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Title: Truth And Method (Continuum Impacts)
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| Truth And Method (Continuum Impacts) by Continuum International Publishing Group on truth and method | | Truth and method is a magnificent project about social sciences and it affected the social sciences deeply. After you read this Gadamer work it makes you feel that all beliefs about methodology of social sciences have to be reviewed again and we must repeat and repeat think about what really science is.And also we learn from this text that living is interpreting (hermeneutic). | | Truth And Method (Continuum Impacts) by Continuum International Publishing Group A mighty work on interpretation | Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method must be considered alongside the great works of Dilthey, Husserl, and Heidegger as a major treatise on hermeneutics, defined by Gadamer as understanding and the correct interpretation of what has been understood. More commonly, people define hermeneutics as the study/theory of interpretation.
Two major contentions that help frame his analysis are: (1) rejection of the view that proper understanding calls for eliminating the influence of the interpreter's context; (2) rejection of the view that the author's intent in writing a text has any special weight to it.
As to the first point, he argues that it is simply not possible for the interpreter to escape his present situation. He advances the concept of the "horizon." For Gadamer, the horizon is ". . .the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point." It is the grounding of the interpreter, including that person's language, that fixes the possibilities of what that person can see and understand. In Gadamer's words, it is
". . .the way in which thought is tied to its finite determination, and the nature of the law of the expansion of the range of vision. A person who has no horizon is a man who does not see far enough and hence over values what is nearest to him. Contrariwise, to have an horizon means not to be limited to what is nearest, but to be able to see beyond it. A person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, as near or far, great or small."
To interpret the words of the past, Gadamer says that:
"Just as in a conversation, when we have discovered the standpoint and horizon of the other person, his ideas become intelligible, without our necessarily having to agree with him, the person who thinks historically comes to understand the meaning of what has been handed down, without necessarily agreeing with it, or seeing himself in it."
In interpreting texts, two horizons are involved--one is the horizon of the interpreter and the other the particular historical horizon into which he or she places him or herself in trying to understand the text. Thus, the two horizons interact to produce understanding.
The historical horizon of the text is not fixed; it cannot take on a meaning that is unchanged for all times and places. Here, he gets to the heart of successful hermeneutic inquiry--the fusing of horizons. He says:
"Hence the horizon of the present cannot be formed with the past. There is no more an isolated horizon of the present than there are historical horizons. Understanding, rather, is always the fusion of these horizons which we imagine to exist by themselves. . .Every encounter with tradition that takes place within historical consciousness involves the experience of the tension between the text and the present."
But what of the intention of the original author of a text? That leads to another of Gadamer's major points, by now clearly implicit in his idea of fusion of horizons. In short, it is not particularly important in trying to interpret a text. Once a text is created by its author, it becomes, so to speak, freed from the creator and begins to take on its own meaning, based upon its historical horizon, continually evolving as circumstances change. It is the text's horizon that interacts with the interpreter's horizon.
So what? To the extent that "reality" is the subject of inquiry, our understanding of "reality" will change as the historical horizon of a particular claim about reality changes. We can, then, never come to a satisfactory conclusion about a transcendental reality, about an absolute truth. Is relativism the end product of the endeavor? The hermeneutist in the Gadamerian tradition would simply note that there is no way out.
This is one of the most historically important works available on interpretation. It is difficult and challenging as a work; however, the effort to learn from Gadamer is well worth it.
| | Truth And Method (Continuum Impacts) by Continuum International Publishing Group Prejudice as Philosophy (in Spanish) | Para Gadamer, la temporalidad de la tradición es absolutamente necesaria para la hermenéutica y de esta manera, la superación de la tradición es vista como una transformación de la tradición: "En nuestro comportamiento respecto al pasado, que estamos confirmando constantemente, la actitud real no es la distancia ni la libertad respecto a lo transmitido. Por el contrario, nos encontramos siempre en tradiciones, y éste nuestro pensar dentro de ellas no es un comportamiento objetivador que pensara como extraño o ajeno lo que dice la tradición; ésta es siempre más bien algo propio, ejemplar o aborrecible, es un reconocerse en el que para nuestro juicio histórico posterior no se aprecia apenas conocimiento, sino un imperceptible ir transformándose al paso de la misma tradición."
La "historia efectual" (wirkliche Historie) o los efectos del pasado en el presente más allá de lo sabido científicamente, es la transformación vital del sujeto histórico, pero desde el interior de la tradición: "La experiencia hermenéutica tiene que ver con la tradición. Es ésta la que tiene que acceder a la experiencia. Sin embargo, la tradición no es un simple acontecer que pudiera conocerse y dominarse por la experiencia, sino que es lenguaje..." . Aquí Gadamer hace referencia a que, precisamente, el medio de la experiencia hermenéutica es el lenguaje y por tanto interpretable, pero los límites de la interpretación que, de alguna manera, constituyen la ética de la investigación, es tomar en cuenta los prejuicios históricos y la autoridad de la tradición que en Gadamer quedan rehabilitados, es "la resolución entre oposición abstracta entre tradición e investigación histórica, entre historia y conocimiento de la misma". Es decir, la interpretación histórica se debe efectuar dentro de la tradición que no está fundada sobre una autoridad coercitiva sino de conocimiento: "Este sentido rectamente entendido de autoridad no tiene nada que ver con una obediencia ciega de comando. En realidad no tiene nada que ver con obediencia sino con conocimiento." Es decir, Gadamer implica que la autoridad de la tradición, lo mismo que el concepto de historia, se constituye no por la lucha entre diferentes discursos pasados sino por el conocimiento. Ahora bien, el problema es si el conocimiento dado por la tradición está in situ en el pasado o si no es algo construido en su poshistoria. Los contenidos de autoridad de la tradición son dados a posteriori y Gadamer, me parece, hace abstracción de las relaciones de poder que están inherentes a los prejuicios. La crítica que hace a la concepción de prejuicio a la Ilustración es que ésta separa absolutamente razón y tradición no viendo precisamente que la tradición y la autoridad también son racionales. La rehabilitación del prejuicio es que éste precisamente es el principio de comprensión del receptor: "La moderna investigación histórica tampoco es sólo investigación, sino en parte también mediación de la tradición." | | Truth And Method (Continuum Impacts) by Continuum International Publishing Group Very difficult -- although admittedly a classic. | I hate to admit it...especially because all the other reviewers have raved about it...but I find Truth and Method to be a real slog. Yes -- there is some good stuff here. But be warned - you will really, really have to work to get through this book!
Now at this point you may be thinking "well, you are probably lazy or were unprepared." But the thing is - I was neither. I have read Being and Time (which I think is an easier - yes easier - book) and have done much prepatory work for T & M including Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics by Jean Grondin -- which I highly recommend).
This book is brilliant. But I think it is very interesting that all the reviewers have such high praise for a text that is so very difficult. Great ideas do not need to be inaccessible. Don't believe me? Look at Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche..... | | Truth And Method (Continuum Impacts) by Continuum International Publishing Group Klassisch! | | First, Truth and Method is a true classic. Basically, it sees Gadamer revitalise 'nonscientific' truth, i.e. the experience of truth inaccessible to method and irreducible to bare statement. The book itself does have a structure/setting that makes it difficult to get into initially (it is usefully read in tandem with a good commentary eg. Joel Weinsheimer's 'Gadamer's Hermeneutics'), but it is simply worth the effort. Second, the review below is mistaken when it attributes to Gadamer the idea that the Old Testament should be read literally. Gadamer refers to Luther's position that "the Scripture has a univocal sense that can be derived from the text", but he does this as part of an historical overview of hermeneutics and, on the very next page, Luther gets refuted by 18thC historicism. Gadamer moves beyond both these positions to reveal how 'literalism' (and - more pressingly - 'historicism') is a projection of unproductive prejudices. It is an "obstruction", that gets in the way of the truth Gadamer seeks. Also, while T&M is relevant to theology, it should be made clear that Gadamer is writing of a philosophical-universal hermeneutics and not something regional. |
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