Reading and Understanding From Gadamer to Derridas Deconstructionism.

In the field of hermeneutics there are perhaps no two more important figures than Gadamer and Derrida. The work of Hans-Georg Gadamer has had a profound and robust influence on all that have followed after him in considering the nature of reading and understanding either in informing key areas of their thought or in providing new grounds for debate and criticism. Jacques Derrida and his controversial work concerning hermeneutics, whilst still clearly influenced by Gadamer, has turned interpretive theory on its head and has provoked passionate reactions, both positive and negative, from all areas of the humanities (giving rise to 14,000 citations in journal articles alone between 1982-19991). It is the extreme changes to the theory and practice of hermeneutics brought about by Derridas thoughts that we are concerned with in this essay. I shall proceed in the course of this essay then, to give an exposition of Gadamers ideas before moving on to detailing Derridas thoughts and the changes to reading and understanding brought about by them if they are accepted. Prior to any discussion of the two thinkers we are concerned with here, however, and in order to understand their thoughts better, we should give an account of the domain in which Gadamer and Derridas theories primarily resonate - that of Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics can most simply be described as being concerned with the act of interpretation, the term hermeneutics being derived from the Greek hermeneutic - to interpret and hermeneuitke - the art of interpretation. Scholars working in the field of hermeneutics then, have traditionally been concerned with how we are able to interpret texts or events as well as with questions of the correct method to do so. In the act of interpretation we are clearly seeking some form of knowledge, we are looking to know what is being said, but we should not confuse the concerns of hermeneutics with those of epistemology or of the sciences as despite the fact that their aims can appear at first glance to be very similar their objects and methods are in fact entirely distinct. Whereas epistemology is concerned with the possibility of knowledge and science aims for explanation, hermeneutics is concerned with the possibility of understanding and with the grasping of meaning. Take for example a set of bodily movements like a salute, the scientist would seek an explanation of the action and use that explanation for the generation of general principles for the explanation and prediction of all such actions with the epistemologist providing the grounds for the certainty of such knowledge. The hermeneutist on the other hand will be concerned with the meaning of the bodily movement, what is being communicated through the act or what beliefs are expressed by the individual saluting and with how we reach such understanding. Accordingly the paradigm of scientific endeavour is seeing or observing whilst that of hermeneutic enquiry is reading. Whether it be a physical event, speech or, more obviously, the written word the hermeneutist is reading the situation, considering elements such as context and intentions in order to penetrate its meaning (from here on in I shall use the word text to cover all objects of hermeneutic concern). There has of course been much debate within the sphere of hermeneutics as to how much weight be given to considerations of context or intention and indeed whether we can look beyond the text itself in determining meaning but this essay is not the place to elaborate on all these controversies, instead, with this basic sketch of hermeneutics in place I shall move now to an elaboration of the particular approach to hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. As stated in the previous paragraph hermeneutics has traditionally been

concerned with how we are able to interpret a text and what is the correct method to do so. The latter concern with correct method was a large part of early hermeneutics where the focus was religious texts and the method of interpretation had to take account of prevalent dogma. Gadamer, in setting out his hermeneutics in his Truth and Method2 sees himself both as reviving hermeneutics and as shifting the focus to the more philosophic concern of the conditions of understanding. This is made apparent when, in the foreword to the second edition of Truth and Method, Gadamer says of his book, My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing3. Gadamer then, is not setting out to describe methods of interpretation or to set out a method in order to be utilised by scholars engaged in the interpretation of texts, his concern is rather to illuminate how we are able to gain access to a text and understand it, the basis of which he takes to be interpretation. Gadamers interest in interpretation is driven by the desire to get to the ontological conditions of understanding . In order to understand why Gadamer takes interpretation to be the basis of understanding and how it performs this function we need to look now at Gadamers account of that which interprets and understands - the interpreter. In giving his description of the interpreter Gadamer is primarily influenced by Martin Heideggers conception of the nature of human beings as set out in his major work Being and Time4. Heideggers notion of the being of man, designated by the term Dasein, is a complex notion that would require more space than we have here to set out in its entirety. However, there is one aspect that is especially pertinent in its influence on Gadamers hermeneutics that should be elaborated on in order to give a greater clarity to Gadamers account of the interpreter, that being Heideggers characterisation of Dasein in terms of temporality and historicality5. Essentially, in ascribing temporality to mans Being Heidegger draws attention to the fact that we are never simply an isolated subject encountering the world, we are always at all times meeting the world in terms of a life and the projects that make up that life, for instance, in purchasing a hammer we encounter the hammer as a thing for banging in nails that may be of use in some future task. We are always conducting ourselves against the backdrop of time, we are never simply existing but instead are always engaged with a present moment and referring back to a former occasion or projecting ourselves in to a future. Tied up with Heideggers picture of mans temporal nature is his concept of mans historicality. Man, pictured as a temporal being always engaged with a world in which it exists involves, as we have just seen, the rejection of man as an isolated subject looking out on the world. Along with this rejection comes the rejection of the idea that the mind of man was ever a blank slate or that man could ever (as in the ideal of scientific enquiry) take a vantage point of pure objectivity. Instead Heidegger posits that man, as a temporal being always already engaged with the world, will be constituted by the beliefs and traditions of the society to which it belongs. There is no tabula rasa for Heidegger and neither is there a concrete essence of man, rather man inherits the values and perspectives of the time and place he happens to have been born in and as such those beliefs will be brought to bear in any encounter with the world or the objects within it either explicitly or inexplicitly. It is this often inexplicit, primordial background of beliefs that Heidegger believes allows us to question and understand the world at all by giving us a perspective with which to approach a subject, a sense of what we are approaching and an expectation of what we might discover that can then be challenged or confirmed by our enquiry. Gadamer, in considering understanding and the hermeneutic experience consciously takes over Heideggers temporal and historical man in its entirety as the

model for his interpreter. In a chapter entitled Elements of a theory of hermeneutic experience6 Gadamer gives a detailed account of what he labels prejudices, these prejudices are the background of inherited beliefs we have just seen in Heideggers thought and they perform the same function, providing a starting point for understanding a text, a preliminary interpretation. This then is the ontological ground of understanding that Gadamer was seeking to elucidate but before we move on to Gadamers account of the process of understanding that springs from this ground we must also give some attention to the very particular conception of a text that Gadamer holds. Gadamers thoughts on the nature of a text will be important in grasping his account of the process of understanding and will also be important when we come to considering the differences we encounter with the thoughts of Derrida. The first thing that it is important to note about Gadamers conception of the text is the concessions he makes to it in terms of truth and authority. Gadamer argues that we must approach a text with the assumption (at least at first) that it contains information that is both true and an instance of authority in the area with which it is concerned (the necessity and importance of such an approach will become apparent presently when we consider the process of understanding itself). In terms of structure Gadamer holds that the text contains all we need in order to comprehend its meaning. Considerations of context or authors intentions are not essential elements for the understanding of a text in Gadamers hermeneutics. A text is taken to be an isolated entity, the parts of which combine to express its meaning. This being the case a texts meaning can be discerned by means of what is known as the hermeneutic circle. Through moving back and forth through the text, clarifying sections or revising previous impressions through later developments, and ultimately the whole course of the narrative, the meaning of the text can be arrived at. With an account of that which is to be interpreted and that which does the interpreting we can begin to see how the process of understanding occurs for Gadamer. The meaning of a text is reached via the reading enabled by the hermeneutic circle and we gain access to the circle by way of our prejudices. In approaching a text we project on to it an expectation of its meaning drawn from our inherited beliefs, we already have before us various assumptions about the subject matter the text is dealing with and what it is trying to say. Through the moving backwards and forwards through the elements of the text and the text as a whole our preliminary interpretation of the text is revised and shaped until we reach an understanding. The importance of Gadamers assumption that the text is authoritative and has a truth content, that the writer of a transmitted text is better informed than we are, with our prior opinion7, is that it is only when what we try to accept as true becomes problematic that we attempt to understand a text and further that without such an assumption we will only really be capable of producing interpretations in line with the tradition from which we receive our prejudices. By believing that a text has something to teach us we avoid the possibility of simply confirming the prejudices we have already projected on to the text and instead the movement within the hermeneutic circle becomes a substantive inquiry that can bring us to an understanding of a texts meaning. This inquiry results in what Gadamer terms a fusion of horizons, the understanding we reach involves the regaining of, the concepts of a historical past in such a way that they also include our own comprehension of them8. The understanding we reach then is not a reconstruction of what the author originally meant, as was the ideal of the Romantic scholars of hermeneutics, but is rather the generation of a new meaning as the past perspective expressed in the text essentially fuses with our own present perspective. Consequently, in Gadamers theory there is no definitive interpretation of a text only a continuing

process of revision of our understanding of a texts meaning aiming at a more complete reading. In response to Gadamers theory certain criticisms have been levelled against him and it would be worth considering them briefly to complete our overview of his hermeneutics. Firstly, the charge is brought against Gadamer that there is little in his theory to prevent us from arriving at a complete misunderstanding of a text. The question posed to Gadamer is that if we approach an isolated text with a set of assumptions (prejudices) that lead us to a preliminary interpretation of a text that is completely mistaken, for instance reading a political satire under the impression it is a serious account of political practices, what is to stop us from retaining this false assumption and attributing a false meaning to the text? Further, it may be asked what is to stop a distorted account of a text being produced as the product of a particular ideology exerting a coercive force on the interpreter and the prejudices they project on a text? In both instances the question asks what is there to stop the prejudices that Gadamer takes as essential for getting access to the hermeneutic circle from dictating the nature of the interpretation produced? Gadamers answer to this question is that the moving back and forth between the text as a whole and its elements and the attempted fusion of perspectives involved in understanding will bring out any major misunderstandings. In reading a political satire under the impression it is a serious text we will find that certain elements of the text do not match up to our expectations and that the text does not achieve a unified, consistent meaning and from here we will have to reconsider our assumptions and approach the text anew. A second criticism makes a similar point but is concerned with Gadamers insistence that we should assume the text which we are interpreting is an instance of authority in the area it deals with. Here critics suggest that in assuming a text is better informed about its subject than we are there is a danger that understanding is little more than the adoption of the beliefs we encounter in the text. Gadamer would reply here that this is simply a misunderstanding of his theory. In assuming that a text has something to teach us, has authority, we are adopting a position of openness towards what the text has to say and that this is a condition of understanding but that this concession may be suspended at any time. Beyond this the nature of understanding precludes this simple substituting of the perspective found in the text for our own in as far as what we find in the text is always already conditioned by our approach to it. Georgia Warnke in her book Gadamer. Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason9 gives the example of asking whether Huckleberry Finn is racist and states, one cannot read Huckleberry Finn and then apply its content to this question, the question rather conditions the content one finds in it10. What is being highlighted here is that it is not the case that our prejudices are confronted by an isolated set of beliefs embodied in a text (and certainly not, as we have seen, a reconstruction of the authors beliefs) to which we can submit, the process of understanding is rather at all times a mingling of our preliminary interpretation of the text with the narrative discerned in the text moving towards a fusion of perspectives. With this account of Gadamers theory in place we can now look at Derridas thoughts and the considerable changes to the nature of hermeneutics they result in. Derrida is clearly influenced by Gadamer but is highly critical of his approach to hermeneutics. The ideas Derrida takes over from Gadamer, like the perspective of the interpreter conditioning his interpretation and consequently the new meaning generated with each interpretation, he takes to the extreme in order to show how the theory undermines itself. Derridas critical approach to philosophy, as well as the conclusions and practices that arise from his thoughts, is known as Deconstructionism. Although largely taken to be of importance in the field of hermeneutics and literary criticism,

Derridas Deconstructionism begins in response to the metaphysical prejudices he perceives throughout the whole tradition of Western thought. One characteristic of the Western philosophical tradition that is of relevance as we begin to look at Derridas theory is its reliance on the logic of identity which gives rise to distinctions such as speech and writing, nature and culture and truth and fiction. The logic of identity has three essential elements: 1. The law of identity: Whatever is, is, 2. The law of contradiction: Nothing can both be and not be, 3. The law of excluded middle: Everything must either be or not be11. For these laws to hold true the reality to which they refer is taken to be simple and free from contradiction, uniform and identical with itself and features that result in complexity or adulteration are excluded and as a consequence the distinctions such as those mentioned above (among many others) arise as the guides to thought in Western philosophy. Derridas project of Deconstruction concerns itself with the undermining of the philosophical tradition through the identification of paradoxes and contradictions involved in the traditions reliance on the logic of identity and the prioritising of one side of a relevant distinction despite such distinctions being supposedly taken as neutral in value, showing that in practice the distinctions employed are simultaneously negated and affirmed. Derrida sets out, when considering a particular text, to show how it brings about its own refutation through the logic it employs. A good example of this aspect of Derridas approach to a text is given in his consideration, in Part Two, Chapter Two of Of Grammatology12, of Rousseaus philosophy and in particular his use of the concept of nature. Derrida focuses his attention on Rousseaus claim that nature (the voice or example of which we ought to follow, according to Rousseau) is a plenitude to which nothing can be added of subtracted, that it is self-sufficient, and then, using Rousseaus own words, proceeds to illustrate that this is not the whole story. When Rousseau says that the best rules of good farming [culture] is to keep things back as much as possible13 it is also implied, Derrida argues, that some intervention is necessary and when Rousseau mentions the necessity of wet nurses to stand in for mothers who cannot produce breast milk a deficiency in nature is clearly admitted. Rousseau has then depicted nature as selfsufficient but also as deficient and seeing as these two characteristics are opposite sides of a distinction only one or the other can be the basis of an identity, not both, and so a contradiction is revealed and the text is undermined. Looking back to the account of Gadamers hermeneutics we can furnish ourselves with another example of the approach of Derridas Deconstructionism. Gadamers theory holds that all knowledge of a text, embodied in our interpretation, is necessarily finite and incomplete, being as it is a fusion of past and present perspectives in to a new meaning. However, in going on to say that an interpretation can be revised and corrected Gadamer seems to be employing a notion of complete knowledge of a text that such revisions move towards. Likewise, the approach that Gadamer suggests we take to a text (assuming it is an instance of truth and authority) appears to involve the assumption of a kind of truth precluded by Gadamers own account of human understanding and knowledge as finite and incomplete. Incompleteness and completeness cannot both be the basis of the identity of knowledge and once again a contradiction is revealed. Derridas treatment of Rousseau and others is not involved in spotting contradictions or slip ups but rather is engaged in highlighting a fundamental flaw in the metaphysics of the tradition, Derrida is illustrating that the idea that the basis of concepts are simple and free from impurities is a fiction (as will be made clearer in the next paragraph) and that therefore the whole tradition of Western metaphysics, resting as it does on the logic of identity, is undermined. The consequence for hermeneutics will be that a text can no longer be

considered to be a unity the elements of which combine to express a unitary meaning, as Gadamer and the hermeneutic tradition had assumed, due to the misconception at the heart of the tradition from which it arose and which still holds sway. The destruction of the meaning of a text is made clearer when we turn our attention to Derridas account of the nature of language. Derrida recognises that we understand ourselves and the world through consciousness and language and follows, to an extent, the Structuralists in holding that that language is constituted by a system of differences, loosely speaking that each basis of an identity has, as a condition of its possibility, its opposite. Structuralism seeks to avoid metaphysics and philosophical conjecture altogether, focusing instead on linguistics, holding that, cultural forms, belief systems and discourses of every kind can best be understood by analogy with language, or with the properties manifest in language14. Language is taken to be an object that is independent of any individual using the language and open to investigation like any other object. The conclusions arrived at by linguists like Ferdinand de Saussure (whose work contributed to the foundations of Structuralism) are that language is a system of signs, that a sign consists of a collation of a word (the signifier) to a concept (the signified) and that the role of a sign is determined through its difference to other signs rather than its content i.e. the word hot derives its meaning from how it differs from cold as its opposite, as well as from words such as hut or hat. Whilst Derrida retains the idea of language as a system of differences he holds that the implications of this insight are not fully worked out by the Structuralists and proceeds to demonstrate that Structuralism is undermined by an unwitting adherence to the same metaphysics it sought to avoid. Derrida, in working out the implications of the Structuralists notion of difference as the ground for the possibility of meaning, coins the term diffrance. This neologism utilises the fact that the French word diffrer, from which it derives, means both to differ and to defer. The point Derrida is drawing our attention to here is that whilst it might be agreed that the meaning of a sign can be said to be defined through reference to other signs (those from which they differ) the consequence is that a sign does not have a meaning of itself which would fit with the notion of the collation of a signifier and the signified found in Saussure, the meaning of the sign is tied up with the appeal to other signs and is therefore forever on hold (deferred). Further, the meaning of a sign can be seen to be deferred when we consider how the context in which a sign appears can alter its meaning. For example, the word hot that we used earlier is understood not only through reference to words from which it differs but also through reference to the words which surround it. Depending on the nature of a text the word hot appears in it can be suggestive of high temperature, fashionableness, passion and so on. The meaning of the particular word hot then, is once again always deferred. This disagreement with, or more accurately, correction of, the Structuralist account of language has the effect of exposing the distinction made by Saussure between a signifier and the signified as an illegitimate construction, a product of a metaphysics that had supposedly been denied. The meaning of a word, for Derrida, is always bound up with the way in which it is expressed, there is no distinction between the signifier and the signified, there can be no possibility of pinning down one referent for a particular word or sign, or for language as a whole and as such the objective structure of language the Structuralists assume in their studies evaporates. What we have with Derridas theory is a picture of language as a system of signs which cannot refer to anything other than other signs all of which are devoid of any concrete meaning. Further and as a consequence of this picture we cannot claim any access to an authors intentions, they simply cannot be gleaned from the text that cannot refer

beyond itself. Even appeals to other texts (that may be taken to have influenced the author, provided a terminology or a grounds for reaction etc) as a means of gaining an understanding are of no use as whilst it is accepted that as signs refer to other signs, texts can refer to other texts we only open up the field in which meaning is deferred in doing so as the meaning of the text to which we refer will also be conditioned by countless references between its constituent signs and to other texts. The chain of references that would have to be pinned down in order to arrive at a concrete understanding of a text becomes infinite in Derridas view and so total undecidability reigns. This being the case a text will be able to be read in numerous ways and each interpretation will be an entirely new one, conditioned by our more or less arbitrary selection between the countless meanings of the elements that constitute the text we are concerned with. Each reading of a text will also be, of course, entirely finite and open to being supplanted. An interpretation will not be supplanted however in the way that it is in Gadamer, with a more accurate (although still finite) interpretation; it will simply be another interpretation, also entirely finite. With all meaning being undecidable there can be no progression of knowledge, only an accumulation of different readings. In this climate Derridas approach becomes (as we saw at the beginning of the exposition of Derridas hermeneutics) to uncover and expose the point in a text where its logic comes undone through its employment of a metaphysical opposition and the prioritising of one of its terms and highlighting words whose meaning can be disputed, pointing out the possibility of alternative readings (a practice Derrida terms dissemination). Now that we have this outline of Derridas theory in place it should be clear how radically hermeneutics has been altered from Gadamer to Derrida. With Gadamer we have an argument for how we are able to read and understand a text. Understanding may be essentially finite in Gadamers theory but nonetheless it is taken to be a species of genuine knowledge and a text is held to be both authoritative and possessing a unitary meaning. Further, the methods we might derive from Gadamers thoughts appear to give us a point of access to texts and a way in which to check our interpretations and move towards the fullest interpretation we can. With Derrida however, we have an illustration of how reading and understanding is in fact impossible and how a text is essentially devoid of any fixed meaning. The practice of hermeneutics then, becomes concerned with showing where understanding reaches its limits and is made impossible and with opening up texts to countless finite and often contradictory readings, in sum; demonstrating where a texts supposed cohesion gives way. The shift in focus of hermeneutics we find in Derrida has been accused, by some, of being nihilistic, gloomy and pessimistic and as such has been either rejected or reduced to a corrective tool for more traditional hermeneutic practice (Derridas deconstructive method being used as a way to guard against misunderstanding or contradiction). Such accusations, I feel, are unwarranted and also illegitimate reasons for dismissing Derridas philosophy and further, that the description of hermeneutics after Derrida given in the last paragraph is not the last word. The accusation that Derridas philosophy is gloomy and pessimistic is not, of course, without some grounds. All possibility of concrete meaning in a text or interpretation, as we have seen, is ruled out and there is no hope for reading and understanding as traditionally understood but an accusation of pessimism can only really be leveled if such a claim about the possibility of reading and understanding is exaggerated or mistaken. This does not seem to be the case, Derridas playful style does not have the flavour of pessimism and his account of language and texts seem, to my

mind, to be solid and so it is hard not to see such an accusation as one born simply of discomfort and an unwillingness to relinquish the metaphysics Derrida has shown to be untenable. The charge of nihilism is likewise not without grounds but is also, I think, a misguided criticism. Derrida always acknowledged his debt to Nietzsche and saw himself at times as speaking for him and his work, especially in Of Grammatology, can easily be viewed as a working out (in his own way) of some of the consequences of Nietzsches proclamation of the death of God15 and as such Derridas thought is undoubtedly coloured by nihilism. It can rightly be argued that man cannot sustain a nihilistic perspective, interpretation and the attribution of meaning would seem to be an essential part of our nature, Gadamer recognised this in his location of interpretation as an ontological feature of Dasein and Derrida and Nietzsche recognised it in their continuing to write and philosophise despite their insights. Nihilism then is the backdrop against which Derrida (and Nietzsche) worked, in the knowledge that they cannot make claims to truth or authority in the traditional sense. Whilst Derridas illumination of the consequences of the death of metaphysics leaves our readings of a text entirely contingent it does not mean an end to hermeneutics and we certainly cannot reject or reduce Derridas theory purely because it might appear that it does. Whilst Derrida essentially restricted himself to deconstructing texts I see no reason why we cannot continue to offer readings of texts, but we must do so without absolute foundations for our interpretations and we can only entice others to take our view rather than assume any concrete grounds for supposing our interpretation of a text is superior to any other beyond its relative resistance to deconstruction. The background of nihilism that accompanies the shift in hermeneutics from Gadamer to Derrida can be viewed as liberating rather than as a loss (if Derrida and Nietzsche are right then what we have lost is an illusion anyway), opening up texts and lifting restrictions on how we can read and interpret them, giving over reading and understanding to the creativeness and autonomy of the reader.

Notes: * - For further information see bibliography. 1. Philosophy - 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, page 188. * 2. Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer. * 3. Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, page xxviii. * 4. Being and Time by Martin Heidegger. * 5. Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, Division Two, Chapter V. * 6. Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Part II, Chapter II. * 7. Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, page 294. * 8. Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, page 374. * 9. Gadamer - Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason by Georgia Warnke. * 10. Gadamer - Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason by Georgia Warnke, page 96. * 11. The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, page 40. * 12. Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida. * 13. Quoted by Derrida in Of Grammatology, page 147. * 14. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy edited by Ted Honderich, page 855. * 15. The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, aphorism 125, page 181. * Bibliography: DERRIDA, Jacques, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The John Hopkins University Press, 1976 GADAMER, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method (Second Edition), trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, Sheed and Ward Ltd, 1989 HEIDEGGER, Martin, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Blackwell, 1998 HONDERICH, Ted (Ed), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1995 LECHTE, John, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers From Structuralism to Postmodernity, Routledge, 1994 MEGILL, Allan, Prophets of Extremity - Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, University of California Press, 1985 NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1974 RUSSELL, Bertrand, The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1973 SKINNER, Quentin (Ed), The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 1990

STOKES, Philip, Philosophy - 100 Essential Thinkers, Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2006 WARNKE, Georgia, Gadamer - Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, Polity

Press, 1987 WINCHESTER, James J, Nietzsches Aesthetic Turn - Reading Nietzsche After Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida, State University of New York Press, 1994