The Ways of Power   Hermeneutics, Ethics, and Social Criticism    Contents    Introduction: The Ways of Power and the Question of Critique    1. The Will to Power and the Politics of Ressentiment    2. Power/Knowledge    3. The Critique of Ideology    4. The Practice of Criticism    5. Hermeneutical Ethical Theory    Conclusion

 Publisher's Description

The Ways of Power advances a hermeneutical conception of ethics, one oriented particularly toward questions of power and the critique of power in the aftermath of foundationalism. Bringing into mutual interrogation such disparate traditions as hermeneutics, liberalism, critical theory and postmodernism, and such figures as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas, Foucault, Nietzsche and Aristotle, Fairfield argues that the principal question of ethics is no longer how to ground practices and judgments on a secure epistemological foundation. Rather, what is important is how normative discourses rooted in tradition and invested with power may adopt a critical posture toward these same conditions without generating an impossible circularity.

"The Ways of Power is thought-provoking and contains an innovative argument for a universal theory of justice. Fairfield's work on Gadamer and Habermas is nicely turned."
--- Charles E. Scott, Pennsylvania State University

"The Ways of Power is indeed thought-provoking and ambitious in that it attempts to bring together voices that speak to each other only with some difficulty."
--- David F. Gruber, Truman State University

"This very readable book concludes that 'principles of justice are properly rooted not in the settled convictions of a community but in a universal conception of humanity.' Therefore, a communicative understanding of the humanity, and thus the rights, of the other provides the basis for a hermeneutical ethics. This is a very interesting discussion of a current debate in philosophy, social criticism, literature and sociology. Recommended."
--- Choice