The term hermeneutics comes from the name of the Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes. Over the past millenia, hermeneutics has referred to the practice of theological interpretation. But for Gadamer, who re-introduced the term hermeneutics into contemporary discussion, the hermeneutic...
[more]The term hermeneutics comes from the name of the Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes. Over the past millenia, hermeneutics has referred to the practice of theological interpretation. But for Gadamer, who re-introduced the term hermeneutics into contemporary discussion, the hermeneutic process is not based in the divine but in history: history is the wings which carries meaning between writers, readers, speaker, listeners.
Influenced by Hegel and having studied with Heidegger, Gadamer's notion of meaning is phenomenological: it is a palpable experience, an event which takes place in time and between people. Gadamer therefore shares the poststructural and deconstructive premise that language is of this world, part of the human fray. But whereas the poststructuralists find this a source of language's failure to convey meaning, for Gadamer it is precisely the source of meaning's success. (Gadamer and Derrida in fact debated this point in a face to face exchange.) After all, he suggests, we are all constituents of the same language which has necessarily grown as humans have grown. We are in language just as language is in us. And it is this fact which accounts for understanding between people and across the ages.
Gadamer therefore writes against the scientific claim to objectivity and methodological means of attainting understanding. He focuses in particular on the so-called human sciences which in the 19th century adopted the scientific model as a mode of comprehending human experience. But as Gadamer maintains, human experience takes place within language, within subjectivity, within perspective, within the inclination prejudice affords.
In fact, this privileging of perspective and reliance on history and tradition as the ground of understanding has earned Gadamer the reputation of being conservative. On the other hand, his assertion that human and linguistic experience are inextricable have earned him the reputation of being too radical-especially from that ardant moralist, Habermas (or Blabbermas, as the case may be). But as Gadamer is a shameless dialectician, a bastard disciple of Hegel, the truth lies somewhere in between and beyond both of these two interpretations: Gadmer offers a radical traditionalism.
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