More Radical Hermeneutics On Not Knowing Who We Are [Paperback]

In these spirited essays, John D. Caputo continues the project he launched with Radical Hermeneutics of making hermeneutics and deconstruction work together. Caputo claims that we are not born into this world hard-wired to know Being, Truth, or the Good, and we are not vessels of a Divine or other omnipotent supernatural force. Focusing on how various contemporary philosophers develop aspects of this fragmented view of the life world in areas such as madness, friendship, democracy, gender, science, the end of ethics, religion, and mysticism, this animated study by one of America's leading continental philosophers shakes the foundations of religion and philosophy, even as it gives them new life.

Preliminary Table of Contents:

Introduction: Hermeneutics and the Secret

Part 1: On Not Knowing Who We Are: Toward a Felicitous Non-Essentialism
1. On Not Knowing Who We Are: Madness, Hermeneutics, and the Night of Truth in Foucault
2. How to Prepare for the Coming of the Other: Gadamer and Derrida
3. Who is Derrida's Zarathustra? Of Fraternity, Friendship, and a Democracy to Come
4. Parisian Hermeneutics and Yankee Hermeneutics: The Case of Derrida and Rorty

Part 2: Passions of Non-Knowledge: Gender, Science, Ethics

5. Dreaming of the Innumerable: Derrida, Drucilla Cornell, and the Dance of Gender
6. Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences: Heidegger, Science, and Essentialism
7. The End of Ethics: A Non-Guide for the Perplexed

Part 3: On the Road to Emmaus: In Defense of Devilish Hermeneutics

8. Holy Hermeneutics versus Devilish Hermeneutics: Textuality and the Word of God
9. Undecidability and the Empty Tomb: Toward a Hermeneutics of Belief
10. The Prayers and Tears of Devilish Hermeneutics: Derrida and Meister Eckhart
Conclusion without Conclusion
Notes
Index

John D. Caputo holds the David R. Cook Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University. He is author of The Prayers and Tears of JacqueslS$