Preface Acknowledgments 1. Philosophical Hermeneutics:Navigating the Approaches Introduction Eleven Theses on Philosophical Hermeneutics Thesis One:Hermeneutical Understanding Requires Difference Thesis Two:Philosophical Hermeneutics Promotes Philosophy of Experience Thesis Three:Philosophical Hermeneutics Entails an Commitment to Hermeneutic Realism Thesis Four:Philosophical Hermeneutics Seeks Otherness within the Historical Thesis Five:Philosophical Hermeneutics Reinterprets Transcendence Thesis Six:Philosophical Hermeneutics Entails Ethical Disposition Thesis Seven:Hermeneutic Understanding Redeems the Negativity of Its Constituting Differential Thesis Eight:Philosophical Hermeneutics Affirms an Ontology of the In-between Thesis Nine:Philosophical Hermeneutics Is Philosophical Practice Rather Than a Philosophical Method Thesis Ten:Philosophical Hermeneutics Is a Negative Hermeneutics Thesis Eleven:Philosophical Hermeneutics Looks upon Linguistic Being as a "Mysterium" Conclusion:Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Question of Openness 2. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Bildung Introduction Bildung as a Transformative and Formative Process Bildung and Tradition Bildung and the Question of Essence Bildung and the In-between Bildung and Hermeneutical Practice Bildung and Subject Matter ( Die Sache selbst ) Sachen as a Totality of Meaning Die Sachen and Negative Dialectics Die Sachen and Plato's Forms Sachen , Cultural Communities, and Cortesia "Bildung" and the Question of Nihilism Conclusion 3. Intimations of Meaning:Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Defense of Speculative Understanding What Is Speculative Thinking? The Formal Elements of Speculative Thought The Speculative Motion of Hermeneutic Experience The Defense of Speculative Understanding The Speculative and the Humenistic Speculative Insight and the "Unfounding" of Experience Language and the Dialectic of Speculative Experience Nietzsche, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Language, and the Market Place. Entr'acte 4. Understanding's Disquiet The Wantonness of Understanding Four Responses to Deconstructive Criticism Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Question of Alterity Nihilism and the Life of Understanding Dialogue and Dialectic Language, Ideas, and Sachen Keeping the Word in Play Choice Words The Poise of the In-between The Giving Word Language and Withouteness Language Negation and Affirmation:A Resumé The Open and the Empty Understanding and the Disquieting of the Self Di-alogue and Di-stance Afterword Notes Bibliography Index.