Montaigne's of Cruelty and the Emergence of Hermeneutic and Intercultural Modernity: Three Rival Readings

While classical interpretations of hermeneutics have often identified themselves with Montaigne, others have contested not only whether Montaigne is committed to an account of a hermeneutic self, but whether a hermeneutics of traditional or self-identity is either possible or desirable. This article will investigate the continuing viability of hermeneutics through contested interpretations of Montaigne undertaken from the varying standpoints of phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. These interpretations have shed significant light on Montaigne's work and have in turn been further illuminated by it; they reveal not only something about the hermeneutics of Montaigne's work, but about consciousness, and the timeliness of hermeneutics itself.