Musings and Meanings: Hermeneutical Ripples

This edited work titled "Musings and Meanings: Hermeneutical Ripples..." is the outcome of the international conference hosted in honor of two eminent veteran scholars Richard De Smet and Jean de Marneffe of the Faculty of Philosophy at Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune in January 2014 to dwell extensively on the art of understanding from both the Eastern and the Western perspectives. All the scholarly essays in this edited work critically engage with contemporary theories of cross-cultural understanding and the discourse on the stranger. This work therefore is attempt to formulate a cross-cultural interpretation that incorporates the ambivalence of boundaries, the enabling dimension of essentialism and acknowledges the role that fore- meanings and fore-structures have on cross-cultural understanding.

Nishant Alphonse Irudayadason (nishant@jdv.edu.in) is a teaching faculty member of Philosophy at Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth: Pontifical Institute of Philosophy and Religion (JDV), Pune, India. After having completed his doctoral studies on Derrida and Ethics at Universite Paris- Est and in Insitut Catholique de Paris, France, he has been actively pursuing academic life. He has presented research papers in many National and International Conferences. He has authored two books, edited one book, and penned more than 30 articles in National and International Journals as well as in edited books. He is currently the Chairperson of the doctoral programme in the Faculty of Philosophy at JDV. He is a regular contributor to contemporary political analysis in "Light of Truth", a bimonthly published from Kochi, Kerala.