Dostal, Robert. Review of Kristin Gjesdal, GADAMER AND THE LEGACY OF GERMAN IDEALISM. NDPR (May 2010).

Gjesdal, Kristin. Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. As the title suggests, this is a work that examines the relation of Gadamer's hermeneutics to German Idealism. Gjesdal reminds us with the motto of the book that Gadamer himself writes that his starting point was a "critique of German Idealism and its Romantic traditions" from a Heideggerian point of view. Gjesdal's central thesis is that Gadamer espouses "an aestheticizing model of understanding" that "prevents him from developing an adequate notion of normative issues in hermeneutics" (p. 3). Her critique of Gadamerian hermeneutics, which is developed by the consideration of Gadamer's reading of Kant, Hegel, and the Romantics, represented especially by Schleiermacher, leads her to endorse, against Gadamer, the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher: "I recommend a return to the early nineteenth-century theory of interpretation" (p. 4). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19548.