PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE. BEYOND OBJECTIVISM AND RELATIVISM: AN OVERVIEW

Objectivism and Relativism

The Cartesian Anxiety

Postempiricist Philosophy and History of Science

The Idea of a Social Science

The Recovery of the Hermeneutical Dimension of Science

Philosophic Hermeneutics: A Primordial Mode of Being

Hermeneutics and Praxis

Political Judgment and Practical Discourse

Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis

PART TWO. SCIENCE, RATIONALITY, AND INCOMMENSURABILITY

The Practical Rationality of Theory-Choice

Kuhn and His Critics: The Common Ground

The Development of the Philosophy of Science

Incommensurability and the Natural Sciences

Incommensurability and the Social Disciplines

PART THREE. FROM HERMENEUTICS TO PRAXIS

The Cartesian Legacy

Truth and the Experience of Art

Understanding and Prejudice

The Hermeneutical Circle

Temporal Distance, Effective-Historical Consciousness, and the Fusion of Horizons

Application: The Rediscovery of the Fundamental Hermeneutical Problem

The Movement Beyond Philosophic Hermeneutics

Philosophic Hermeneutics and the Cartesian Anxiety

PART FOUR. PRAXIS, PRACTICAL DISCOURSE, AND JUDGMENT

A Historical Interlude

Practical Discourse: Habermas

Rorty's Metacritique

Judgment: Arendt

Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: The Practical Task

NOTES

APPENDIX. A LETTER BY PROFESSOR HANS-GEORG GADAMER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SUBJECT INDEX

INDEX