Intensive Science & Virtual Philosophy, by Manuel DeLanda

self-transcendence as stated on p.I48. Grondin concedes the point on the last page of his book when he comments that "the horizon of language which cannot be overtaken can at least be enlarged 000 (for) 000 to raise ourselves above our particularities or our too unilateral conceptions always remains 000 to be wished" (p.l55). These are fine sentiments and are felicitous to Gadamer's arguments. They are, however, immediately preceded by two curious remarks. Grondin claims that "to accuse hermeneutics of remaining at the horizon of language is to lead it into an instrumental concept of language" (p.l54) Why? Surely, the notion of a linguistic horizon which precedes individual speech and thought acts directly against any instrumentalist view of language? He also remarks correctly that hermeneutics is "a thought about finitude and 000 language" (p.l54 ). Indeed, the play of difference within language, a play which Gadamer clearly acknowledges, grounds our sense of finitude. But, Grondin then remarks, "We bitterly resent the limits of language but we will never transcend them" (ibid). The tone of this remark is striking. Why should we feel such resentment? The fact that we cannot say or clarify what we would like to say is not an indictment of language's limitations but a call for better, more appropriate words. Furthermore, the very instability of language guarantees the possibility of unanticipated configurations of meaning. Isn't the constant vitality and transformation of understanding made possible by the irresolvable play of language? Were we able to escape the actual indeterminacy of words and reside in the fixity of well determined concepts, wouldn't the very tensions and motions upon which hermeneutic understanding undoubtedly depends come to end? Such questions do not reflect upon the excellence of this book but they do raise a certain ambiguity. Does the resentment of language's limits betray the presence of the unquiet spirit of metaphysics in Gadamer's thought or in Grondin's eloquent reading of it? I suspect that the answer is that it is, in fact, present in both. Nicholas Davey University of Dundee