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9781498594462

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Interpretation, play, and creativity are not simply behaviors, Homan (philosophy, Mount Mary Univ.) argues in this perceptive and trenchant new book, but ways of being in the world (p. 134). Tracing, engaging, and building on this ontological orientation in the works of many key German language poets and philosophers-including Hoelderlin, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Celan, Fink, Gadamer, and others-the author identifies a pervasive as if stance that marks many of their perspectives on language, education, and existence. Human existence is groundless yet finite and thus tragic. And language (while not merely a tool) is capable of enlarging understanding even though it always remains incomplete. The poetic, however, keeps these tensions alive and therefore offers the true promise of a liberatory and playful education. Homan underscores the seriousness of play as it provides the bridge that enables one to reclaim an original unity obscured by ubiquitous dualisms (e.g., subject/object, self/world, familiar/foreign, and so on). A concluding chapter responds to some critiques of hermeneutics and offers a justification of education as Bildung, which Homan regards as consistent with hermeneutics in that it is premised on the spontaneity and openness to what is other (p. 166). This is exemplary and astute scholarship with a timely and timeless focus. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * Choice * Catherine Homan makes a compelling case for poetic education, beginning with Hoelderlin's appeal to the creative arts in the nineteenth century. Weaving imaginatively different play traditions from the hermeneutic encounter with Gadamer and Fink to the social justice concerns of Gloria Anzaldua, Mariana Ortega, and bell hooks, Homan brings an original perspective to philosophy of education, arguing for language to be attuned to dialogical interplay and affectively rooted in the world. With her focus on an ethics of vulnerability, drawing on Paul Celan's poetry, her book serves as an important corrective to play narratives in the hermeneutic tradition that merely tarry with the aesthetic. -- Mechthild Nagel, SUNY Cortland

Author Information

Catherine Homan is assistant professor of philosophy at Mount Mary University in Milwaukee.

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