Overview

Hans-Georg Gadamer's poetics completely overturns the European aesthetic tradition. This full-length study in English of Gadamer's aesthetics draws on a significant proportion of Gadamer's latter essays on art and aesthetics. It explores the far-reaching consequences of Gadamer's hermeneutical critique of aesthetics. This book explores the far-reaching consequences of Gadamer's hermeneutical critique of aesthetics. Hans-Georg Gadamer's poetics completely overturns the European aesthetic tradition. By concentrating on how we experience the meaning of artworks, Gadamer's poetics has deep implications for how we can understand the meaning of poetry, art, literature, history and theology. This emphasis on participation promises an approach that will revolutionise how we appreciate and understand art, and gives us new ways to think about the value and productivity of the humanities. This is the first full-length study in English of Gadamer's aesthetics. It draws on a significant proportion of Gadamer's latter essays on art and aesthetics. It presents aesthetic attention as a form of practice.

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In this excellent work, Nicholas Davey gives a superlatively clear, sharp-edged, and analytically precise account of Gadamer's hermeneutic aesthetics, which makes clear both the capacity of Gadamer's thought to meet stringent philosophical demands and its distinctive appeal as an approach within aesthetics. A more engaging and persuasive account could not be asked for.--Sebastian Gardner, University College London Nicholas Davey did not write a book on Gadamer; he wrote about the question: how to look at art, how art changes our understanding of the world and ourselves. After Davey's clear writing the reader will see how Gadamer changed our philosophy of art based on phenomenological hermeneutics.--Ben Vedder, Radboud University Nijmegen Long before it became fashionable to talk of relational aesthetics, Gadamer presented art as an encounter of the most fundamental kind. With Unfinished Worlds, Davey has not only given us the first monograph in English on Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics, but also made a compelling case for the importance of Gadamer to our understanding of the structures that give rise to art and human experience.--Clive Cazeaux, Cardiff Metropolitan University

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Nicholas Davey is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dundee.

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