Bryn Mawr Authors

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) is widely recognized as the leading exponent of philosophical hermeneutics. The essays in this volume examine Gadamer's biography, the core of hermeneutical theory, and the significance of his work for ethics, aesthetics, the social sciences, and theology. There is full consideration of Gadamer's appropriation of Hegel, Heidegger and the Greeks, as well as his relation to modernity, critical theory and poststructuralism. This revised edition includes several new chapters on aspects of Gadamer's work, as well as updated chapters from the first edition and the most comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Gadamer available in the English language.

In Gadamer's HermeneuticsRobert J. Dostal provides a comprehensive and critical account of Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy, arguing that Gadamer's enterprise is rooted in the thesis that "being that can be understood is language." He defends Gadamer against charges of linguistic idealism and emphasizes language's relationship to understanding, though he criticizes Gadamer for too often ignoring the role of the prelinguistic in our experience. Dostal goes on to explain the concept of the "inner word" for Gadamer's account of language. 

The book situates Gadamer's hermeneutics in three important ways: in relation to the contestability of the legacy of the Enlightenment project; in relation to the work of his mentor, Martin Heidegger; and in relation to Gadamer's reading of Plato and Aristotle. Dostal explores both Gadamer's claim on the Enlightenment and his ambivalence toward it. He considers Gadamer's dependence on Heidegger's accomplishment while pointing out the ways in which Gadamer charted his own course, rejecting his teacher's reading of Plato and his antihumanism. Dostal points out notable differences in the philosophers' politics as well. Finally, Dostal mediates between Gadamer's hermeneutics and what might be called philological hermeneutics. His analysis defends the civic humanism that is the culmination of the philosopher's hermeneutics, a humanism defined by moral education, common sense, judgment, and taste. Supporters and critics of Gadamer's philosophy will learn much from this major achievement.

In his much-anticipated memoir, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies Leonard A. Lauder shares the business and life lessons he learned as well as the adventures he had while helping transform the mom-and-pop business his mother founded in 1946 in the family kitchen into the beloved brand and ultimately into the iconic global prestige beauty company it is today.

In its infancy in the 1940s and 50s, the company comprised a handful of products, sold under a single brand in just a few prestigious department stores across the United States. Today, The Estée Lauder Companies constitutes one of the world's leading manufacturers and marketers of prestige skin care, makeup, fragrance and hair care products. It comprises more than 25 brands, whose products are sold in over 150 countries and territories. This growth and success was led by Leonard A. Lauder, Estée Lauder's oldest son, who envisioned and effected this expansion during a remarkable 60-year tenure, including leading the company as CEO and Chairman.

In this captivating personal account complete with great stories as only he can tell them, Mr. Lauder, now known as The Estée Lauder Companies' "Chief Teaching Officer," reflects on his childhood, growing up during the Great Depression, the vibrant decades of the post-World War II boom, and his work growing the company into the beauty powerhouse it is today. Mr. Lauder pays loving tribute to his mother Estée Lauder, its eponymous founder, and to the employees of the company, both past and present, while sharing inside stories about the company, including tales of cutthroat rivalry with Charles Revson of Revlon and others. The book offers keen insights on honing ambition, leveraging success, learning from mistakes, and growing an international company in an age of economic turbulence, uncertainty, and fierce competition.

William Faulkner remains one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, and Faulkner Studies offers up seemingly endless ways to engage anew questions and problems that continue to occupy literary studies into the twenty-first century, and beyond the compass of Faulkner himself. His corpus has proved particularly accommodating of a range of perspectives and methodologies that include Black studies, visual culture studies, world literatures, modernist studies, print culture studies, gender and sexuality studies, sound studies, the energy humanities, and much else. The fifteen essays collected in The New William Faulkner Studies charts these developments in Faulkner scholarship over the course of this new century and offers prospects for further interrogation of his oeuvre.