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Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
philosopher of the
continental tradition Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prio ...
, best known for his 1960 '' magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics.


Life


Family and early life

Gadamer was born in Marburg, Germany, the son of Johannes Gadamer (1867–1928), a pharmaceutical
chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...
professor who later also served as the rector of the University of Marburg. He was raised a Protestant Christian. Gadamer 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 Jean Grondin (born August 27, 1955) is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He is a specialist in the thought of Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. His research focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, German classical philos ...
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 World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
for reasons of ill health and similarly was exempted from serving during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
due to polio.


Education

He later studied classics and
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
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'' () 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 became close to Heidegger, 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.


Early career

Gadamer
habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
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 Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...
, and he was not politically active during Nazi rule. 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 ''
Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State Bekenntnis der Professoren an den Universitäten und Hochschulen zu Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat officially translated into English as the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Ad ...
''. 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 Jean Grondin (born August 27, 1955) is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He is a specialist in the thought of Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. His research focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, German classical philos ...
has said that Orozco is engaged in a "witch-hunt" while
Donatella Di Cesare Donatella Ester Di Cesare ( Rome, 29 April 1956) is an Italian political philosopher, essayist, and editorialist. She currently serves as professor of theoretical philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome. Di Cesare collaborates with variou ...
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.


At Heidelberg

Communist East Germany was no more to Gadamer's liking than Nazi Germany, 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 was a Japanese philosopher who studied Chinese philosophy. Life Imamichi taught in Europe (Paris and Germany) as well as in Japan (he was also emeritus professor of the University of Palermo). Beginning in 1979 he was the president of the '' Ce ...
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 Richard Jacob Bernstein (May 14, 1932 – July 4, 2022) was an American philosopher who taught for many years at Haverford College and then at The New School for Social Research, where he was Vera List Professor of Philosophy. Bernstein wrote ...
said that " 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".


Honorary doctorates

Gadamer received honorary doctorates from the University of Bamberg, the University of Wrocław, 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.


Death

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 "Fusion of horizons" (german: Horizontverschmelzung) is a dialectical concept which results from the rejection of two alternatives: objectivism, whereby the objectification of the other is premised on the forgetting of oneself; and absolute knowle ...
(''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 ''For definition, see Communication'' Communication Ethics is how a person uses language, media, journalism, and creates relationships that are guided by an individual's moral and values. These ethics consider being aware of the consequences of ...
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.Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference Arnett, Harden Fritz & Bell, Los Angeles 2009


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 on 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 Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
and the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.


Prizes and awards

:1971: Pour le Mérite and the :1972: Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany :1979: Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose and Hegel Prize :1986:
Karl Jaspers Prize The Karl Jaspers Prize or Karl-Jaspers-Preis is a German philosophy award named after Karl Jaspers and awarded by the city of Heidelberg and the University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of H ...
: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 The Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig (german: Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig) is an institute which was founded in 1846 under the name ''Royal Saxon Society for the Sciences'' (german: Königlich Sächsische G ...
in Leipzig


Honorary doctorates

:1995: University of Wrocław :1996: University of Leipzig :1999: Philipps-University Marburg


Bibliography

;Primary *'' Truth and Method''. (1st English ed., 1975, trans. by W, Glen-Doepel, ed. by John Cumming and Garret Barden) *'' Hegel's Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies''. Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976. *'' Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato''. Trans. and ed. by P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980. *'' The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy''. Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven, CT: 1986. *'' 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. *'' Heidegger's Ways''. Trans. John W. Stanley. New York: SUNY Press, 1994. *'' 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, translated by Robert R. Sullivan.) *'' The Enigma of Health: The Art of Healing in a Scientific Age''. Trans. John Gaiger and Richard Walker. Oxford: Polity Press, 1996. *'' 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. *'' The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings''. Ed. by Richard E. Palmer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007. ;Secondary * Arthos, 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, . * Davey, Nicholas. ''Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics.'' New York: SUNY Press, 2007, . *Davey, Nicholas. ''Unfinished Worlds. Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, and Gadamer.'' Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013, . * 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. * 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. * Sullivan, Robert R., ''Political Hermeneutics, The Early Thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer''. Univ. Park, Penn State Press,1989. * 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 __NOTOC__ The Gadamer–Derrida debate concerns the issue of the containment of otherness in Gadamer's hermeneutics and it began with an encounter between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida in April 1981 in a Sorbonne conference in Paris on "Te ...
*
Limit situation A limit situation (german: Grenzsituation) is any of certain situations in which a human being is said to have differing experiences from those arising from ordinary situations. The concept was developed by Karl Jaspers, who considered fright, guil ...


References


Citations


Works Cited

* * * * * *


External links

*
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Jeff Malpas, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900—2002)
Lauren Swayne Barthold Lauren Swayne Barthold (born 1965) is an American philosopher and Philosophy Professor at Emerson College. Previously she was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Gordon College, with tenure, and has also taught at Haverford College, Siena Colle ...
, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Gadamer's Hermeneutics
(introductory lecture by Henk de Berg, 2015)
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. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1900 births 2002 deaths 20th-century educational theorists 20th-century essayists 20th-century German historians 20th-century German male writers 20th-century German philosophers Commentators on Aristotle Commentators on Plato Communication theorists German consciousness researchers and theorists Continental philosophers Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy Critical theorists Cultural critics Epistemologists German anti-communists German anti-fascists German centenarians German critics German educational theorists German ethicists German literary critics German male essayists German male non-fiction writers German philosophers Grand Crosses 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Heidegger scholars Hermeneutists Historians of philosophy History of medicine History of philosophy Intellectual history Literacy and society theorists Literary theorists Mass media theorists Men centenarians Metaphilosophers Metaphysicians Moral philosophers Ontologists People from Hesse-Nassau People from Marburg Phenomenologists Philosophers of art Philosophers of culture Philosophers of education Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of medicine Philosophers of mind Philosophers of science Philosophers of social science Philosophers of technology Philosophy academics Philosophy teachers Rationality theorists Recipients of the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Social critics Social philosophers Theorists on Western civilization Leipzig University faculty Heidelberg University faculty