The Origin and Horizon of Ethics: A Philosophical Hermeneutic Interpretation

This chapter, dealing with those thinkers committed to hermeneutic philosophy and how they understand ethics and communication, begins with a brief rehearsal of the long backstory of hermeneutics and then turns to the famed three hermeneuticians of suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud) and how their work leads to the epoch-defining work in hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The chapter provides an account of the major concepts developed by Heidegger and Gadamer that have direct reference to thinking about communicative ethics. In light of this explication, the chapter then discusses some of those philosophers whose contemporary interpretations make significant contributions to thinking about hermeneutics and ethics (Schrag, Caputo, Nancy). After addressing some of the major objections to this way of thinking and its relation to ethics (Habermas and Derrida), the chapter concludes by making a case for seeing hermeneutic thinking about ethics as a contemporary form of virtue ethics that is tied inextricably to the practice of communication.