Reality and Hermeneutics

There is no such thing as a realistic phenomenology. In this line of thought, Jocelyn Benoist here presents the sum of his previous works, which have led him further and further away from phenomenology - towards a contextual realism that emphasises the inevitability of the real: reality is not a property that can or cannot be assigned to the meaningful. Rather, it is something that is always already there, that we ever already have. Nevertheless, it is precisely this prejudice in favour of meaning that has dominated philosophy since Kant's transcendental turn. Benoist therefore attacks the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger and their reception in France as well as the "new realism" of Markus Gabriel, whose ontology of the "fields of sense" he finds conflating being and sense. Benoist's monograph thus revives the dialogue between contemporary philosophy in France and Germany. At the same time, this volume exemplifies the ambition that the new series Reality and Hermeneutics ascribes to the humanities and cultural studies, liberating them from a misleading opposition to the natural sciences.

In this volume, French, German and Italian authors continue the dialogue between realism and idealism in contemporary philosophy from the perspective of history, epistemology, phenomenology, and aesthetics.