Hans-Georg Gadamer

February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002

Prepared by:
LALAINE D. ARES
A German philosopher of
the continental tradition, best
known for his 1960 magnum
opus Truth and Method
on hermeneutics.
 He was born in Marburg,
Germany
 Son of Johannes Gadamer and
Emma Karoline Johanna Geiese.
 He grew up and studied classics
and philosophy in the University
of Breslau but soon moved back
to the University of Marburg.
 He joined the National Socialist
Teachers League in August 1933
 In April 1937 he became a temporary professor
at Marburg, then in 1938 he received a
professorship at Leipzig University.
 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).
 He remained in this position, as emeritus, until
his death in 2002 at the age of 102.
 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.
Philosophical hermeneutics and 
Truth and Method
 elaborate on the concept of "philosophical
hermeneutics“
 uncover the nature of human understanding.
 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.“
 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 process
of man.” 
 He works 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".
 Gadamer argued that people have a
"historically-effected" consciousness and that
they are embedded in the particular history
and culture that shaped them.
 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
pre-understanding established by this historical
stream. The tradition in which an interpreter
stands establishes "prejudices" that affect how
he or she will make interpretations.
In Education:

 For Gadamer, the historical consciousness is

not something that hinders the ability to make
interpretations, but are both integral to the
reality of being, and “are the basis of the being
able to understand.”
 For Gadamer, interpreting a text involves
a fusion of horizons.
 The “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.