Publications

While some take Gadamer’s Truth and Method to be a departure from epistemological questions and concerns, I read Gadamer’s work as offering a valuable reflection on the nature of understanding—one that is deeply resonant with the recent social turn in epistemology. Like social epistemologists, Gadamer worries about the epistemic irresponsibility that we encourage when we treat an attitude of objectivity, wherein the inquirer lacks any awareness of their social and historical situation, as an epistemic ideal. Like social epistemologists too, Gadamer argues that understanding that one is socially and historically situated does not mean believing that one is fated to simply repeat traditional ideas without critique or modification—a concern frequently raised in response to critiques of Enlightenment epistemology. By developing such parallels, Gadamer and the Social Turn in Epistemology offers seasoned readers of Gadamer a new context in which to appreciate his discussion of understanding in Truth and Method and readers unfamiliar with Gadamer a productive point of access into his major work.   

This book examines the central role that language plays in understanding and human flourishing. The book begins by exploring Heidegger's idea that language is an essential element of how we dwell in the world and is, for the most part, ready-to-hand for us. With Gadamer, I then begin to explore phenomena where language is not ready-to-hand but calls for interpretation. The latter half of the book explores distinct ways in which language can become unready-to-hand for individuals (e.g., in cases of trauma, depression, and social subordination) and examines the way that such situations have been analyzed by twentieth-century Continental thinkers (e.g., Blanchot, Kristeva, Derrida).

Culbertson, Carolyn. "Testimonial Justice Beyond Belief: On Van der Heiden's Philosophy of Testimony." Epoche: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol. 27, no. 2 (2023): 317-330.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "Why Natural Language Processing Is Not Reading: Two Philosophical Distinctions and Their Educational Import." Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, (2025): 1-17.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "The Ethics of Relationality: Judith Butler and Social Critique." Continental Philosophy Review Vol. 46, no. 3 (2013): 449-463.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "The Omnipotent Word of Medical Diagnosis and the Silence of Depression: An Argument for Kristeva's Therapeutic Approach." IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2016): 1-26.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "The Genuine Possibility of Being-with: Heidegger, Watsuji, and the Primacy of Betweenness." Comparative and Continental Philosophy Vol. 11, no. 1 (2019): 7-18.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "Shared Understanding Before Semantic Agreement: Gadamer on the Hidden Ground of Linguistic Community." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology Vol. 55, no. 1 (2025): 57-69.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "Play in Conversation: The Cognitive Import of Gadamer's Theory of Play." In Language and Phenomenology. Edited by Chad Engelland. (New York: Routledge, 2021), 248-63.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "Losing the Measure of Health: Phenomenological Reflections on the Role of Healthcare Today." In Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness. Edited by Kevin Aho (London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2018), 179-90.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "My Language Which Is Not My Own: Heidegger and Derrida on the Ambiguity of Linguistic Life." Southwest Philosophy Review Vol. 32, no. 2 (2016): 115-136.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "Gadamer's Concept of Language." In The Gadamerian Mind. Edited by Theodore George and Gert-Jan Van der Heiden. New York: Routledge, 2021), 127-138.

Culbertson, Carolyn. "The Historical Situation of Thought as a Hermeneutic Principle." In Gadamer's Truth and Method: A Polyphonic Commentary. Edited by Cynthia R. Nielsen and Greg Lynch. (London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2022), 143-64.