The Limits of Language: Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Task of Comparative Philosophy

One of the most important accomplishments of philosophical hermeneutics has been the recovery of forms of truth fully apart from those reached by method or presented in science. This is an achievement made possible, in part, by a conception of language as essentially disclosive rather than referential. In an encounter with a text, for example, the horizons of reader and text intersect in a linguistically mediated experience that can uncover new aspects of the self and its world. In the experience of dialogue at its best, too, new truths are opened up in the shared linguistic space constituted by the participants in a conversation.Despite the importance of linguistic disclosure for philosophical hermeneutics...