What are the foundations of human self-understanding and the value of responsible philosophical questioning? Focusing on Heidegger's early work on facticity, historicity, and the phenomenological hermeneutics of factical-historical life, Hans-Helmuth Gander develops an idea of understanding that reflects our connection with the world and other, and thus invites deep consideration of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. He draws usefully on Husserl's phenomenology and provides grounds for exchange with Descartes, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Foucault. On the way to developing a contemporary hermeneutical philosophy, Gander clarifies the human relation to self in and through conversation with Heidegger's early hermeneutics. Questions about reading and writing then follow as these are the very actions that structure human self-understanding and world understanding.

Table of Contents:
Translators' Introduction Foreword Introduction 1. Exposition of the Connection Between Self-Being, Lifeworld, and History 2. Conception and Outline of the Treatise with an Excursis on the Paratextual Functions of Remarks Part One. In the Network of Texts: Toward the Perspective Character of Understanding 3. Inception and Beginning: Toward a Fore-Structure of Understanding 4. Approaching the Question of Interpretation: On the Relation of "Author-Text-Reader" 5. On the Relation of Writing and Reading to Self-Formation 6. The Text as a Connection of Sense in the Horizon of the Occurrence of Tradition as Effective History 7. In the Governing Network of Discourse 8. The Sense-Creating Potential of Texts: The Modification of the World 9. Excursis on the Metaphor of the "Book of the World" 10. In the Network of Tradition: On Understanding as an Incursion into the Current of Texts 11. On the Interpretive Character of Knowledge in the Wake of the Historicity of Understanding 12. Parenthesis on the Discourse of Metaphysics "as such" as a Problem of an Epochal Revaluation in View of a Signature of the Present 13. Critical Remarks on the Concept of an Absolute Reason Part Two. I and World: The Question Concerning the Ground of Philosophy Chapter One. On the Search for the Certainty of the I 14. Toward the Task of a Hermeneutical Interpretation of the Concept and its Relation to Everyday Experience: An Approximation 15. Wonder and Doubt: On the Entry-Point of Philosophical Reflection 16. Under the Spell of Certainty: Descartes' Self-Certainty of the 'I am' as a Hermeneutical Problem 17. The Ontological Positioning of the Cartesian Ego Between Acquisition of the Self and Loss of the World Chapter Two. On Life in Lifeworlds: Critical Considerations of Husserl's Phenomenology of the Lifeworld 18. The Concept of 'Lifeworld' as an Indication of the Problem 19. Husserl's Recourse to as an "Irruption into the Theoretical Attitude" 20. The Problem of Objectivism in the Tension Between and 21. Toward a Philosophical Thematization of Natural Life-in-the-World 22. On Husserl's Transcendental Self-Grounding of Philosophy with a View to the Question of the World 23. Husserl's Application of the Task of a Lifeworldly Ontology 24. The Function of History in Husserl's Transcendental-Phenomenological Conception Part Three. Self-Understanding and the Historical World: Basic Traits of a Hermeneutical Ontology of Facticity Chapter One. The Hermeneutical Turn: Heidegger's Critical Dialogue with Husserlian Phenomenology 25. Husserl versus Heidegger: On Situating their Disagreement 26. The Hermeneutical Stance on a Second View 27. The 'Blind Spot' in the Phenomenological Eye: Heidegger's Critique of Husserl with a View to the Structure of Care a. Phenomenological Maxims of Research and Cognitive Intention b. The 'Actual Things of Philosophy': The Being of the Human 28. The Metamorphosis of Phenomenology into the Hermeneutical a. In Connection with the Tendencies of Lebensphilosophie b. The Hermeneutical Approach in Pre-Theoretical Life c. The New Hermeneutical Accentuation of Phenomenology 29. The Function and Relation of the Hermeneutical Ontology of Facticity, Fundamental Ontology, and Metontology 30. Aspects of a Contemporary Philosophical Situating of the Discourse on Facticity Chapter Two. The Experiental Structure of the Self: Toward a Hermeneutics of Factical Historical Life 31. The Leap into the World: On Outlining the Factical-Hermeneutical Concept of Experience 32. Analysis of Environmental Experience 33. Remarks on the Problematic of the Foreign 34. The Self-World as the Center of Life-Relations 35. The Having-of-Oneself within the Field of Tension between Winning and Losing Oneself 36. The Structure of the Self as a Function of Life-Experience 37. On the Status of a Hermeneutics of Facticity as Ontological Hermeneutics Chapter Three. Application-Destruktion-History: Hermeneutical Sketches of a Philosophy of the Situation 38. Hermeneutical Application 39. The Critical Sense: On the Task of Phenomenological Destruktion 40. History as the Organon of Understanding Life Open End 41. Retrospective Reflections on the World-Conceptual Relevance of a Hermeneutics of Facticity Bibliography