Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Language: Essays on Heidegger and Gadamer
Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer undoubtedly belong among the most important representatives of twentieth-century phenomenological hermeneutics, which represents, in turn, one of the major traditions within so-called continental philosophy. Respectively teacher and pupil, during their long and philosophically intense lives and careers Heidegger and Gadamer greatly contributed to the development of philosophical thought in our age, providing significant and often decisive contributions in various fields of philosophical inquiry. Their main works, Being and Time (1927) and Truth and Method (1960), respectively amount to the great “classics” of contemporary philosophy, both being extraordinarily influential books without which the history of twentieth- and also twenty-first century philosophy as we know it would not be conceivable. This book addresses a number of problems concerning aesthetics, metaphysics, language and philosophical anthropology, by focusing on Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s specific contributions in these fields, and by establishing fruitful and original comparisons between their views and those of other relevant thinkers of our time, such as Hannah Arendt, Richard Rorty and John McDowell. The book adopts a comparative approach that portrays the complex philosophical problems and concepts at the core of this investigation from various points of view, thus broadening the philosophical horizon, generating a more comprehensive perspective, and underlining the compatibility of different philosophical views.
Stefano Marino received his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bologna in 2008, and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Freiburg in 2009 and 2011. He is currently Postdoctoral Researcher and Adjunct Lecturer of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna. His main publications include Ermeneutica filosofica e crisi della modernità. Un itinerario nel pensiero di Hans-Georg Gadamer (2009); I sentieri di Zarathustra (co-edited with F. Cattaneo, 2009); Gadamer and the Limits of the Modern Techno-Scientific Civilization (2011); Filosofia e Popular Music. Da Zappa ai Beach Boys, dai Doors agli U2 (co-edited with D. Ferdori, 2013); La filosofia di Frank Zappa. Un’interpretazione adorniana (2014); Nietzsche nella Rivoluzione Conservatrice (co-edited with F. Cattaneo and C. Gentili, 2015); and Aufklärung in einer Krisenzeit: Ästhetik, Ethik und Metaphysik bei Theodor W. Adorno (2015). He has also translated the following works of Hans-Georg Gadamer from German into Italian: Che cos’è la verità. I compiti di un’ermeneutica filosofica (2012), and Ermeneutica, etica, filosofia della storia (2014).
"Few, perhaps very few, Italian authors are able to make an impression on the international philosophical landscape. Many will refrain from even trying. Stefano Marino's book on aesthetics, metaphysics and language in Heidegger and Gadamer is therefore to be commented all the more. [...] There are great advantages to the 'comparative historiography' developed here by Marino: firstly, the clarity of presentation; secondly, the intellectual honesty in restricting his own analysis to only a few concepts, avoiding the trap of falling into the grandiose language of certain writers; and thirdly, the presentation of the Italian philosophical tradition to international readers (many of the works that Marino quotes are in fact from Italian writers). This is a work that ... can only be commended."
—Diego D'Angelo, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; Phenomenological Reviews, 21.11.2016
"Scholars of aesthetics, philosophical anthropology and, more generally, contemporary philosophy will find in Stefano Marino's recent book Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Language: Essays on Heidegger and Gadamer an important resource and a valuable tool to extend their depths of understanding. [...] It is important to underline the conceptual soundness of this work, and as a result of this Marino shows himself able to draw together a significant number of references and themes while always maintaining a clear and precise argument."
—Dr Rolando Vitali, Fellow in Residence, Nietzsche-Archiv, Weimar; MicroMega Online, 31.5.2016
"This book is a series of separate essays exploring the relationships of Gadamer and Heidegger to each other and to other figures such as Arendt, McDowell, and Rorty. The unifying factor is not so much a philosophical thesis as, first, sympathy for the two eponymous Germans, and then for Gadamer over Heidegger. Each essay is clearly written, extremely well-informed, lucid and insightful. They contain so many fascinating digressions and obiter dicta that no summary can do full justice to any of them. [The author's] readings of the widely different thinkers he treats are throughout delicate and scrupulous, and the connections he makes are illuminating. This book contains a wealth of insights valuable to any analytical philosopher seeking to understand the continental tradition and vice-versa."
—Professor John McCumber, UCLA; Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 3.12.2015
“In Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and Language: Essays on Heidegger and Gadamer, Stefano Marino provides a welcome bridge between what many consider to be the incommensurable approaches of continental European and Anglophone analytic methods in philosophy. This erudite study acquaints us not only with some well-known works of Heidegger and Gadamer, but also with their less familiar writings, and all in a pellucid and inviting style. Marino’s astute perspective focuses on aesthetics, language, and philosophy of art to show us how apparent incompatibility actually yields complementary insights into our understanding of art, culture, and human sensibility. He interweaves the variant interpretations of Gadamer and Hannah Arendt regarding Kant’s theory of taste to produce an engaging adjudication between their variant interpretations of the Critique of Judgment; and his discussion of Gadamer further introduces a compelling interpretation of tragedy, demonstrating the productive insights of theory in practice. Marino has the happy ability to present in a readable style ideas that are sometimes embedded in obscure texts, and readers from many different theoretical orientations will find much of interest in this volume.”
—Professor Carolyn Korsmeyer, Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo (SUNY)
“This book by Stefano Marino provides a rich and fruitful interpretation of some important aspects of Martin Heidegger’s and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophies. More precisely, the book deals with some fundamental problems concerning aesthetics, language, the history of philosophy and philosophical anthropology, and it does so by adopting a comparative approach that often allows the author to give an original and uncommon account of such problems. Marino investigates the complex and sometimes also very up-to-date philosophical questions at issue in this book with clarity, fluency and authority, showing to possess great competence in twentieth-century continental philosophy but also an intriguing capacity to intersect the paths of phenomenology and hermeneutics with those of at least some trends of analytic philosophy and pragmatism. The problems at the core of this book still represent an intriguing challenge for philosophers today, and I recommend “Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Language: Essays on Heidegger and Gadamer” as a relevant and competitive philosophical work both from a historical and a theoretical point of view.”
—Professor Giovanni Matteucci, University of Bologna
“In this collection of essays, Stefano Marino brings wide learning in contemporary philosophy, and sensitivity to its efforts and achievements, to the task of locating Heidegger and Gadamer in the appropriate context for their philosophical hermeneutics. Marino advances the project of understanding across traditions with his attention to moments of exchange between Gadamer or Heidegger on one side, analytic philosophers on the other. […] In Marino’s hands such exchanges become occasions for seeing where the traditions might yet cleave together as well as what cleaves them apart.”
—Nickolas Pappas, Professor of Philosophy, City College and the Graduate Center, The City University of New York
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