The Life of Understanding Quotes

“The great principles of the limit and unlimited as announced in the Philebus make possible the becoming of being as well as the delay of presence. It is being that cannot be one with itself because it is (being) and it is and is not (appearance). Being cannot be one with itself because it is one (a limit) and two (the unlimited as indeterminate dyad). In saying that being that can be understood is language, Gadamer, now following Plato, knows that we can never say all that we want to say, we can never bring the intended thing into the full unity of its aspects.”
― James Risser, The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics

“Here the art of weaving pertains not simply to the art of combining and separating words, but to language formation as such, to what occurs as the generative function of language that mirrors the “becoming of being.”
― James Risser, The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics

“We learn to understand ourselves in and through it because the artwork is not a timeless present for a pure aesthetic consciousness (i.e., it is not an encounter with an object for which one can only express feelings of pleasure or displeasure), but rather, a real encounter with a world that presents itself historically. The self-understanding that occurs in relation to the experience of art, Gadamer tells us, is only possible when our experiencing is not discontinuous with “the unity and integrity of the other.”17”
― James Risser, The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics

“In creating a “hold upon nearness” the poetic word creates a place where we can stand for a while, allowing us to bear witness to our own being.”
― James Risser, The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics