Summary
Gunter Figal: The Meaning of Understanding
Only one year after the publication of the German original, the book by Günter Figal (1949), a respected German thinker, university professor of philosophy in Tübingen, was published in Croatian translation.
Like most of Figal's works and books, The Meaning of Understanding actualizes the relationship between hermeneutic philosophy and the classical metaphysical tradition. With reference to the contemporary philosophical achievements of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Thugendhat, Dieter Henrich and Michael Theunissen, Figal shows that philosophical hermeneutics and the concept of understanding can only be seen as "the interplay of difference and sameness, time and presence, which is a motif that has always been discussed in philosophy - ever since Plato's dialogues" (T. Bracanović). Therefore, Figal points out, philosophical hermeneutics "does not have - in opposition to different types of 'post-metaphysical thinking' - any difficulties with the tradition that goes back to Plato, but is obliged to it and would like to pass it on." Such an attitude is best explained by Figal in the most interpretatively interesting chapter of the book, the consideration of the philosophical logos in Plato's Phaedo.
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