Summary |
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) is arguably the figure most
associated with hermeneutics in our times. Gadamer completed his doctoral studies
in Marburg, where his teachers included Paul Natrop and Nicolai Hartman; the
principal influence on Gadamer’s philosophical development, however, was Martin
Heidegger, with whom Gadamer subsequently completed his Habilitation studies in Freiburg. Among Gadamer’s faculty
appointments, perhaps the most notable are the positions he has held at the
University of Leipzig from 1939–1947, where he also served in 1946 as Rector, and
at the University of Heidelberg from 1949 until his official retirement in the
late 1960s, as well as after this his long association with Boston College. Gadamer’s
project, which is typically identified as philosophical hermeneutics, may be
understood to build on Heidegger’s elucidation of hermeneutics in an
ontological register. Hermeneutics, as the early Heidegger develops it,
concerns not foremost the art of understanding or epistemological
considerations of our cognitive capacity to understand and interpret, but, more
fundamentally, the ontology of human beings insofar as human beings are characterized
by their disclosedness, that is, their openness to the being of whatever beings
they find themselves involved with. Gadamer, from this point of departure,
stresses the finitude of such openness, arguing that hermeneutic experience is
epitomized by dialogic interaction, or, conversation, and that human
understanding remains always conditioned by prejudices, or, pre-judgments,
passed down through tradition and language. Gadamer develops his project of
philosophical hermeneutics in his major work, Truth and Method, as well as in a large body of other writings, and
his work makes significant contributions in the philosophy of art and
aesthetics, practical philosophy, ancient Greek philosophy, and a number of
other areas. Influenced not only by Heidegger, but also several figures in the
history of philosophy, especially Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel, Gadamer is furthermore
noted for his important philosophical engagements with leading figures of the
age, especially Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. |