Philosophy of Law

What philosophical issues are raised in expressing, translating and understanding? Can we even perceive things
without interpreting them? What are the best ways to understand the works of other cultures and epochs, and
why? Is the interpreter passive and neutral before the text, or is he or she always active and creative? How
shuld we evaluate creative interpretations? In this module such questions will be considered by way of an
historical and critical introduction to the movements of hermeneutics and deconstruction. These collectively
comprise the philosophy of interpretation in recent European philosophy. We begin with the foundations of
hermeneutics laid by Schleiermacher and Dilthey, proceed to its development in the phenomenologies of Husserl
and Heidegger, and conclude with its post-phenomenological variants in the work of Gadamer,
Derrida and Ricoeur.