Customer Reviews (9)

A mighty work on interpretation
Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method must be considered alongside the great works of Dilthey, Husserl, and Heidegger as a major treatise on hermeneutics, defined by Gadamer as understanding and the correct interpretation of what has been understood.More commonly, people define hermeneutics as the study/theory of interpretation.

Two major contentions that help frame his analysis are: (1) rejection of the view that proper understanding calls for eliminating the influence of the interpreter's context; (2) rejection of the view that the author's intent in writing a text has any special weight to it.

As to the first point, he argues that it is simply not possible for the interpreter to escape his present situation.He advances the concept of the "horizon."For Gadamer, the horizon is ". . .the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point."It is the grounding of the interpreter, including that person's language, that fixes the possibilities of what that person can see and understand.In Gadamer's words, it is

". . .the way in which thought is tied to its finite determination, and the nature of the law of the expansion of the range of vision.A person who has no horizon is a man who does not see far enough and hence over values what is nearest to him.Contrariwise, to have an horizon means not to be limited to what is nearest, but to be able to see beyond it.A person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, as near or far, great or small."

To interpret the words of the past, Gadamer says that:

"Just as in a conversation, when we have discovered the standpoint and horizon of the other person, his ideas become intelligible, without our necessarily having to agree with him, the person who thinks historically comes to understand the meaning of what has been handed down, without necessarily agreeing with it, or seeing himself in it."

In interpreting texts, two horizons are involved--one is the horizon of the interpreter and the other the particular historical horizon into which he or she places him or herself in trying to understand the text.Thus, the two horizons interact to produce understanding.

The historical horizon of the text is not fixed; it cannot take on a meaning that is unchanged for all times and places.Here, he gets to the heart of successful hermeneutic inquiry--the fusing of horizons.He says:

"Hence the horizon of the present cannot be formed with the past.There is no more an isolated horizon of the present than there are historical horizons.Understanding, rather, is always the fusion of these horizons which we imagine to exist by themselves. . .Every encounter with tradition that takes place within historical consciousness involves the experience of the tension between the text and the present."

But what of the intention of the original author of a text?That leads to another ofGadamer's major points, by now clearly implicit in his idea of fusion of horizons.In short, it is not particularly important in trying to interpret a text.Once a text is created by its author, it becomes, so to speak, freed from the creator and begins to take on its own meaning, based upon its historical horizon, continually evolving as circumstances change.It is the text's horizon that interacts with the interpreter's horizon.

So what?To the extent that "reality" is the subject of inquiry, our understanding of "reality" will change as the historical horizon of a particular claim about reality changes.We can, then, never come to a satisfactory conclusion about a transcendental reality, about an absolute truth.Is relativism the end product of the endeavor?The hermeneutist in the Gadamerian tradition would simply note that there is no way out.

This is one of the most historically important works available on interpretation.It is difficult and challenging as a work; however, the effort to learn from Gadamer is well worth it.

Prejudice as Philosophy (in Spanish)
Para Gadamer, la temporalidad de la tradición es absolutamente necesaria para la hermenéutica y de esta manera, la superación de la tradición es vista como una transformación de la tradición: "En nuestro comportamiento respecto al pasado, que estamos confirmando constantemente, la actitud real no es la distancia ni la libertad respecto a lo transmitido. Por el contrario, nos encontramos siempre en tradiciones, y éste nuestro pensar dentro de ellas no es un comportamiento objetivador que pensara como extraño o ajeno lo que dice la tradición; ésta es siempre más bien algo propio, ejemplar o aborrecible, es un reconocerse en el que para nuestro juicio histórico posterior no se aprecia apenas conocimiento, sino un imperceptible ir transformándose al paso de la misma tradición."

La "historia efectual" (wirkliche Historie) o los efectos del pasado en el presente más allá de lo sabido científicamente, es la transformación vital del sujeto histórico, pero desde el interior de la tradición: "La experiencia hermenéutica tiene que ver con la tradición. Es ésta la que tiene que acceder a la experiencia.Sin embargo, la tradición no es un simple acontecer que pudiera conocerse y dominarse por la experiencia, sino que es lenguaje..." .Aquí Gadamer hace referencia a que, precisamente, el medio de la experiencia hermenéutica es el lenguaje y por tanto interpretable, pero los límites de la interpretación que, de alguna manera, constituyen la ética de la investigación, es tomar en cuenta los prejuicios históricos y la autoridad de la tradición que en Gadamer quedan rehabilitados, es "la resolución entre oposición abstracta entre tradición e investigación histórica, entre historia y conocimiento de la misma".Es decir, la interpretación histórica se debe efectuar dentro de la tradición que no está fundada sobre una autoridad coercitiva sino de conocimiento:"Este sentido rectamente entendido de autoridad no tiene nada que ver con una obediencia ciega de comando.En realidad no tiene nada que ver con obediencia sino con conocimiento."Es decir, Gadamer implica que la autoridad de la tradición, lo mismo que el concepto de historia, se constituye no por la lucha entre diferentes discursos pasados sino por el conocimiento. Ahora bien, el problema es si el conocimiento dado por la tradición está in situ en el pasado o si no es algo construido en su poshistoria.Los contenidos de autoridad de la tradición son dados a posteriori y Gadamer, me parece, hace abstracción de las relaciones de poder que están inherentes a los prejuicios.La crítica que hace a la concepción de prejuicio a la Ilustración es que ésta separa absolutamente razón y tradición no viendo precisamente que la tradición y la autoridad también son racionales. La rehabilitación del prejuicio es que éste precisamente es el principio de comprensión del receptor:"La moderna investigación histórica tampoco es sólo investigación, sino en parte también mediación de la tradición."

Very difficult -- although admittedly a classic.
I hate to admit it...especially because all the other reviewers have raved about it...but I find Truth and Method to be a real slog. Yes -- there is some good stuff here. But be warned - you will really, really have to work to get through this book!

Now at this point you may be thinking "well, you are probably lazy or were unprepared." But the thing is - I was neither. I have read Being and Time (which I think is an easier - yes easier - book) and have done much prepatory work for T & M including Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics by Jean Grondin -- which I highly recommend).

This book is brilliant. But I think it is very interesting that all the reviewers have such high praise for a text that is so very difficult. Great ideas do not need to be inaccessible. Don't believe me? Look at Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche.....

Klassisch!
First, Truth and Method is a true classic. Basically, it sees Gadamer revitalise 'nonscientific' truth, i.e. the experience of truth inaccessible to method and irreducible to bare statement. The book itself does have a structure/setting that makes it difficult to get into initially (it is usefully read in tandem with a good commentary eg. Joel Weinsheimer's 'Gadamer's Hermeneutics'), but it is simply worth the effort.

Second, the review below is mistaken when it attributes to Gadamer the idea that the Old Testament should be read literally. Gadamer refers to Luther's position that "the Scripture has a univocal sense that can be derived from the text", but he does this as part of an historical overview of hermeneutics and, on the very next page, Luther gets refuted by 18thC historicism. Gadamer moves beyond both these positions to reveal how 'literalism' (and - more pressingly - 'historicism') is a projection of unproductive prejudices. It is an "obstruction", that gets in the way of the truth Gadamer seeks. Also, while T&M is relevant to theology, it should be made clear that Gadamer is writing of a philosophical-universal hermeneutics and not something regional.

Bold and Daring Christian-Judaic Thought
Gadamer's _Truth and Method_ is both very profound and very readable; it is a vast improvement over other more widely-read philosophical texts from the same region and time period (such as Heidegger's _Being and Time_ and Husserl's _Crisis of the European Sciences_).Unlike the aforementioned philosophers, Gadamer is actually willing to stick his neck out and reveal to us the true nature of his own personal spiritual beliefs.Believe it or not, Gadamer has the audacity to tell us that we "must take the Old Testament literally" (!) That's right, folks.Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, Moses, Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-Joseph-ect.We have to take all of that literally.Now I've been to north-Georgia, backcountry, hillbilly Baptist churches where they didn't believe in that stuff anymore.And that is precisely what makes Gadamer's philosophy so revolutionary.The age of reason has quite literally come full circle.People were completely caught off guard by this shocking new assertion, that we must once again turn to the literal interpretation of the Old Testament in order to explain the dawn of temporal conciousness in man.
It seems as though modern phenomenolgy has uncovered far more new questions than it has answers.Hegel was one of the first to attempt an in-depth systemization on how and why the "spirit enters into time".Heidegger was one of the first with a specific answer, stating that the phenomenon of spirit is attributable to a type of "care" and "being-unto-death".Sarte countered that this phenomenology is in fact a result of "being-unto-other".But if we believe Gadamer's historical theory, we may have a concrete solution to all of these problems.Rather than be stuck with a narrow and one-dimensional theory of the phenomenon of soul (which could easily be diluted with other contingencies and unforeseen contributing factors) Gadamer brings us back to a very viable, believable, and comprehesive system of the historical birth of the spirit.Granted, it is impossible to empirically prove the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, but Gadamer points out this historic text's uncanny ability to account for and eliminate every possible obstacle to the coming-into-being of spirit.Once we understand Gadamer's system, we realize that not only is the Old Testament a sensible, fitting, and believable way to account for our existence, it is actually one of the most solid and inarguable existential theories out there.Yes, it does seem shocking and surprising at first, but the more you think about it, the more believable you will find the Old Testament to be.Apparently, the modern philosopher must go down every dead-end, back-alley historical theory known to man before he can finally come to terms with the wisdom of the ancients.
So the only question remaining is, should you buy this book?If you are open minded enough to at least consider the possibility of the historical theory described above, then you will probably find this book to be interesting and intellectually stimulating.If, on the other hand, you are horrified and appauled by what I just said, maybe you should instead ask your college professor for his latest recommendation. ... Read more

Book Description
Through a comparison of their aesthetics and hermeneutics, this book reveals that both Gadamer and Balthasar reject an autonomous, neutral, distanced starting point for interpretation. Instead, they advocate a dialogical model in which interpreters allow themselves to be engaged by the truth of the text or artwork at hand. Both thinkers use aesthetic categories to describe this model of interpretation (such as the neo-Platonic category of radiance) and both reflect a disclosure-concealment theory of truth. In recognizing that interpreters are part of an unfolding history and that the examination of historical texts cannot be done from a neutral standpoint, they both acknowledge that textual interpretation must contain the dimension of dialogue with the past truths. Significantly, Balthasar incorporates these aesthetic and hermeneutical categories into an explicitly Trinitarian salvation-history framework, which is absent in Gadamer's thought.This book concludes with the implications of an aesthetic hermeneutics for contemporary Roman Catholic theology and its dialogue with various schools of thought (philosophical and religious), arguing that the concrete, particular forms of Christianity as expressed in Roman Catholicism cannot be bracketed or evacuated by Catholic theologians in the interest of achieving consensus in religious matters. To the contrary, it is precisely in these forms that we believe that God's revelation takes place. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume makes available for the first time in English the most important of Hans-Georg Gadamer's extensive writings on art and literature. The principal text included is 'The Relevance of the Beautiful', Gadamer's most sustained treatment of philosophical aesthetics. The eleven other essays focus particularly on the challenge issued by modern painting and literature to our customary ideas of art, and use that challenge to revitalize our understanding of it. Gadamer demonstrates the continuing importance of such concepts as imitation, truth, symbol, and play for our appreciation of contemporary art, and thereby establishes its continuity with the Western tradition. The essays here are not technical and are readily accessible to the beginning student and the general reader. The collection as a whole serves to illustrate the practice of hermeneutics and to introduce Gadamer's thought. Robert Bernasconi provides an introduction clarifying the central aims of the essays and their relations to Gadamer's major work, Truth and Method, and to the philosophy of art since Kant. A bibliography of Gadamer's writings available in English is also included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ars Critica
In The Relevance of the Beautiful, Gadamer hopes to justify the ways of art to modern man.He's answering Plato's banishment of the poets in The Republic, and every other such banishment, including Hegel's, who claimed that "art is a thing of the past" on the grounds that art re-establishes our sense of transcendence and order, that it "bridges the chasm between the ideal and the real," establishes our sense of "play," and otherwise enlarges our experience of life, communally, spiritually, culturally, and individually.It teaches us to go beyond ourselves.German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, famed student of Heidegger and author of the seminal Truth and Method, offers this phenomenological defense.As translated by Robert Bernasconi, Gadamer writes such a poetic and aphoristic prose that anyone with a moderate background in the arts can read it, as well as philosophers, artists, and critics.This essay is useful for a number of reasons: it gives articulate defenses-or condemnations-of translation, modern music (both pop and experimental), kitch, religious art, and historical painting.It is further particularly useful to me in that the grounds on which he makes many of his defenses mirror those of P.B. Shelley in "A Defense of Poetry." ... Read more

Book Description
A philosophical and historical testament to the twentieth century, this volume consists of a wide-ranging series of interviews conducted in 1999/2000 between the then centenarian and his former assistant and associate of over thirty years, Riccardo Dottori. In the course of the interviews, Gadamer addresses-often critically-the work of a wide range of philosophers, including Heidegger, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Popper, Vico, Habermas, Rorty, and Derrida. With the possible exception of his autobiography, A Century of Philosophy is perhaps the most accessible expression of Gadamer’s life and work in English today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Addressing the works of a variety of philosophers
A welcome addition to academic library Philosophy Studies collections, Hans-Georg Gadamer's A Century Of Philosophy: A Conversation With Riccardo Dottori presents a series of interviews conducted in the years 1999 and 2000, examining what has been arguably the bloodiest century in human history. Addressing the works of a variety of philosophers, including Nietzsche, Jaspers, Popper, Vico, and many others, A Century Of Philosophy astutely summarizes and expresses Riccardo Gadamer's life and work in a highly accessible and straightforward manner. ... Read more

Book Description
Gadamer on Celan makes all of Hans-Georg Gadamer's published writings on Paul Celan's poetry available in English for the first time. Gadamer's commentaries on Celan's work are explicitly meant for a general audience, and they are further testimony to Celan's growing importance in world literature since the Second World War. Celan's poetry has attracted the attention of many well-known figures, including Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Edmond Jabe`s, Otto Poggeler, and George Steiner. As Steiner has said, "It will take a long time for our sensibilities to apprehend poetry of these dimensions and this radicality." Gadamer's commentaries will help readers to listen to Celan's poetry, and to become acquainted with his only book-length commentary on a poet, using the best example of Gadamer's thinking on the relationship of philosophy and poetry.

This book also contains a translation of Who Am I and Who Are You?, the centerpiece of Gadamer's most important philosophical project since the publication of Truth and Method (1960). Who Am I and Who Are You?demonstrates Gadamer's continual engagement with the key figures of twentieth-century thought, and his responsiveness to the challenges of modernist art and its various affronts to hermeneutics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I'll never see Celan, or poetry, the same way again
Gadamer is an amazing reader of poetry, in a league with Benjamin. What's more, he's a patient and benevolent teacher. As you read his commentaries, the poems under consideration come into their own, show themselves, start really to BE THERE for you. A truly magnificent experience, magnificently true.

Academic hubris has its way with a noble poet
Either you get Gadamer or you don't. Either you understand/respect/follow him out of the Heideggerian 'Clearing' or you start hacking therough the dense and tangled undergrowth and make your own path. I've never felt much affinity for his magnum opus, 'Truth and Method,' but then, all of Heidegger's belabored philosophical children leave me a tad cold... Hannah, Karl, Hans... The only one I felt had something new to say was Levinas. So let's just say that, 'ideologically' I'm not an enemy- just a contender.

You buy this- you get jargon juggling. Lots of jargon juggling. Little substance. I wonder what Celan would have made of this, as he too was very influenced by H's opus, Being and Time, he kept an annotated copy with him. This 'engagement,' as it is described, is another shred of soulless, brittle, and all-too obscurantist work that drains the lifeblood of Celan, page by page. The essay, "Who Am I and Who Are You?" Didn't seem to get anywhere on that topic. Endlessly tangential. Painfully dry.

It's strikes me as odd that Celan seemd able to draw upon Heidegger more deeply and interestingly than Lowith, Gadamer, et al... Most academic reformulation, elaborations of the H-ian legacy come off as tendentious posturing- weilding academic lingo as a blunt plank with which one beats one's readers into unconsciousness.

Beware. Get the Felstiner work, if anything. Or better yet... Let Celan speak for himself. ... Read more

Book Description
One of this century's most important philosophers here focuses on Plato's PROTAGORAS, PHAEDO, REPUBLIC, and PHILEBUS and on Aristotle's three moral treatises to show the essential continuity of Platonic and Aristotelian reflection on the nature of the good. In so doing Gadamer not only succeeds in giving us an incisive example of his interpretive art but also gives us a clearer picture of the ethical dimension of his own philosophy and the practical implications of hermeneutical theory. ... Read more

Book Description
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was one of the greatest philosophers of our era. He was also at the center of some of the century's darkest, most complex historical events, for he chose to remain in his native Germany in the 1930s, neither supporting Hitler nor actively opposing him, but negotiating instead an "unpolitical" position that allowed him to continue his philosophical work. In this magisterial book, Jean Grondin appraises Gadamer's life and achievement. Drawing on countless interviews with Gadamer and his contemporaries, Gadamer's personal correspondence, and extensive archival research, Grondin traces Gadamer's life as an academician and the development of his ideas, placing them in the context of his times. He sheds light on the genesis and accomplishment of Gadamer's major opus, Truth and Method, the bible of modern-day hermeneutics. And he addresses the question of Gadamer's attitude and actions amid the catastrophe of Nazi Germany, painting a balanced portrait of a scholar who tried to preserve German culture and tradition in the face of an invasive menace. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Truth And Tedium!
The author of this thick biography, Jean Grondin, has always been one of the most astute and informed commentators on the subject of philosophical hermeneutics.

Prospective readers need not be put off by this volume's bulk (478 pages) since almost 140 pages are devoted to scholarly apparatus which most of us will ignore.That leaves only 338 pages of actual text to read (plus a few pages of pictures to enjoy).In this era of bloated biographies, we can be thankful for Professor Grondin's restraint.The average intelligent reader will probably find herself skimming chapters 2 - 5 (Gadamer's ancestry and youth) and chapters 10 - 12 (academic politics in the mid-twentieth century) thereby shortening this book by an additional 115 pages.That leaves about 200 pages of interesting reading about Gadamer, Heidegger, Nazis, poets, Habermas, Derrida, Plato, phenomenology, human finitude, etc.

Not surprisingly, Professor Grondin does a fine job of sorting out the influences of others in the formation of Gadamer's conception of hermeneutics and in communicating the gist of his major work, TRUTH AND METHOD.Unfortunately, Grondin never gets around to telling us much about his subject's life-long enthusiasm for the arts (Why did Gadamer love Rilke's poetry?What visual artists was Gadamer excited about?).

In short, this is a good biography of an important twentieth century philosopher, but not a great one (for a great one order Ray Monk's WITTGENSTEIN : THE DUTY OF GENIUS). ... Read more

Book Description
This classic work by Hans-Georg Gadamer-now translated into English for the first time-offers an extensive and imaginative interpretation of Plato's Philebus. Gadamer's earliest book, it also provides an ideal introduction to his thinking, showing how his influential hermeneutics emerged from his application of his teacher Martin Heidegger's phenomenological method to classical texts and problems. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on December 1, 2001. The length of the article is 859 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics. (book review)
Author: Christopher Albrecht
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 2001
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: 55Issue: 2Page: 393(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1952 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
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Book Description
Images of and references to women are so rare in the vast corpus of his published work that there seems to be no "woman question" for Hans-Georg Gadamer. Yet the authors of the fifteen essays included in this volume show that it is possible to read past Gadamer's silences about women and other Others to find rich resources for feminist theory and practice in his views of science, language, history, knowledge, medicine, and literature.

While the essayists find much of value in Gadamer's work, he emerges from their discussion as a controversial figure. Some contributors see him as promoting genuine respect for and engagement with Otherness: others claim that in a Gadamerian conversation the Other has no voice. For some, Gadamer's immersion in tradition is an impediment to feminist inquiry; for others, cognizant of the need to understand tradition well in order to contest its intransigence or benefit from its insights, his way of engaging tradition is especially productive. Some contributors take issue with the separation he maintains between philosophy and politics; others find problems in his relative silence on matters of embodiment; still others maintain that a "fusion of horizons" amounts to a colonizing of difference. But a common aim of each of these controversies is to discern what feminists can learn from Gadamer as well as what limitations feminist reinterpretations of his work must inevitably encounter.

Contributors are Linda Martín Alcoff, William Cowling, Gemma Corradi Fiumara, Marie Fleming, Silja Freudenberger, Susan Hekman, Susan-Judith Hoffmann, Grace M. Jantzen, Patricia Altenbernd Johnson, Laura Kaplan, Robin Pappas, Robin May Schott, Meili Steele, Veronica Vasterling, Georgia Warnke, and Kathleen Roberts Wright. ... Read more