Call for Papers Vol 6, n. 2, December 2022. This issue of Critical Hermeneutics invites submissions on topics in the field of hermeneutic realism and veritative hermeneutics, invited co-editors Mirela Oliva (University of St. Thomas, Houston), Christina Freni (Pontifical University Salesiana), and Theodore George (Texas A&M University).
Despite its crucial role in the humanities, hermeneutics is often reduced to relativism and weak thought, abandoning the priority of truth. Nonetheless, the history of hermeneutics clearly displays the indissoluble relationship between Logos and truth. Indeed, the task of Hermes was to carry God’s message to the humans. That means, to translate it without betraying it.
Retrieving the veritative dimension of hermeneutics signifies thus reformulating fundamental questions of metaphysics in the context of interpretation, concrete existence, and history. In this way, the notion of truth gains in complexity. Hermeneutics adds to the logical and grammatical vision of adaequatio the experience of concrete and existential manifestation of truth.
In the last twenty years, numerous studies rediscussed this original character of hermeneutics. Opposed to relativism, recent work in the field of hermeneutic realism and veritative hermeneutics examined questions regarding objectivity, the structure of reality, truth, language and history, normativity, and the understanding of life. It therefore comes as no surprise that a new interest in hermeneutical realism has arisen concurrently with that in veritative hermeneutics. This interest in hermeneutical realism has come into focus, in part, as a response to the rise of ‘new’ and ‘speculative’ realism.
In hermeneutical realism, the interpretive experience of truth is no longer concerned primarily with the meaning of the matters under our investigation, but, crucially, with the reality that this meaning refers to—a shift of focus that requires the renewed attention to many of the central themes of philosophical hermeneutics.
This issue aims to consolidate this momentum of hermeneutics, analyze existing trends and indicate possible new ones.
Author Guidelines: ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/about/submissions
The manuscript can be submitted in one of the following languages: Italian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, or English (British or American standard; not the mixture of both).