Hans-Georg Gadamer (; German: [ˈɡaːdamɐ];
February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was
a German philosopher of the continental tradition,
best known for his 1960 magnum opus Truth
and Method (Wahrheit und Methode) on hermeneutics.
He was a Protestant Christian.
== Life ==
Gadamer was born in Marburg, Germany, the
son of Johannes Gadamer (1867–1928), a pharmaceutical
chemistry professor who later also served
as the rector of the University of Marburg.
He resisted his father's urging to take up
the natural sciences and became more and more
interested in the humanities. His mother,
Emma Karoline Johanna Geiese (1869–1904)
died of diabetes while Hans-Georg was four
years old, and he later noted that this may
have had an effect on his decision to not
pursue scientific studies. Jean Grondin describes
Gadamer as finding in his mother "a poetic
and almost religious counterpart to the iron
fist of his father". Gadamer did not serve
during World War I for reasons of ill health
and similarly was exempted from serving during
World War II due to polio.He grew up and studied
classics and philosophy in the University
of Breslau under Richard Hönigswald, but
soon moved back to the University of Marburg
to study with the Neo-Kantian philosophers
Paul Natorp (his doctoral thesis advisor)
and Nicolai Hartmann. He defended his dissertation
The Essence of Pleasure in Plato's Dialogues
(Das Wesen der Lust nach den Platonischen
Dialogen) in 1922.Shortly thereafter, Gadamer
moved to Freiburg University and began studying
with Martin Heidegger, who was then a promising
young scholar who had not yet received a professorship.
He and Heidegger became close, and when Heidegger
received a position at Marburg, Gadamer followed
him there, where he became one of a group
of students such as Leo Strauss, Karl Löwith,
and Hannah Arendt. It was Heidegger's influence
that gave Gadamer's thought its distinctive
cast and led him away from the earlier neo-Kantian
influences of Natorp and Hartmann. Gadamer
studied Aristotle both under Edmund Husserl
and under Heidegger.Gadamer habilitated in
1929 and spent most of the early 1930s lecturing
in Marburg. Unlike Heidegger, who joined the
Nazi Party in May 1933 and continued as a
member until the party was dissolved following
World War II, Gadamer was silent on Nazism,
and he was not politically active during the
Third Reich. Gadamer did not join the Nazis,
and he did not serve in the army because of
the polio he had contracted in 1922. He joined
the National Socialist Teachers League in
August 1933.In 1933 Gadamer signed the Loyalty
Oath of German Professors to Adolf Hitler
and the National Socialist State.
In April 1937 he became a temporary professor
at Marburg, then in 1938 he received a professorship
at Leipzig University. From an SS-point of
view Gadamer was classified as neither supportive
nor disapproving in the "SD-Dossiers über
Philosophie-Professoren" (i.e. SD-files concerning
philosophy professors) that were set up by
the SS-Security-Service (SD). In 1946, he
was found by the American occupation forces
to be untainted by Nazism and named rector
of the university.
The level of Gadamer's involvement with the
Nazis has been disputed in the works of Richard
Wolin and Teresa Orozco. Orozco alleges, with
reference to Gadamer's published works, that
Gadamer had supported the Nazis more than
scholars had supposed. Gadamer scholars have
rejected these assertions: Jean Grondin has
said that Orozco is engaged in a "witch-hunt"
while Donatella Di Cesare said that "the archival
material on which Orozco bases her argument
is actually quite negligible". Cesare and
Grondin have argued that there is no trace
of antisemitism in Gadamer's work, and that
Gadamer maintained friendships with Jews and
provided shelter for nearly two years for
the philosopher Jacob Klein in 1933 and 1934.
Gadamer also reduced his contact with Heidegger
during the Nazi era.The communist DDR was
no more to Gadamer's liking than the Third
Reich, and he left for West Germany, accepting
first a position in Goethe University Frankfurt
and then the succession of Karl Jaspers in
the University of Heidelberg in 1949. He remained
in this position, as emeritus, until his death
in 2002 at the age of 102. He was also an
Editorial Advisor of the journal Dionysius.
It was during this time that he completed
his magnum opus, Truth and Method (1960),
and engaged in his famous debate with Jürgen
Habermas over the possibility of transcending
history and culture in order to find a truly
objective position from which to critique
society. The debate was inconclusive, but
marked the beginning of warm relations between
the two men. It was Gadamer who secured Habermas's
first professorship in the University of Heidelberg.
In 1968, Gadamer invited Tomonobu Imamichi
for lectures at Heidelberg, but their relationship
became very cool after Imamichi alleged that
Heidegger had taken his concept of Dasein
out of Okakura Kakuzo's concept of das in-der-Welt-sein
(to be in the being in the world) expressed
in The Book of Tea, which Imamichi's teacher
had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having
followed lessons with him the year before.
Imamichi and Gadamer renewed contact four
years later during an international congress.In
1981, Gadamer attempted to engage with Jacques
Derrida at a conference in Paris but it proved
less enlightening because the two thinkers
had little in common. A last meeting between
Gadamer and Derrida was held at the Stift
of Heidelberg in July 2001, coordinated by
Derrida's students Joseph Cohen and Raphael
Zagury-Orly. This meeting marked, in many
ways, a turn in their philosophical encounter.
After Gadamer's death, Derrida called their
failure to find common ground one of the worst
debacles of his life and expressed, in the
main obituary for Gadamer, his great personal
and philosophical respect. Richard J. Bernstein
said that "[a] genuine dialogue between Gadamer
and Derrida has never taken place. This is
a shame because there are crucial and consequential
issues that arise between hermeneutics and
deconstruction".Gadamer received honorary
doctorates from the University of Bamberg,
the University of Breslau, Boston College,
Charles University in Prague, Hamilton College,
the University of Leipzig, the University
of Marburg (1999) the University of Ottawa,
Saint Petersburg State University (2001),
the University of Tübingen and University
of Washington.On February 11, 2000, the University
of Heidelberg celebrated Gadamer's one hundredth
birthday with a ceremony and conference. Gadamer's
last academic engagement was in the summer
of 2001 at an annual symposium on hermeneutics
that two of Gadamer's American students had
organised. On March 13, 2002, Gadamer died
at Heidelberg's University Clinic at the age
of 102. He is buried in the Köpfel cemetery
in Ziegelhausen.
== Work ==
=== Philosophical hermeneutics and Truth and
Method ===
Gadamer's philosophical project, as explained
in Truth and Method, was to elaborate on the
concept of "philosophical hermeneutics", which
Heidegger initiated but never dealt with at
length. Gadamer's goal was to uncover the
nature of human understanding. In Truth and
Method, Gadamer argued that "truth" and "method"
were at odds with one another. For Gadamer,
"the experience of art is exemplary in its
provision of truths that are inaccessible
by scientific methods, and this experience
is projected to the whole domain of human
sciences." He was critical of two approaches
to the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften).
On the one hand, he was critical of modern
approaches to humanities that modeled themselves
on the natural sciences, which simply sought
to “objectively” observe and analyze texts
and art. On the other hand, he took issue
with the traditional German approaches to
the humanities, represented for instance by
Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey,
who believed that meaning, as an object, could
be found within a text through a particular
process that allowed for a connection with
the author’s thoughts that led to the creation
of a text (Schleiermacher), or the situation
that led to an expression of human inner life
(Dilthey).However, Gadamer argued meaning
and understanding are not objects to be found
through certain methods, but are inevitable
phenomena. Hermeneutics is not a process in
which an interpreter finds a particular meaning,
but “a philosophical effort to account for
understanding as an ontological—the ontological—process
of man.” Thus, Gadamer is not giving a prescriptive
method on how to understand, but rather he
is working to examine how understanding, whether
of texts, artwork, or experience, is possible
at all. Gadamer intended Truth and Method
to be a description of what we always do when
we interpret things (even if we do not know
it): "My real concern was and is philosophic:
not what we do or what we ought to do, but
what happens to us over and above our wanting
and doing".As a result of Martin Heidegger’s
temporal analysis of human existence, Gadamer
argued that people have a so-called historically-effected
consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein),
and that they are embedded in the particular
history and culture that shaped them. However
the historical consciousness is not an object
over and against our existence, but “a stream
in which we move and participate, in every
act of understanding.” Therefore, people
do not come to any given thing without some
form of preunderstanding established by this
historical stream. The tradition in which
an interpreter stands establishes "prejudices"
that affect how he or she will make interpretations.
For Gadamer, these prejudices are not something
that hinders our ability to make interpretations,
but are both integral to the reality of being,
and “are the basis of our being able to
understand history at all.” Gadamer criticized
Enlightenment thinkers for harboring a "prejudice
against prejudices".For Gadamer, interpreting
a text involves a fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung).
Both the text and the interpreter find themselves
within a particular historical tradition,
or “horizon.” Each horizon is expressed
through the medium of language, and both text
and interpreter belong to and participate
in history and language. This “belongingness”
to language is the common ground between interpreter
and text that makes understanding possible.
As an interpreter seeks to understand a text,
a common horizon emerges. This fusion of horizons
does not mean the interpreter now fully understands
some kind of objective meaning, but is “an
event in which a world opens itself to him.”
The result is a deeper understanding of the
subject matter.
Gadamer further explains the hermeneutical
experience as a dialogue. To justify this,
he uses Plato’s dialogues as a model for
how we are to engage with written texts. To
be in conversation, one must take seriously
“the truth claim of the person with whom
one is conversing.” Further, each participant
in the conversation relates to one another
insofar as they belong to the common goal
of understanding one another. Ultimately,
for Gadamer, the most important dynamic of
conversation as a model for the interpretation
of a text is “the give-and-take of question
and answer.” In other words, the interpretation
of a
given text will change depending on the questions
the interpreter asks of the
text. The "meaning" emerges not as an object
that lies in the text or in the interpreter,
but rather an event that results from the
interaction of the two.
Truth and Method was published twice in English,
and the revised edition is now considered
authoritative. The German-language edition
of Gadamer's Collected Works includes a volume
in which Gadamer elaborates his argument and
discusses the critical response to the book.
Finally, Gadamer's essay on Celan (entitled
"Who Am I and Who Are You?") has been considered
by many—including Heidegger and Gadamer
himself—as a "second volume" or continuation
of the argument in Truth and Method.
==== Contributions to communication ethics
====
Gadamer's Truth and Method has become an authoritative
work in the communication ethics field, spawning
several prominent ethics theories and guidelines.
The most profound of these is the formulation
of the dialogic coordinates, a standard set
of prerequisite communication elements necessary
for inciting dialogue. Adhering to Gadamer's
theories regarding bias, communicators can
better initiate dialogic transaction, allowing
biases to merge and promote mutual understanding
and learning.
=== Other works ===
Gadamer also added philosophical substance
to the notion of human health. In The Enigma
of Health, Gadamer explored what it means
to heal, as a patient and a provider. In this
work the practice and art of medicine are
thoroughly examined, as is the inevitability
of any cure.In addition to his work in hermeneutics,
Gadamer is also well known for a long list
of publications on Greek philosophy. Indeed,
while Truth and Method became central to his
later career, much of Gadamer's early life
centered around studying Greek thinkers, Plato
and Aristotle specifically. In the Italian
introduction to Truth and Method, Gadamer
said that his work on Greek philosophy was
"the best and most original part" of his career.
His book Plato's Dialectical Ethics looks
at the Philebus dialogue through the lens
of phenomenology and the philosophy of Martin
Heidegger.
== Prizes and awards ==
1971: Pour le Mérite and the Reuchlin Prize
1972: Great Cross of Merit with Star of the
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of
Germany
1979: Sigmund Freud Award for scientific prose
and Hegel Prize
1986: Jaspers Prize
1990: Great Cross of Merit with Star and Sash
of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic
of Germany
1993: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of
the Federal Republic of Germany
12 January 1996: appointed an honorary member
of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig
Honorary doctorates
1995: University of Wrocław
1996: University of Leipzig
1999: Philipps-University Marburg
== Bibliography ==
PrimaryDialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical
Studies on Plato. Trans. and ed. by P. Christopher
Smith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1980.
The Enigma of Health: The Art of Healing in
a Scientific Age. Trans. John Gaiger and Richard
Walker. Oxford: Polity Press, 1996.
Gadamer on Celan: ‘Who Am I and Who Are
You?’ and Other Essays. By Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Trans. and ed. Richard Heinemann and Bruce
Krajewski. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997.
The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later
Writings. Ed. by Richard E. Palmer. Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007.
Hegel's Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies.
Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1976.
Heidegger's Ways. Trans. John W. Stanley.
New York: SUNY Press, 1994.
The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian
Philosophy. Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New
Haven, CT: 1986.
Literature and Philosophy in Dialogue: Essays
in German Literary Theory. Trans. Robert H.
Paslick. New York: SUNY Press, 1993.
Philosophical Apprenticeships. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1985 (Gadamer's memoirs.)
Philosophical Hermeneutics. Trans. and ed.
by David Linge. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1976.
Plato's "Parmenides" and Its Influence. Dionysius,
Volume VII (1983): 3-16
Reason in the Age of Science. Trans. by Frederick
Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.
The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays.
Trans. N. Walker. ed. R. Bernasconi, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Praise of Theory. Trans. Chris Dawson. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Truth and Method. 2nd rev. edition. Trans.
J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. New York:
Crossroad, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8264-7697-5 excerptSecondaryArthos,
John. The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics.
South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
2009.
Cercel, Larisa (ed.), Übersetzung und Hermeneutik
/ Traduction et herméneutique, Bucharest,
Zeta Books, 2009, ISBN 978-973-199-706-3.
Dostal, Robert L. ed. The Cambridge Companion
to Gadamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.
Drechsler, Wolfgang. Gadamer in Marburg. Marburg:
Blaues Schloss, 2013.
Code, Lorraine. ed. Feminist Interpretations
of Hans-Georg Gadamer. University Park: Penn
State Press, 2003.
Coltman, Robert. The Language of Hermeneutics:
Gadamer and Heidegger in Dialogue. Albany:
State University Press, 1998.
Grondin, Jean. The Philosophy of Gadamer.
trans. Kathryn Plant. New York: McGill-Queens
University Press, 2002.
Grondin, Jean. Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography
trans. Joel Weinsheimer. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2004.
Kögler, Hans-Herbert. The Power of Dialogue:
Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault
trans. Paul Hendrickson. MIT Press, 1996.
Krajewski, Bruce (ed.), Gadamer's Repercussions:
Reconsidering Philosophical Hermeneutics.
Berkeley: University of California Press,
2004.
Lawn, Chris. Gadamer : a guide for the perplexed.
(Guides for the perplexed) London: Continuum,
c2006. ISBN 978-0-8264-8461-1
Malpas, Jeff, and Santiago Zabala (eds),Consequences
of Hermeneutics: Fifty Years after Truth and
Method, (Northwestern University Press, 2010).
Malpas, Jeff, Ulrich Arnswald and Jens Kertscher
(eds.). Gadamer's Century: Essays in Honour
of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2002.
Risser, James. Hermeneutics and the Voice
of the other: Re-reading Gadamer's Philosophical
Hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Warnke, Georgia. "Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition
and Reason". Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1987.
Weinsheimer, Joel. Gadamer's Hermeneutics:
A Reading of "Truth and Method". New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1985.
Wierciński, Andrzej. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics
and the Art of Conversation Germany, Münster:
LIT Verlag, 2011.
Wright, Kathleen ed. Festivals of Interpretation:
Essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer's Work. Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1990.
P. Della Pelle, La dimensione ontologica dell'etica
in Hans-Georg Gadamer, FrancoAngeli, Milano
2013.
P. Della Pelle, La filosofia di Platone nell'interpretazione
di Hans-Georg Gadamer, Vita e Pensiero, Milano
2014.
== See also ==
Gadamer–Derrida debate
Limit situation
== Notes ==
== References ==
Grondin, Jean (2003). Hans-Georg Gadamer:
A Biography.
Cesare, Donatella Di (2007). Gadamer: A Philosophical
Portrait. Niall Keane (trans.). Indiana University
Press. ISBN 9780253007636.
Orozco, Teresa (1995). Platonische Gewalt:
Gadamers politische Hermeneutik der NS-Zeit.
== External links ==
Works by or about Hans-Georg Gadamer at Internet
Archive
Hans-Georg Gadamer at Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy
Gadamer's Hermeneutics (introductory lecture
by Henk de Berg, 2015)
Chronology (in German)
Works by Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer: Plato as portratist
Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz: "On Hermeneutical
Ethics and Education", a paper on the relevance
of Gadamer's Hermeneutics for our understanding
of music, ethics and education in both.
