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Paul Ricoeur |manga |graphic memoirs |comics |sequential art |hermeneutical phenomenology |Barefoot Gen |Hiroshima |Keiji Nakazawa |autobiography

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In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of the famous manga series, Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) by Keiji Nakazawa, which is the author’s quasi‑fictional memoir of his childhood as an atom bomb survivor in Hiroshima, Japan. Against the backdrop of larger issues of war and peace, Gen’s family struggles with his father’s ideological rebellion against the nation’s militaristic rule, leading to the family’s persecution. The story then chronicles the cataclysmic effects of the bomb, and the fates of Gen and other survivors as they live through the aftermath of the detonation and the hardships of the American occupation. My framework for critique follows Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, which applies the descriptive method of phenomenology to cultural texts.

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Hans-Georg Gadamer |Susan Sontag |hermeneutics |erotics of art |interpretation

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The object of the article is to assess whether the concepts of erotica and the erotic can be identified with the hermeneutic interpretation of art as understood by Hans‑Georg Gadamer. The starting point of the discussion is Susan Sontag’s essay ‘Against interpretation’, in which the concept of the erotic interpretation of art is outlined and which culminates with the author setting up a deliberate opposition between the erotics of art and hermeneutics. The present article is an attempt to present the issue of the eroticism of hermeneutic interpretation on the basis of Sontag’s essay, and thus a response to the provocation contained in this essay. In the final part of the text, another possible approach to the issue of the postulated eroticism of hermeneutics is presented.

The first part of the present article is devoted to explaining what Sontag means when she writes about the erotics of art and hermeneutics. The next part will demonstrate the connections and similarities between the concept of erotic art presented by Sontag and Gadamer’s concept of the hermeneutic interpretation of art. In the third part of the article I present Gadamer’s proposition and answer the question of whether the hermeneutic interpretation of art can be erotic. The final part of the article is devoted to invoking additional arguments for linking erotics and hermeneutics, followed by a summary.

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Stanley Cavell |method of reading literature |literature |skepticism |literary criticism |analytic philosophy

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Not many readers will recognize Disowning Knowledge: Seven Plays of Shakespeare by Stanley Cavell as either a piece of philosophical writing or literary criticism, so it may be useful to ask what method Cavell uses to read literature, what are the main features of his approach, and whether he has a coherent view on what reading literature means. I examine Cavell’s interdisciplinary eclecticism, the feature which makes his work so original, and I describe his moving away from the British and American analytic tradition in which he was trained to other sources of inspiration, especially Thoreau. I also stress the important fact that Cavell does not avoid autobiographical motifs in his writings, the style of which derives to some extent from the Jewish tradition of storytelling. In his writings Cavell declares his adherence to an ahistorical approach, maintaining that in a sense philosophy is trans‑historical. In many of his books the central issue is the challenge that skepticism poses, and he endeavors to make a convincing case against it. Although Cavell’s work covers a broad range of interests, including tragedy and literature, as well as Romantic poetry, Shakespeare, Henry James and Samuel Beckett, I try to answer the question of why his analyses of skepticism in literature focus especially on the works of Shakespeare.

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Gadamer |Performance |interpretation |presentation |participation |epiphany

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The notion of presentation (Darstellung) is a key concept of Truth and Method and of Gadamer’s hermeneutics as a whole. It has however many levels of meaning that this article seeks to sort out: presentation as 1) performance, 2) interpretation, 3) revelatory epiphany and 4) participation (festival). The aim of this article is to show how this strong conception of presentation makes it possible to understand the unity of Truth and Method and to grasp the non relativistic intent of its important theses on interpretation and language: in both cases, interpretation (or the linguistic expression) must be understood as the unfolding of meaning that stems from the work or the thing itself.

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Gadamer and art |critique of aesthetic consciousness |Gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics |Romare Bearden |Bearden’s montage technique |art and social construction |participatory aesthetic engagement |art’s address |the event of art

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This essay centers on Romare Bearden’s art, methodology, and thinking about art, and likewise explores his attempt to harmonize personal aesthetic goals with sociopolitical concerns. Following an investigation of Bearden’s work and thought, we turn to Hans‑Georg Gadamer’s reflections on art and our experience (Erfahrung) of art. As the essay unfolds, we see how Bearden’s approach to art and the artworks themselves resonate with Gadamer’s critique of aesthetic consciousness and his contention that artworks address us. An important component of Gadamer’s account is his emphasis on the spectator’s active yet non‑mastering role in the event of art’s address – an event that implicates the spectator and has the potential to transform him or her. As we shall see, Gadamer’s notion of aesthetic experience sharply contrasts with modern, subjectivizing aesthetics, as it requires not only active participatory engagement, but it also brings about a transformed “vision” and understanding of one’s self, others, and the world. In closing, we return to Bearden in order to explore how his art unearths a crucial activity of our being‑in‑the‑world. I call this activity “un‑fabricating one’s world” and discuss how it expands and enriches Gadamer’s account.

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hermeneutic interpretation |metaphysical cognition |artistic installation |nature |trace

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The article contains a hermeneutic interpretation of the art of Grzegorz Sztabiński, a contemporary Polish artist creating drawings, paintings and installations. It starts with definitions of transcendence, hermeneutic interpretation, metaphysical cognition, and artistic installation. The main section is comprised of descriptions and interpretations of the artist’s works, created throughout his career, including his own comments and those of his critics, especially in relation to the cycle Pismo natury – Transcendencja [The Writing of Nature: Transcendence]. The text explains how the artist finds the signs of writing to be traces of transcendence concealed in nature and how the relationship between the artwork and the place is used to build the new contexts of each exposure (serving always to discover the transcendence). Finally, the game of models of distinguishing the object of metaphysical cognition is described and in conclusion the metaphysical cognition discovered in the hermeneutic interpretation of an artwork is found as a way of being in the world proposed by art.

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Vattimo |modernity |explosion of aesthetics |reproduction |post‑historical art

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The paper describes the situation of art works in the times of late modernity by presenting Gianni Vattimo, one of the most important representatives of modern hermeneutics. Art’s historical narrative has collapsed due to civilisational transformation – mainly thanks to the invention of technological means for the mass reproduction of images. Two of the primary traits of art works from a traditional perspective – originality and authenticity – have nowadays been undermined. Vattimo calls this phenomenon ‘an explosion of aesthetics’.

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Gadamer |hermeneutics |poetics |language |Art

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Despite Gadamer’s sustained engagement with poetry throughout his career, evidenced by his numerous publications on modern German poetry, his contributions towards a poetics have gone underappreciated. In this essay I argue that a poetics can be drawn from his work, a poetics hermeneutically attuned to the poetic word as the true word, as the privileged site where the being of language as an event of unconcealment comes to language. Indeed, what is at stake for Gadamer in the poetic word is the hermeneutic understanding of language as the medium of phenomenological self‑showing. The paper further outlines the salient features of hermeneutic poetics by highlighting, elaborating and integrating five basic traits of the poetic word as an event of language. First, because language itself appears in the poetic word it is language bound. Second, gathering itself into the unity of a linguistic configuration the poetic word is self‑standing. Third, listening to the language of the poem the reader enables what is said to come forth. Fourth, where this occurs the poem achieves a unique presence simply by virtue of its being‑said. In this way, fifth, the poetic word preserves our familiarity with the world by bearing witness to its nearness.

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hermeneutics of the image |Boehm |iconic difference |iconic thickness |simultaneity |aesthetic non‑differentiation

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The task of the hermeneutics of the image is to grasp the sensual emergence of meaning, to describe the conditions of its forming and the possibilities for its understanding. Gottfried Boehm suggests an answer to the question about sensual sense and formulates the most important aspects of the potential for creation of meaning. This potential is rooted in iconic difference, which manifests itself both through the liberating power of contrast and as a relation between the part and the whole – that is, a relation between transitions, or consecutiveness, and the simultaneity of the image. Sensuality, which organises and articulates the pictorial meaning, remains unseen, even elusive – “empty” – though it drives the play of difference and oscillation.