however, is an architectural historian, and it’s refreshing to come across a cultural warrior lobbing grenades from a different academic encampment. -- Etlin’s book is excessively ambitious in trying to attack poststructuralism from dozens of angles; this, however, is part of its charm. He is bravely willing to take on anyone — Hayden White, Foucault, Nietzsche, Derrida, Bourdieu, de Man, Norman Bryson, Freud — and has no hesitation in identifying heroes and heroines, from Rembrandt to Jane Austen to Jefferson to Victor Hugo to Frank Lloyd Wright. -- Etlin says that not since Hegel have intellectuals displayed the hubris they show today, “attributing to themselves the power to arbitrate all meaning.” Their celebration of complexity and ambiguity becomes a form of “boundless egotism.” Poststructuralists are as suckered by the notion that texts are hidden repositories of obscure meanings as previous generations of intellectuals were suckered by the forces of astrology or alchemy. But their feelings of power, freedom, and discovery are illusory. "....Claims about variety, endless or even limited, can never be merely asserted; they must be demonstrated with coherent solutions.” -- Etlin’s brief but incisive treatment of Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is quite typical of the provocations of his book, making me wonder why this essay is continuously reproduced, forced on students, and cited in articles. Benjamin’s so-called pathbreaking discourse is wrong on virtually all major counts, as Etlin shows.

Delightful Denis Dutton review - Umberto Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation (Cambridge University Press, $39.95 hardbound, $11.95 paper) -- presents three lectures by Umberto Eco, with responses by Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, and Christine Brooke-Rose, a final rejoinder by Eco, and a general introduction by Stefan Collini. The occasion was the Clare Hall Tanner Lectures, and they apparently packed out one of the biggest auditoriums at Cambridge University in 1990. There was more debate, including Frank Kermode, Malcolm Bradbury, and David Lodge, than is included here, and one imagines it was an exciting occasion. -- quite splendid description of debate between Eco and Rorty. Culler who is more open ended than Eco on limits to interpretation turns his guns on the self described American pragmatists, Rorty and Stanley Fish. Needless to say Dutton is reluctant to put Rorty in the same tradition as Dewey - Eco's voracious curiosity and wonder about the world is more in Dewey’s line - and is appalled at labeling Fish a pragmatist. Definitely to buy.

Downloaded pdf to Note

Reviewed works: *--* (1) Nietzsche Contra Rousseau: A Study of Nietzsche's Moral and Politicial Thought by Keith Ansell-Pearson; *--* (2) The Neitzche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 by Steven E. Aschheim; *--* (3) Confrontations: Derrida/Heidegger/Nietzsche by Ernst Behler; *--* (4) Neitzsche on Truth and Philosophy by Steven Taubeneck; *--* (5) Nietzsche Contra Nietzsche: Creativity and the Anti-Romantic by Adrian Del Caro; *--* (6) Neitzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism by Bruce Detwiler; *--* (7) Nietzsche's New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics by Michael Allen Gillespie; Tracy B. Strong; *--* (8) Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue by Lester H. Hunt; *--* (9) Zarathustras Geheimnis: Friedrich Nietzsche und seine verschlüsselte Botschaft by Joachim Köhler; *--* (10) Nietzsche as Postmodernist: Essays Pro and Contra; Clayton Koelb; *--* (11) Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/and Literature by Bernd Magnus; Stanley Stewart; Jean-Pierre Mileur; *--* (12) Nietzsche's Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology by Alistair Moles; *--* (13) Nietzsche und der Nietzscheanismus by Ernst Nolte; *--* (14) Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius by Carl Pletsch; *--* (15) Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction by Alan D. Schrift; *--* (16) Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gifts, Noise, and Women by Gary Shapiro; *-'* (17) Nietzschean Narratives by Gary Shapiro; *--* (18) Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism by Peter Sloterdijk; *--* (19) Reading Nietzsche by Robert C. Solomon; Kathleen M. Higgins; *--* (20) Nietzsche's Voice by Henry Staten; *--* (21) Left-Wing Nietzscheanism: The Politics of German Expressionism, 1910-1920 by Seth Taylor; *--* (22) Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism by Leslie Paul Thiele; *--* (23) Nietzsche and Political Thought by Mark Warren; *--* (24) Within Nietzsche's Labyrinth by Alan White; *--* (25) Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art by Julian Young -- downloaded pdf to Note

This paper argues that the notion of weak intentionalism in Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas is incoherent. Bevir's proposal for weak intentionalism as procedural individualism relies on the argument that the object of study for historians of ideas is given by the beliefs that are expressed by individuals (whether authors or readers) since these beliefs constitute the historical meaning of the work for those individuals as historical figures. Historical meanings are thus hermeneutic meanings. In the case of insincere, unconscious, and irrational beliefs, however, the beliefs expressed by individuals are not in fact their actual beliefs, and their actual beliefs are now taken to be those expressed by the works. It thus turns out that it is not the beliefs expressed by individuals that are the object of study for historians but the works themselves, since the overriding requirement for historians of ideas is to "make sense of their material" and it is this requirement that determines whether or not the beliefs are to be construed as expressed by individuals or by the works. But once it is accepted that the beliefs that are the object of study for historians are expressed by the works and not by individuals, the original argument that such beliefs are historical hermeneutic meanings for historical figures no longer applies. The argument for weak intentionalism thus turns out to be incoherent. Bevir's argument fails to establish that the object of study for the history of ideas is external to the works, and the attempted distinction between interpreting a work and reading a text also fails. -- didn't download

Looks like this is the introductory article for a 2007 issue of the Journal of the Philosophy of History in which Bevir also contributed a separate article (on national histories? ) Starts with verstehen and then puts it into post-positivist context. Downloaded pdf to Note

Looks like a working paper by Bevir with PhD candidate - paper presented in 2006. The "naturalism" they criticize appears to reify social science concepts and doesn't have a place for anti-foundationalism "web of meaning" interpretation. Still not sure how this differs from hermeneutics other than perhaps not so focused on phenomenology or various versions of verstehen. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Original Citation:
“Anti-foundationalism”, in M. Flinders, A. Gamble, C. Hay, and M. Kenny, eds., The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 115-137.

Keywords:
Anti-foundationalism, Interpretivism, British Politics, PostMarxism, Governmentality

See Brown article in same issue - The general aim of this paper is to establish the plausibility of a postfoundational intentionalism. Its specific aim is to respond to criticisms of my work made by Vivienne Brown in a paper "On Some Problems with Weak Intentionalism for Intellectual History." Postfoundationalism is often associated with a new textualism according to which there is no outside to the text. In contrast, I suggest that postfoundationalists can legitimate our postulating intentions, actions, and other historical objects outside of the text. They can do so by reference to, first, philosophical commitments to general classes of objects, and, second, inference to the best explanation with respect to particular objects belonging to such classes. This postfoundational intentionalism sets up a suitable context within which to address Brown's more specific questions.

See response from Bevir - This paper argues that the notion of weak intentionalism in Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas is incoherent. Bevir's proposal for weak intentionalism as procedural individualism relies on the argument that the object of study for historians of ideas is given by the beliefs that are expressed by individuals (whether authors or readers) since these beliefs constitute the historical meaning of the work for those individuals as historical figures. Historical meanings are thus hermeneutic meanings. In the case of insincere, unconscious, and irrational beliefs, however, the beliefs expressed by individuals are not in fact their actual beliefs, and their actual beliefs are now taken to be those expressed by the works. It thus turns out that it is not the beliefs expressed by individuals that are the object of study for historians but the works themselves, since the overriding requirement for historians of ideas is to "make sense of their material" and it is this requirement that determines whether or not the beliefs are to be construed as expressed by individuals or by the works. But once it is accepted that the beliefs that are the object of study for historians are expressed by the works and not by individuals, the original argument that such beliefs are historical hermeneutic meanings for historical figures no longer applies. The argument for weak intentionalism thus turns out to be incoherent. Bevir's argument fails to establish that the object of study for the history of ideas is external to the works, and the attempted distinction between interpreting a work and reading a text also fails.

See re Pettit and Skinner treatment of Hobbes, rhetoric and "constructivist" approach to social and political reality, sovereignty, authority erc -- downloaded pdf to Note -- followed up with comment be Victoria Silver and response

This article develops, illustrates, and defends a conception of immanent critique. Immanent critique is construed as a form of hermeneutical practice and second-order political and normative criticism. The common charge that immanent critique is a form of philosophical conventionalism necessarily committed to value relativism and to the rejection of transcultural and cosmopolitan norms is denied. But immanent critique insists that meaningful and potentially efficacious criticism must be connected to relevant criteria and understandings internal to the culture or social order at which the criticism is directed. The complaint that this demand will likely limit political and moral criticism is also denied, and the ability of immanent critique to develop from convention unconventional thinking is defended and demonstrated. -- downloaded pdf to Note

For David Nirenberg—whose Anti-Judaism is one of the saddest stories, and one of the most learned, I have ever read—Jewel, and Jerome and Augustine are typical figures from an enormous tapestry. From antiquity to more recent times, an endless series of writers and thinkers have crafted versions and visions of Jews and Judaism that are as ugly and frightening as they are effective.

European Romantic Review, Volume 15, Issue 4, 2004, pages 547- 565, Available online: 17 Aug 2006DOI: 10.1080/1050958042000312027 -- paywall -- starts with discussion that Schleiermacher more influenced by Spinoza and the Pantheism fight than Gadamer acknowledges, as he puts Schleiermacher extending Biblical_criticism to the broader hermeneutics of understanding

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, she also contextualizes contemporary developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome.

Anthony Pagden recommends re Enlightenment Project