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Notes
Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics, trans. Robert M. Wallace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 8–9.
“Thus I would certainly adhere to the guiding thesis, as in my first book, that the Platonic dialogues can be depicted in their content on the conceptual level of Aristotelian teachings. Nevertheless I would admit that the real involvement in a Socratic dialogue, composed for us by Plato, moves us closer to the subject-matter than any conceptual fixation ever could,” quoted from Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Gadamer on Gadamer,” in Gadamer and Hermeneutics, ed. Hugh J. Silverman, trans. Birgit Schaaf and Gary E. Aylesworth (New York: Routledge, 1991).
The present essay is accordingly one of the few occasions on which Gadamer discusses explicitly the shortcomings of Aristotle’s art of conceptual distinction. See also: Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Aristotle and Imperative Ethics,” in Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 155–156; Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Die Idee der praktischen Philosophie,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 10 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1995), 240, 246; Aristotle, Nikomachische Ethik VI, ed. and trans. Hans-Georg Gadamer (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1998), passim.
Cf. Gadamer’s 1996 interview with Jean Grondin: “I would still like to do some basic investigations to the line that goes back and forth marking the separation between word and concept. One of these essays would deal with the topic of what ethics is, and what it means that one can talk about something practical in theoretical terms,” quoted from Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jean Grondin, “Looking Back with Gadamer Over His Writings and Their Effective History: A Dialogue with Jean Grondin,” Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 1 (2006): 99.
Translator note: For more on Gadamer’s relationship to Strauss, see: Ernest L. Fortin and Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Gadamer on Strauss: An Interview,” Interpretation 12, no. 1 (1984): 1–13. In that interview Gadamer explains that Strauss, particular in his Persecution and the Art of Writing, helped him appreciate the “external or dramatic elements” of the Platonic dialogues. Gadamer, however, notes that Strauss and his followers at times “overemphasize” these dramatic elements and consequently make claims irrelevant to the content of the dialogue.
That the expression “prohairesis” ultimately points to the same inseparability of ethos and phronēsis has, it seems to me, recently been confirmed in Lambros Couloubaritsis, “Le problème de la proairésis chez Aristote,” in Annales de l’Iinstitut de Philosophie (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1972), 7–50.
Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Denken als Erlösung,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1991), 407–417.
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A great debt of gratitude is owed to Greg Lynch, David Vessey, Weneta Dischlieva, and Babette Babich for their help in improving both this introduction and translation.
