Hans-Georg Gadamer 1900 – 2002
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher and the founder of philosophical hermeneutics. A student of Husserl and Heidegger, he taught at Leipzig, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg, where his Truth and Method, published when he was sixty, became one of the major works of twentieth-century continental philosophy. He argued that all understanding takes place within a historically conditioned horizon, that prejudices in the form of inherited expectations are the precondition rather than the obstacle of interpretation, and that genuine understanding is a fusion of horizons. He lived to be a hundred and two.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Phenomenology, Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer:
“All understanding is interpretation.”
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Attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer:
“Language is the medium in which substantive understanding and agreement take place between two people.”
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Attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer:
“Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth.”
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Attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer:
“It is not so much our judgments as our prejudices that constitute our being.”
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Attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer:
“Understanding is always more than merely re-creating someone else's meaning.”