Harsh Poetry and Art's Address: Romare Bearden and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Conversation

In this essay, I analyze Romare Bearden’s art, methodology, and thinking about art, as well as his attempt to harmonize his personal aesthetic goals with his sociopolitical concerns. I then turn to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reflections on art and our experience (Erfahrung) of art. I show how Bearden’s approach to art and the artworks themselves resonate with Gadamer’s critique of aesthetic consciousness and his contention that artworks address us, make claims upon us, and even reveal truth. Lastly, I discuss Gadamer’s emphasis on the spectator’s active yet non-mastering role in the event of art’s address—an event that implicates the spectator and has the potential to transform him or her. This leads to a discussion of Gadamer’s notion of the type of self-(and world) understanding that occurs through aesthetic experience. I close by returning to Bearden in order to discuss how his art unearths a crucial feature of our being-in-the-world. I call this feature “world-unmasking” and show how it expands and enriches Gadamer’s account

Interstitial Soundings: Philosophical Reflections on Improvisation, Practice, and Self-Making

In Interstitial Soundings, Cynthia R. Nielsen brings music and philosophy into a fruitful and mutually illuminating dialogue. Topics discussed include the following: music's dynamic ontology, performers and improvisers as co-composers, the communal character of music, jazz as hybrid and socially constructed, the sociopolitical import of bebop, Afro-modernism and its strategic deployments, jazz and racialized practices, continuities between Michel Foucault's discussion of self-making and creating one's musical voice, Alasdair MacIntyre on practice, and how one might harmonize MacIntyre's notion of virtue development with Foucauldian resistance strategies

Strategic Afro-Modernism, Dynamic Hybridity, and Bebop's Socio-Political Significance

In this chapter, I argue that one can articulate a historically attuned and analytically rich model for understanding jazz in its various inflections. That is, on the one hand, such a model permits us to affirm jazz as a historically conditioned, dynamic hybridity. On the other hand, to acknowledge jazz’s open and multiple character in no way negates our ability to identify discernible features of various styles and aesthetic traditions. Additionally, my model affirms the sociopolitical, legal (Jim Crow and copyright laws), and economic structures that shaped jazz. Consequently, my articulation of bebop as an inflection of Afromodernism highlights the sociopolitical, and highly racialized context in which this music was created. Without a recognition of the sociopolitical import of bebop, one’s understanding of the music is impoverished, as one fails to grasp the strategic uses to which the music and discourses about the music were put

Tasks of Philosophy in the Present Age RIAS-Lecture, June 9, 1952

Translators’ Abstract: This is a translation of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s recently discovered 1952 Berlin speech. The speech includes several themes that reappear in Truth and Method, as well as in Gadamer’s later writings such as Reason in the Age of Science. For example, Gadamer criticizes positivism, modern philosophy’s orientation toward positivism, and Enlightenment narratives of progress, while presenting his view of philosophy’s tasks in an age of crisis. In addition, he discusses structural power, instrumental reason, the objectification of nature and human beings, the reduction of both to mere means, and the colonization of scientific-technological ways of knowing and being—all of which continue to impact our social and political lives together and threaten the very existence of every living being. This speech is essential reading for Gadamer scholars interested in the social, political, and ethical dimensions of his thought and for those interested in bringing Gadamer into conversation with critical theor

Gadamer on the Event of Art, the Other, and a Gesture Toward a Gadamerian Approach to Free Jazz"

Several prominent contemporary philosophers, including Jürgen Habermas, John Caputo, and Robert Bernasconi, have at times painted a somewhat negative picture of Gadamer as not only an uncritical traditionalist, but also as one whose philosophical project fails to appreciate difference. Against such claims, I argue that Gadamer’s reflections on art exhibit a genuine appreciation for alterity not unrelated to his hermeneutical approach to the other. Thus, by bringing Gadamer’s reflections on our experience of art into conversation with key aspects of his philosophical hermeneutics, we are able to better assess the viability of Gadamer’s contributions to contemporary discussions of difference and alterity. Sections two through six focus on key concepts in Gadamer’s account of art’s dynamic ontology and our experience of art. Such concepts include the play structure of art, hermeneutic identity, tarrying with a work, and contemporaneity. The opening sections provide not only a discussion of these central themes, but they also (1) draw attention to the various ways in which difference and otherness are integral to Gadamer’s account, and (2) utilize relevant musical examples that prepare the reader for a more focused discussion of a Gadamerian approach to free jazz in section seven. By highlighting how Gadamer’s understanding of art possesses a dialogical play structure, is characterized by identity and difference, requires actively engaged spectators and auditors, and is amenable to what many criticize as an unintelligible musical expression, viz. free jazz, Gadamer’s project is shown as other-affirming and open to ambiguity and dynamism. That is, the essential structures and concepts characterizing Gadamer’s reflections on art are likewise central to his overall hermeneutical project, and hence are not rightly described as un-attuned to difference or other-negating. Rather, Gadamer’s philosophical project upholds difference, since it requires a dialogical interplay between self and other that creates the possibility for a transformative experience

The Hermeneutics of (Im)politeness: A Gadamerian Perspective

Central to Gadamerian hermeneutics is dialogical engagement, a back and forth “play” (Spiel) among interlocutors. For Gadamer, texts as well as works of art function as interlocutors capable of addressing and making a claim upon us. However, whether engaging a human dialogue partner or a text, one must approach the other with openness, which can be understood as a hermeneutic virtue. Consequently, in order for a fruitful dialogue to occur, one must embody specific comportment to the other. In this sense, hermeneutics exhibits politeness of sorts. If one considers the Latin roots (politus, polire) from which we derive our English term “polite,” relevant connections with the notion of refinement and being “polished” emerge. That is, to be polite is in some sense to exhibit refinement, which often comes through a process of training or even suffering. One the one hand, openness to the other involves politeness or refinement in that one demonstrates respect for the other in a genuine willingness to hear the other’s view. Such refinement has been achieved through experience (Erfahrung) and continues to be achieved through dialogical engagement with others. On the other, it is also the case that hermeneutical dialogue involves elements of impoliteness, where one transgresses social norms in order to provoke a thoughtful, self-reflective response.Central to Gadamerian hermeneutics is dialogical engagement, a back and forth “play” (Spiel) among interlocutors. For Gadamer, texts as well as works of art function as interlocutors capable of addressing and making a claim upon us. However, whether engaging a human dialogue partner or a text, one must approach the other with openness, which can be understood as a hermeneutic virtue. Consequently, in order for a fruitful dialogue to occur, one must embody a specific comportment to the other. In this sense, hermeneutics exhibits a politeness of sorts. If one considers the Latin roots (politus, polire) from which we derive our English term “polite,” relevant connections with notion of refinement and being “polished” emerge. That is, to be polite is in some sense to exhibit refinement, which often comes through a process of training or even suffering. One the one hand, openness to the other involves politeness or refinement in that one demonstrates respect for the other in a genuine willingness to hear the other’s view. Such refinement has been achieved through experience (Erfahrung) and continues to be achieved through dialogical engagement with others. On the other, it is also the case that hermeneutical dialogue involves elements of impoliteness, where one transgresses social norms in order to provoke a thoughtful, self-reflective response

Dialogical Breakdown and Covid-19: Solidarity and Disagreement in a Shared World

This article considers the limitations, but also the insights, of Gadamerian hermeneutics for understanding and responding to the crisis precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Our point of departure is the experience of deep disagreements amid the pandemic, and our primary example is ongoing debates in the United States about wearing masks. We argue that, during this dire situation, interpersonal mutual understanding is insufficient for resolving such bitter disputes. Rather, following Gadamer’s account of our dialogical experience with an artwork, we suggest that our encounter with the virus gives rise to new ways of seeing and experiencing ourselves and the world. Further, we draw on Gadamer’s account of the fusion of horizons to show how even competing perspectives on wearing masks arise within a shared space of meaning created by the virus. These insights provide hope for an improved model of political dialogue in the world of Covid-19