Is Gadamer's Hermeneutics Inherently Conservative?

• Authors: Camille E. Atkinson
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

According to two critics, Georgia Warnke and John Caputo, Gadamer's hermeneutics is inherently “conservative” insofar as he appeals to tradition as a constituent in understanding. They insist that he simply preserves the ideals, norms and values of the Western metaphysical tradition without critically examining them. I do not agree and will argue that views like this depend upon several false assumptions—for example, that Gadamer reifies the text as a “thing-in-itself” (Sache selbst) and remains trapped in subjectivism. I will begin by examining some of the ways in which these charges might be warranted before proceeding to defend him.

Keywords

EN

Hermeneutics; Conservatism; Metaphysics; Subjectivity; Gadamer, Hans Georg

• Publisher: Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
• Journal: Forum Philosophicum
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 285-306

Dates

published

2009

Contributors

author

Camille E. Atkinson

• Portland State University

References

• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Martin Ostwald. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
• Caputo, John D. Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.
• Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Historical Transformations of Reason.” In Rationality Today, edited by Theodore F. Geraets, 3–14. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979.
• Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, New York: Continuum, 1994.
• Grondin, Jean. Sources of Hermeneutics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995.
• Hirsch, Eric Donald. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Warnke, Georgia. Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
• Wills, Garry. “There’s Nothing Conservative About the Classics Revival.” New York Times, February 16, 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/16/magazine/there-s-nothing-conservative-about-the-classics-revival.html.

Identifiers

DOI

10.5840/forphil20091427

URI

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=47567574&lang=pl&site=ehost-live

URI

http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2009_0014_0002_0285_0306