Encountering Finitude: On the Hermeneutic Radicalization of Experience

In Antonio Cimino & Cees Leijenhorst (eds.), Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives. Boston: Brill. pp. 46-62 (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The chapter approaches the hermeneutic concept of experience introduced by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method (1960) from the perspective of the conceptual history of experience in the Western philosophical tradition. Through an overview of the concept and the epistemological function of experience (empeiria, experientia, Erfahrung) in Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and Hegel, it is shown that the tradition has considered experience first and foremost in methodological terms, that is, as a pathway towards a form of scientific knowledge that is itself increasingly immune to experience. Science strives “beyond” experience because of the limitations inherent in the fundamentally contingent, singular, and negative character of experience: experience comes to us through unpredictable chance encounters and in singular situations and negates, tests, or “imperils” previous knowledge, thereby transforming it. By contrast, philosophical hermeneutics rethinks experience precisely in terms of these limitations. In the hermeneutic approach articulated by Gadamer and Claude Romano, experience is an encounter with the irreducible finitude and historical situatedness of one’s understanding and conceptual framework, an encounter with an otherness that puts our preunderstanding to test and requires us to revise it. Hermeneutic experience is thus a singular event that irreparably transforms us.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Coming Full Circle. Experience, Tradition, and Critique in Gadamer and McDowell.David Lauer - 2023 - In Daniel Martin Feige & Thomas J. Spiegel (eds.), McDowell and the hermeneutic tradition. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 166-191.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-12-21

Downloads
542 (#43,015)

6 months
122 (#41,267)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Jussi M. Backman
Tampere University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references