'With Unfinished Worlds, Nicholas Davey has not only given us the first book in English on Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics, but also made a compelling case for the importance of Gadamer to our understanding of the structures that give rise to art and human experience.' Clive Cazeaux, Cardiff Metropolitan University 'Nicholas Davey did not write a book on Gadamer; he wrote about the question: how to look at art, how art changes our understanding of the world and ourselves. After Davey's clear writing the reader will see how Gadamer changed our philosophy of art based on phenomenological hermeneutics.' Ben Vedder, Radboud University Nijmegen A study of Gadamer's paradigm shifting aesthetics, its transformation into hermeneutics and its development as a mode of attentive practice Unfinished Worlds explores the far reaching consequences of Gadamer's hermeneutical critique of aesthetics. By demonstrating that the experience of art is grounded in the objectivities of language, history and tradition, aesthetics becomes an exploration of how we participate in structures of meaning that transcend us individually. The presentation of words and images as transmittable placeholders for meanings and concepts allows hermeneutics to offer a persuasive account of how artworks effectively communicate. This new 'poetics' is relevant not only to the understanding of art but also to showing, explaining and defending the cognitive content of the humanities. Nicholas Davey demonstrates how hermeneutics transforms aesthetic reflection into a poignant, attentive practice open to the unexpected as a means of challenging and transforming received experience. Hermeneutic aesthetics not only radicalises our understanding of aesthetic education but it provides a sound basis for re-thinking humanities disciplines as critical-creative practices able to re-envision the future. Nicholas Davey is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He is the author of Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer and Philosophical Hermeneutics (2006). Cover image: Balanced, 2008 Oil and graphite on canvas, 95 x 156 cm (c) Paul Saroglou Cover design: [EUP logo] www.euppublishing.com

Nicholas Davey was educated at the Universities of York, Sussex and Tübingen and has lectured at the City University London, the University of Manchester, the University of Wales Institute Cardiff and is presently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dundee. His teaching and research interests lie in aesthetics and hermeneutics. He has published widely in the field of Continental Philosophy, aesthetics and hermeneutic theory. His last book, Unquiet Understanding, Gadamer and Philosophical Hermeneutics, (2006), was published with the State University Press of New York.