Abstract

Hans Georg Gadamer in his influential work Truth and Method attempts to represent hermeneutics as the dialogue between discourse on the truth and discourse on the method by which we grasp the truth, in order to indicate that intersubjective communication is the only true reality of human experience. Although Gadamer notices that the method has been already torn apart from the truth, since it has followed the path of instrumental knowledge, he still tries to bring them in discussion so as to consecrate what he declares as “the dialogue that we are”. This paper focuses on the third part of Truth and Method specifically emphasizing the two basic elements of Gadamer’s universal hermeneutics: the linguistically of the hermeneutical phenomenon and the impact of the historically effected consciousness on hermeneutical experience. In the first part I discuss about the three situations of a hermeneutical experience, that is conversation, translation and text interpretation. In the second part I point to the argument that hermeneutical consciousness is indissolubly linked with historical consciousness to conclude that “fusion of horizons” leads us to a common world of understanding.