First published in Italian in 1988, History of Hermeneutics constitutes the first comprehensive reconstruction of the historical development of hermeneutics. Its translation, augmented by an extensive theoretical afterword especially written by the author for this English-language edition, is an important and timely contribution to philosophy.

The breadth of scholarship is impressive: Not only does the author discuss thinkers such as Plato, Vico, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida, but he also considers the contributions of figures outside the contemporary canon of maitres a penser, including Reformation philosophers, biblical interpreters of the German Enlightenment, and contemporary theoreticians.

The first two chapters trace the history of the art of interpretation from its origins in Greece as a specialized technique for the transmission of divine messages by the poets and oracles, to the nineteenth century, a time that was characterized by a new awareness of the problem of tradition and by the influence of positivism on the theory of interpretation.

In the following three chapters, Ferraris examines the universalization of the domain of interpretation with Heidegger, the development of Heideggerian philosophical hermeneutics with Gadamer and Derrida, and the relation between hermeneutics and epistemology, on the one hand, and the human sciences, on the other.

This is an invaluable work for philosophers and for scholars in disciplines as diverse as literary studies, cultural studies, religious studies, history, and the social sciences. At the same time, its clear and concise presentation of the historical unfolding of hermeneutics makes it ideal for use as a textbook in introductory and advanced courses.