Lexington Books
Pages: 200
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7391-5080-1 • Hardback • July 2011 • $120.00 • (£92.00)
978-0-7391-5082-5 • eBook • August 2011 • $114.00 • (£88.00)
Kalle Puolakka is postdoctoral researcher of aesthetics at the Palmenia Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Helsinki.
Chapter 1 Preface
Part 2 I. Does Joseph Margolis' Defense of Relativism Fall into an Impasse?.
Part 3 II. From Humpty Dumpty to James Joyce: Donald Davidson's Late Philosophy and the Question of Intention
Part 4 III. A New Look at Hermeneutic Criticisms of Intentionalism
Part 5 IV. Richard Rorty's Pragmatist Challenge to Intentionalism
Part 6 V. Conclusions: How to be a Pluralist without Being a Relativist?
A wide-ranging, carefully conducted study that should interest a wide range of philosophers of art, language, and culture, especially those concerned with the bridge-building efforts of Margolis, Rorty, Gadamer and others. The author's guiding aim is to show how Davidson's later ideas on interpretation can serve as a basis for a form of objectivism about interpretation in both conversational and literary contexts, and as a bulwark against strong forms of relativism and historicism, while yet allowing for reasonable pluralism as regards both conversational and literary meanings.
— Jerrold Levinson, University of Maryland, College Park