Few topics have received broader attention within contemporary philosophy than that of responsibility. In current debate, philosophers take up questions of responsibility not only in the context of more traditional moral and ethical problems but, increasingly, in the context of multiple political concerns, concerns for non-human others, historical memory, and a host of other matters. Moreover, current interest in such questions of responsibility draw on a similarly broad range of approaches and methods, from those customarily associated with analytic philosophy to those associated with phenomenology and existentialism, deconstruction, critical theory, feminist theory, race theory and post-colonial theory. Yet, despite the expanse of current interest, philosophers have failed fully to appreciate the contributions that can be made to questions of responsibility by the tradition of hermeneutics. It is the raison d’être of the present enquiry to examine the sense of responsibility at issue in the hermeneutical experiences of understanding and interpretation, as well as their significance for several current debates within philosophy. Hence, the topic of the enquiry may be summed up as: the responsibility to understand.

The claim that hermeneutics offers a distinctive and persuasive contribution to philosophical discussions of responsibility may, initially at least, appear to be idiosyncratic. Within the broader world of professional philosophy, hermeneutics is typically thought to concern not responsibility but rather first and foremost the study of the understanding and interpretation of texts and persons. In this, hermeneutics is usually thought to include considerations of the art, techniques, methods and epistemological foundations of research in the humanities and related disciplines. To be sure, scholars have long recognised that hermeneutics contributes to practical philosophy; that it has important practical applications, such as legal hermeneutics; and, too, that philosophers associated with hermeneutics, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, draw on important traditions of practical philosophy in humanism and ancient Greek philosophy. Yet, the question of responsibility is much more crucial to hermeneutics than is usually appreciated. This, at least, appears to be the suggestion made by Gadamer, one of the most influential proponents of hermeneutics in the post-war era.