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PWL International Seminar #1
PWL INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR #1
“Hermeneutics as a Way of Life: Philosophy and Leadership in an Age of Instrumental Individualism”
DAVID HANEY
ONLINE | March 26 | 8 PM (CET)
Abstract
This talk is based on my forthcoming book, Reading Philosophy and Practicing Leadership: Applied Hermeneutics in an Age of Instrumental Individualism. “Instrumental individualism” refers to the modern primacy of the individual, recently unmoored from moral frameworks, who uses reason and discourse as tools and weapons to serve individual aims rather than to advance historical and social understanding. A broadly defined version of “philosophical hermeneutics,” exemplified by thinkers including Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanual Levinas, and Charles Taylor, provides a counter to modern individualism, emphasizing dialogue, authentic questioning, historical understanding, acceptance of otherness, avoidance of certainty in favor of open-ended experience, the metaphoric development of concepts, and placing the self at risk in the context of historically determined horizons.
The second part of the talk will address the intersection between this hermeneutic approach and Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWL). Hermeneutics and PWL both overlap and diverge on issues of history, language, and the role of the philosopher, which makes “living hermeneutically” both an example of and a divergence from PWL. Drawing on Gadamer’s critique of abstract philosophy in favor of lived understanding, Ricoeur’s theory of action as text, and PWL founder Pierre Hadot’s work on the historic separation of discourse and life in philosophy, I will discuss the benefits and challenges of incorporating hermeneutics into the lived experiences of leadership. The interpretive act of writing about these issues is examined as both the production of a discourse about leadership and a lived hermeneutic engagement.
Bio
Dr. David P. Haney is the former president of Hiram College and Centenary University and has served in faculty and administrative roles at several public and private colleges and universities. He has published on higher education issues in outlets including Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and he is the author of two monographs on Penn State Press’s Literature and Philosophy series: William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation (1993) and The Challenge of Coleridge: Ethics and Interpretation in Romanticism and Modern Philosophy (2001). His new book, forthcoming on Springer Press, is Reading Philosophy and Practicing Leadership: Applied Hermeneutics in an Age of Instrumental Individualism. He holds an MA and PhD in English from the University at Buffalo and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. For more information, see davidphaney.com.
Attendance is free but restricted to the members of the ISPWL. If you wish to become a member, please fill in this form.