Theodore George is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel’s Phenomenology (SUNY, 2006). He is co-editor of The Gadamerian Mind (Routledge, forthcoming) and Philosophers and their Poets: On the Poetic Turn in German Philosophy since Kant (SUNY, 2019). He is the translator of Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy by Günter Figal (SUNY, 2010).

Theodore George’s book The Responsibility to Understand: Hermeneutical Contours of Ethical Life is a sensitive, thoughtful, and insightful invocation to rehabilitate connection and the relational capacity of our lives. This book not only invites an internal reflection of the ways I live in the world and keep in relationship to others in it, but it deeply connects to the work we do in practice professions. Like Gadamer, George offers us a sophisticated practice philosophy that resonates and coalesces with our human endeavours of understanding each other in the context of urgent social and global concerns and fundamental human experiences of suffering, pain, joy, loss, and love.

• AcknowledgementsPreface. The Unbearable Lightness of EthicsIntroduction. Contemporary Hermeneutics and the Question of ResponsibilityPart I. The Responsibility to Understand1. The Responsibility to Understand2. The Capacity for DisplacementPart II. I and Thou3. Things4. Animals5. OthersPart III. I and We6. Solidarity7. Arts and Literature8. Translation