Hermeneutics concerns the art of interpretation and the conditions of human understanding. These essays explore how language, tradition, prejudice, dialogue, and lived experience shape the ways in which we understand texts, the world, ourselves, and other human beings. Particular attention is given to the ethical significance of understanding in social work, professional practice, and everyday encounters.
When We Think We Understand
Hermeneutics, Prejudice, and the Art of Encountering Another Human Being
We Never See Without a Prehistory
Gadamer, Pre-understanding, Prejudice, Tradition, and Horizon
The Silent Child
On Silence, Interpretation, and Adult Responsibility
Beginning Where the Other Person Is
Kierkegaard and the Secret of the Helping Art
Putting Our Prejudices at Risk
Gadamer and the Humility of All Understanding
We Never See the World for the First Time
Pre-understanding, Tradition, and Horizon
Dialogue as a Form of Life
How We Become Ourselves in Conversation with the World
When the Text Leaves the Author
Ricoeur and the Life of Words After Publication
The Other Is Always More
On Perspective, Otherness, and the Limits of Our Understanding
Hermeneutics in Social Work
Social Work requires human presence.
The Traditions We Live Within Without Noticing Them
Understanding the quiet traditions already living through us,
From Prejudice to Understanding
To live openly within the incomplete understanding that is always part of being human.
Freedom Within Tradition
Freedom begins when we learn to live more consciously within the history we are already part of.
Why We Need Traditions — Even in Modern Societies
Human life requires continuity in order not to dissolve into the restlessness of the immediate moment.
When Truth Comes Before Method
Gadamer, Tradition, and the Understanding in Which We Always Already Stand
Effective History — What We Never Entirely Escape
Wisdom begins with the realization that we always already belong to a history that continues working through us.
Science Never Stands Outside History
Practical philosophy reminds us that human beings must always interpret the world before they can act within it.
The Roles We Grow Into
We need traditions that provide direction, but also freedom to live them in new ways.
From Concept to Word
Gadamer and the Art of Understanding the Other
Practical Philosophy 