gadamer essays

gadamer essays Herder claimed that human nature and understanding are not essentially the same in all times and places and so by this he introduced the idea of perspectivism in to literary thought. Gadamer expands upon this idea and uses the terminology and claims of phenomenology/existentialism, in his theory of interpretation. He reminds us that ones own perspective is the view from within ones own horizon, that is, we are all wedged in a particular time and space, a culture and a history, so all that we can conceive, perceive and understand is done so though this view. The same is also true in regard to texts from the past and different cultures, their authors and their meanings exists in their own particular horizons, so their view-points Gadamer claims are rendered utterly different from our own. So how then in light of this, are we to be able to carry out interpretations of texts? How do we avoid misunderstanding the meaning because of our temporal and cultural bias and yet still be able to comprehend them in their persuasive force? Gadamer suggests that we do this by fusion of horizons, but before looking at this idea, I feel we need to look at his ideas about understanding and how they apply to the interpretation of literature. For Gadamer understanding is active, like Heidegger, he believes that we (our consciousness) are in the world and inseparable from it. So because of this, our consciousness is all ways directed at something. So as we are involved in the world, we understand things in terms of their relation of to us, and the context they have in general, like Heidegger example of a hammer. We can see if our understanding is directed a literature, it means we have to participate in it, we have to see it relation to us, and the world around it. This is why Gadamer claims that, what would not be an adequate understanding of a text is, the basic r ...