The chief feature of Gadamer's philosophy is his claim that the humanities obey their own rules concerning reading texts and ensuring certitude. The promise of certitude is illusory, however, and the discourses on interpretation by him and his leading disciples are too confused to instruct the reader. His own sketch of his philosophy, published in his autobiographic Philosophical Apprenticeship, and its reflection in Gadamer and Hermeneutics (Hugh J. Silverman, ed.), shows this and reveals him as still too insensitive to the (...) national tragedy of the Third Reich, which he witnessed. (shrink)

Often, respectable scholars attack the soundness of Heidegger's "violent" interpretations of Hölderlin (and others). In this case, Dieter Henrich offers a particularly harsh assessment of Heidegger's interpretation of " Andenken." Hans-Georg Gadamer, student of Heidegger and teacher of Henrich, attempts to bring harmony where none seems possible. A study of the three interpretations indicates that scholarship alone is sufficient to reach a decision on the strength of the interpretations.

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The essay takes as its point of departure the way in which the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer has recently been adopted by philosophers such as Richard Rorty, John McDowell, and Robert Brandom. While appreciating the way in which Truth and Method has gained new relevance within an Anglo-American context, I ask whether sufficient attention has been paid to Gadamer’s romantic heritage. In particular I question the way in which his notion of tradition and historical truth, designed as it is to (...) overcome the ramifications of Descartes and the Kantian enlightenment, is modeled on the example of art and aesthetic experience. (shrink)

The relationship between 20th-century phenomenology and the transcendental program launched by Immanuel Kant is crucial, but delicate. First there is Husserl, who seemed both attracted to and seriously critical of Kant's first Critique. Then there is Heidegger's ambition to scour the entire field of the three Critiques. Most important in this context, is probably his reading of the Critique of Pure Reason in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929). Faithful to his notion of a salvaging “destruction” of the philosophical (...) tradition, Heidegger argues that the earliest version of Kant's work, the so-called A-deduction, is radically different from the philosophy promoted by the neo-Kantians. Kant, he claims, was not really interested in epistemology in the narrow meaning of the term. He was, rather, a philosopher verging upon a genuine ontology of Being, but who, for reasons that remain unknown, felt forced to leave these tracks behind in order to pursue the transcendental conditions of knowledge. Then there is the second Critique, which Heidegger approaches through a discussion of the Kantian notions of freedom and causality. And, finally, there are his remarks about the Critique of Judgment, scattered all over his writing on art from the early 1930s onwards. However, Heidegger never produces a proper, systematic account of the relevance of the third Critique. Such an account, I argue in this essay, is provided by Hans-Georg Gadamer. (shrink)

The present paper uses the theme of dialectic and dialogue to begin unraveling the similarities and differences between the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and H.G. Gadamer. Ricoeur is shown to distance himself from Heidegger by insisting on a dimension of explanation and distanciation (which he sometimes identifies with Plato's `descending dialectic') that cannot be reduced to, or absorbed by, understanding and appropriation. This same move, however, leads him to reject Platonic dialogue, with the attendant prioritizing of oral conversation over the (...) written text, as a model for hermeneutics. Ricoeur therefore sees in Gadamer's recourse to such a model a regression to the problematic position of Heidegger. Yet the conception of philosophy as dialectical and dialogical which Gadamer finds in Plato is capable of responding to Ricoeur's objections. Where the fundamental difference between the hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Gadamer emerges is in the question of whether experience is fundamentally dialectical and whether language is inherently dialogical. (shrink)

Gadamer and Habermas both argue that some earlier theorists of interpretation in the human sciences, despite recognizing the meaningful character of social reality, still succumb to objectivism because they fail to conceive the relation of interpreters to their subjects in terms of cross-cultural normative "dialogue." In particular, Gadamer and Habermas claim that the most prominent nineteenth-century philosopher of the human sciences, Wilhelm Dilthey, fell prey to a misleading Cartesian outlook which sought to ground the objectivity of interpretation on complete transcendence (...) of the interpreter's present cultural and historical situation. This article challenges Gadamer's and Habermas's claim by arguing that new research on nineteenth-century hermeneutic thought reveals Dilthey to be much more aware of the reflexive, present-centered nature of historical research than they maintain and further that their own "dialogical" model of interpretation suffers from notable obscurities which Dilthey's work itself helps expose. Key Words: Dilthey • Gadamer • Habermas • hermeneutics. (shrink)

Axel Honneth investigates an ambiguity in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. In Truth and Method, Gadamer lays out key forms of reciprocal recognition. By means of them, he can subject historical transmission to normative appraisal. Gadamer makes the recognitional interaction relative only to an 'I' and 'Thou', omitting reference to an objective 'Third'. Honneth claims that Gadamer posits this restriction based on the influence of Heidegger's Mitwelt concept. Honneth claims, however, that Gadamer's model fails to explain the possibility of a hermeneutic openness (...) to agents who are not in close personal proximity to us. Instead, Honneth argues that the concrete other in I/Thou relations must be supplemented by a standpoint where the concrete and generalized other continually and reciprocally correct one another. Key Words: concrete other • Gadamer • generalized other • Heidegger • hermeneutics • intersubjectivity • recognition. (shrink)

Certain critics, e.g. Manfred Frank and Hans-Herbert Kögler, claim that Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics reduces the individual subject to a mere instrument of history and tradition, the latter reproducing themselves through the subject. However, Gadamer also emphasizes the active role of the subject in shaping and creating history and tradition. In this article I argue that the critics mistakenly emphasize a one-sided conception of history. By incorporating both active and passive aspects of the subject, Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics provides the means (...) by which the individual may be conceived more aptly in an interdependent, dialectical relation to their corresponding historical, cultural, and social context. (shrink)

Gadamer was fond of telling of his last meeting with his old teacher Martin Heidegger: ‘You are right’, said Heidegger, ‘language is conversation [Sprache ist Gespräch].’1 We might argue as to what such a comment, assuming Gadamer remembered it aright, would really have meant for Heidegger – whether it would have constituted a significant revision of any view to which Heidegger was himself committed.2 The fact that Gadamer felt it worth repeating, however, does indicate something of Gadamer’s conception of the (...) relation between his thought and that of Heidegger, as well as of the centrality of the idea at issue in his own thought. Indeed, elsewhere Gadamer has commented that. (shrink)

There is a common concern in some of the writings of Husserl and Gadamer. It is the concern to defend the legitimacy and dignity of the "human sciences." They argue from the methodological standpoint that the method of the natural sciences leaves out the relationship between the object of inquiry and the inquirer. This relationship plays a key role in "understanding," which is the concem of the human sciences. In explicating it, Husserl and Gadamer stress the role of the community (...) and the lifeworld as the context of understanding. Parallels to Husserl's and Gadamer's ideas can be found in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Richard Wolin, in his article 'Nazism and the Complicities of Hans-Georg Gadamer: Untruth and Method' ( New Republic , 15 May 2000, pp. 36-45), wrongly accuses Gadamer of being 'in complicity' with the Nazis. The present article in reply was rejected by the New Republic , but is printed here to show that Wolin in his article is misinformed and unfair. First, Wolin makes elementary factual errors, such as stating that Gadamer was born in Breslau instead of Marburg. He relies (...) on a highly questionable source, Teresa Orozco, as 'definitive'. He argues often by misconstruing the evidence and guilt by association. For instance, he associates Gadamer with Werner Jaeger, with whom he disagreed and had little contact. Finally,he misinterprets basic terms in Gadamer's hermeneutics, Vorurteil and authority, attributing to them the popular sense of these terms instead of their place in Gadamer's hermeneutics. Vorurteil , popularly translated as 'prejudice', but better rendered as 'prejudgment', refers to the prior knowledge that one needs in order to understand a situation or a text. In some cases, this is part of the inherited tradition. Authority refers to the respect one pays to those one recognizes as having more knowledge than oneself: one's doctor, or parent, or teacher, a judge, or certain texts. It is not an abject surrender to all authority but the necessary respect for authority in human relationships and in society in general. By misconstruing these terms, Wolin attempts to discredit Gadamer's general philosophy,not just to demonstrate a connection to the Nazis. At the end, his argument turns into a misinformed general political attack on Gadamer as an enemy of Enlightenment values. (shrink)

Judging Gadamer’s theoretical stance is a complicated matter, and his ontological hermeneutics is usually regarded as a text-centered theory of understanding. Through an analysis of the phenomenological premises from which his theories take off, however, we can clearly see his reader-centric stance. On the basis of this stance some cease to seek for the original intention of the author or the original meaning of the text, which ineluctably leads to the ignorance of an understanding methodology. As far as people’s intentional (...) understanding is concerned, however, the important as well as essential task is still that of striving for a certain kind of understanding that is relatively correct, with universally effective methodology as its necessary prerequisite. What is more, herein lies the significance of the epistemology of hermeneutics. This article aims to re-insert a sense of methodology after hermeneutics went through a period of ontological reflection, and hence clarify that it is of necessity that hermeneutics resumes its text-centric methodological stance. (shrink)

In 'Art as Festival', I put Heidegger and Gadamer into dialogue concerning their respective critiques of traditional aesthetics and their more positive views on the work of art. I use the festival theme to examine some of the philosophical issues in Heidegger's and Gadamer's approaches to the work of art. Specifically, I look at the way both figures conceive the work of art as an encounter which, like the festival, involves a transcendence of subjectivity in an encounter with an event (...) - in this case, the artwork - which the individual does not direct, but rather in which they participate. Putting the theme of festival into play also provides a useful critical lever, especially in the way that it raises important issues of community. More specifically, reflecting on the festival celebration raises questions of the nature of this community, of the relation of the community created in the festival event to the community of the everyday, and thus also of the relation of the aesthetic and the political. (shrink)

Nietzsche penetrates behind any rational discussion to its affective ground, but though he goes deeper than Gadamer's fusion of horizons, he nevertheless fails to acknowledge any other affective disposition besides the will to power. Hence for him Gadamer's Sichverständigung, or reaching an understanding, is fiction. In contrast, Gadamer's Zugehörigkeit, a sense of kinship, and Nachlassen, relenting, suggest not only the possibility of reaching an understanding but its real, affective ground. Two passages from Homer's Iliad illustrate how Nietzsche might penetrate behind (...) Gadamer's intellectualism yet how, at the same time, Gadamer ultimately gets beyond Nietzsche. In Book I, Achilles and Agamemnon can get no further than strife because of their pathos of rage and hostility. Here Nietzsche's will to power explains their altercation entirely. On the other hand, when Achilles is confronted with the devastated Priam in book XXIV, philia and eleos, kinship and mercy, replace his anger; and with the corresponding affective shift in Priam from fear of Achilles to his own feelings of kinship and forgiveness, antipathy becomes sympathy. Only this fusion of affect allows them to reach an understanding. (shrink)