An Enquiry Concerning Kearney’s Dialectic and Gadamer’s Dialogic Approaches to Ethical Criticism

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to understand the contemporary conversation concerning the relationship between self and the other—and how this relationship is to be interpreted in the nexus of today’s postmodern society. This paper also suggests a hermeneutical framework to respond to contemporary needs of ethical criticism, particularly when it comes to resolving conflicting interpretations. Through a critical analysis of Kearney’s critique of Gadamer, this paper first aims to identify underlying reasons behind this critique and, second, examine Kearney’s “poetico-ethical imagination,” which, while being greatly influenced by Gadamer’s notion of “fusion of horizon,” fails to fully acknowledge the contributions of this renowned hermeneut. Finally, through a comparative analysis between Kearney’s dialectic and Gadamer’s dialogic approaches, the paper intends to suggest that because Kearney’s model is contradictory in its demands for openness that ultimately has to judge between contesting interpretations—and thus limits the free play of meaning—Gadamer's dialogic model, with its insistence on learning from rather than judging the other, is better suited to meet contemporary demands of discerning between diverging discourses.