Gadamer Quotes

We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said...Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it.

In truth history does not belong to us but rather we to it.

It is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in tradition.

A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the 'standpoint of art' can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes.

What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself.

Only by forgetting does the mind have the possibility of total renewal.

The structure of play absorbs the player into itself, and thus frees him from the burden of taking the initiative, which constitutes the actual strain of existence.

A horizon is something towards which we move, but it's also something that moves along with us - Hans Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method)

The long history of this idea before Kant made it the basis of his Critique of Judgment shows that the concept of taste was originally more a moral than an aesthetic idea.

In fact, certainty exists in very different modes. The kind of certainty afforded by a verification that has passed through doubt is different from the immediate living certainty with which all ends and values appear in human consciousness when they make an absolute claim. But the certainty of science is very different from this kind of certainty that is acquired in life. Scientific certainty always has something Cartesian about it. It is the result of a critical method that seeks only to allow what cannot be doubted. This certainty, then, does not proceed from doubts and their being overcome, but is always anterior to any process of being doubted.

It is the universal nature of human Bildung to constitute itself as a universal intellectual being. Whoever abandons himself to his particularity is ungebildet ("unformed")—e.g., if someone gives way to blind anger without measure or sense of proportion. Hegel shows that basically such a man is lacking in the power of abstraction. He cannot turn his gaze from himself towards something universal, from which his own particular being is determined in measure and proportion.

Poetska reč je jednako kao i filozofska u stanju da stoji i da se u odvojenosti „teksta“ u kome se artikuliše iskaže sa sopstvenim autoritetom. "Filozofija i poezija

As in play, it rests on a common willingness of the participants in conversation to lend themselves to the emergence of something else, the Sache or subject matter which comes to presence and presentation in conversation.

In the independent existence that work gives the thing, working consciousness finds itself again as an independent consciousness. Work is restrained desire. In forming the object—that is, in being selflessly active and concerned with a universal—working consciousness raises itself above the immediacy of its existence to universality; or, as Hegel puts it, by forming the thing it forms itself. What he means is that in acquiring a “capacity,” a skill, man gains the sense of himself. What seemed denied him in the selflessness of serving, inasmuch as he subjected himself to a frame of mind that was alien to him, becomes part of him inasmuch as he is working consciousness. As such he finds in himself his own frame of mind, and it is quite right to say of work that it forms. The self-awareness of working consciousness contains all the elements that make up practical Bildung: the distancing from the immediacy of desire, of personal need and private interest, and the exacting demand of a universal.

The period of general neglect of Eliot's poetry was one in which a revolution was occurring in the theory of interpretation. Existentialist, phenomenologist, structuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist, and poststructuralist theories appeared and stimulated dazzling conversations about how texts mean. Bloom, Miller, Poulet, Gadamer, Foucault, Lacan, Kristeva, and Derrida are just a few of the critics who have contributed to these conversations. These studies have enormous value for critics interested in Eliot. In the first place, they have popularized insights about language which are central in Eliot poetry from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to Four Quartets. Anyone who doubts this should read Derrida "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" and follow up with a reading of part 5 of each of Four Quartets. In the second place, the studies in theory have created an audience that will be able to appreciate Eliot's dissertation and early philosophical work, an audience unthinkable a generation ago.

En la obra de arte no sólo se remite a algo, sino que en ella está propiamente aquello a lo que se remite. Con otras palabras: la obra de arte significa un crecimiento en el ser. Esto es lo que la distingue de todas las realizaciones productivas humanas en la artesanía y en la técnica, en las cuales se desarrollan los aparatos y las instalaciones de nuestra vida económica práctica. Lo propio de ellos es, claramente, que cada pieza que hacemos sirve únicamente como medio y como herramienta. Al adquirir un objeto doméstico práctico no decimos de él que es una «obra». Es un artículo. Lo propio de él es que su producción se puede repetir, que el aparato puede básicamente sustituirse por otro en la función para la que está pensado. Por el contrario, la obra de arte es irremplazable.

Et les champs de l'art, de l'histoire, des sciences humaines, du savoir éthique, de la philosophie et, en ultime instance, du langage lui-même ont voulu montrer que l'immersion de l'interprète dans le sens qui le concernait ne portait pas préjudice à la justesse, à l'adéquation de la compréhension, mais qu'elle en était une condition essentielle. Fermer les yeux sur cet ''aspect herméneutique'' du sens, c'est succomber au fétichisme de la science moderne et à un simulacre d'objectivité. C'est manquer le ''là'' essentiel de la compréhension et se refuser à la vigilance qui incombe nécessairement à l'être situé dans le temps. [...] L'aspect universel de l'herméneutique est donc celui de la finitude. Banal, dira-t-on ? Peut-être, mais il se pourrait que les plus grandes vérités de la philosophie (il y en a peu) soient aussi très banales. Mais ce rappel de la finitude est important si l'on veut contrer la propension de la compréhension à se laisser séduire par des simulacres d'infinité qui lui font oublier sa finitude. L'objectivation de la science moderne est une des figures de cet oubli de la finitude. Le savoir d'objectivation veut justement effacer le « là » de toute compréhension et de tout éveil à l'être au nom d'un savoir dominateur et certain, et certain parce que dominateur. Il serait dérisoire de vouloir s'objecter à ce modèle de savoir là où il est légitime. Il est cependant nécessaire de contester son universalisation lorsqu'elle déforme les modes de savoir et d'expérience qui sont ceux où la finitude du « là » est constitutive du sens à comprendre et de la vigilance qu'exige sa pénétration. C'est le sens du rapport de la finitude chez Gadamer.

Hay en griego una palabra que ahora podrá parecer chocante, y que se lo parecía sin duda a los griegos, aunque no formulasen mayores interrogantes al respecto: la “philautía”, el “amor a sí mismo”. Pues bien, de eso se trata, de hallar en el amor a sí mismo el verdadero fundamento y condición de cualquier tipo de vinculación con otros y de vinculatividad para uno mismo (Gadamer, 2002, p. 82) » [...] ¿Es, pues, eso la verdadera amistad? No, tampoco es eso aún. La tesis más audaz es la que reza: la primera amistad que se necesita es la uno consigo mismo. Si no la hay, ni se está para el otro ni se llega a estar realmente vinculado con él. ¡Pero que lejos queda eso de lo que llamamos “vinculante”! (Gadamer, 2002, p. 83). »[...] Evidentemente es amistad lo que añade Aristóteles: reconocerse en el otro y que el otro se reconozca en uno. Pero no sólo en el sentido de “así es ese”, sino también en el de concedernos recíprocamente el ser diferentes, más aún, por decirlo en palabras de Droysen: “Así tienes que ser, pues es así como te quiero” (Gadamer, 2002, p. 84). »[...] De modo que, tal vez, el sentido más genuino y profundo de ese conocerse a sí mismo no sea otro que la certidumbre de que uno nunca percibe del todo hasta que qué punto está involucrado en su amor a sí mismo, incluso allí donde se piensa que es auténticamente amigo de otro. Pero si un auténtico acuerdo consigo mismo es condición previa para la amistad con otro, ¿qué es realmente esa amistad? (Gadamer, 2002, p. 84). »[...] En la solidaridad que uno declara, ya sea libremente o a la fuerza, hay siempre, en cualquier caso, una renuncia a los intereses y preferencias más propios. La solidaridad nos hace renunciar a ciertas cosas en una cierta dirección, en un cierto momento, al servició de algún objetivo. (Gadamer, 2002, p. 86). »[...] Desde luego la convivencia entre las personas sería imposible si no hubiese entre ellas algo así como una camaradería. (Gadamer, 2002, 87). Esto nos sitúa ante la tarea tanto de estar de acuerdo con nosotros mismos como de mantenernos de acuerdo con otros. No existe ninguna fuerza de la naturaleza que pueda lograr eso en nuestro lugar» (Gadamer, 2002, p. 88).

The sensus communis plays no part in Kant—not even in the logical sense. What Kant treats in the transcendental doctrine of judgment—i.e., the doctrine of schematism and the principles—no longer has anything to do with the sensus communis.57 For here we are concerned with concepts that are supposed to refer to their objects a priori, and not with the subsumption of the particular under the universal.

The sense of taste is able to gain the distance necessary for choosing and judging what is the most urgent necessity of life. Thus Gracian already sees in taste a “spiritualization of animality” and rightly points out that there is cultivation (cultura) not only of the mind (ingenio) but also of taste (gusto).

If, however, we pursue what is expressed in the phrase 'the language of things', we are pointed in a similar direction. The language of things too is something to which we should pay better attention. This expression also has a kind of polemical accent. It expresses the fact that, in general, we are not at all ready to hear things in there own being, that they are subjected to man's calculus and to his domination of nature through the rationality of science.

The individual case does not serve only to confirm a law from which practical predictions can be made. Its ideal is rather to understand the phenomenon itself in its unique and historical concreteness. However much experiential universals are involved, the aim is not to confirm and extend these universalized experiences in order to attain knowledge of a law—e.g., how men, peoples, and states evolve—but to understand how this man, this people, or this state is what it has become or, more generally, how it happened that it is so.

The same thing is true of the experience of art. Here the scholarly research pursued by the "science of art" is aware from the start that it can neither replace nor surpass the experience of art. The fact that through a work of art a truth is experienced that we cannot attain in any other way constitutes the philosophic importance of art, which asserts itself against all attempts to rationalize it away. Hence, together with the experience of philosophy, the experience of art is the most insistent admonition to scientific consciousness to acknowledge its own limits.

It is no longer a mere critique of taste in the sense that taste is the object of critical judgment by an observer. It is a critique of critique; that is, it is concerned with the legitimacy of such a critique in matters of taste. The issue is no longer merely empirical principles which are supposed to justify a widespread and dominant taste—such as, for example, in the old chestnut concerning the origin of differences in taste—but it is concerned with a genuine a priori that, in itself, would totally justify the possibility of critique.

Jürgen Habermas currently ranks as one of the most influential philosophers in the world. Bridging continental and Anglo-American traditions of thought, he has engaged in debates with thinkers as diverse as Gadamer and Putnam, Foucault and Rawls, Derrida and Brandom. His extensive written work addresses topics stretching from social-political theory to aesthetics, epistemology and language to philosophy of religion, and his ideas have significantly influenced not only philosophy but also political-legal thought, sociology, communication studies, argumentation theory and rhetoric, developmental psychology and theology.

Human science too is concerned with establishing similarities, regularities, and conformities to law which would make it possible to predict individual phenomena and processes. In the field of natural phenomena this goal cannot always be reached everywhere to the same extent, but the reason for this variation is only that sufficient data on which the similarities are to be established cannot always be obtained. Thus the method of meteorology is just the same as that of physics, but its data is incomplete and therefore its predictions are more uncertain.

Arte es algo cuyo «uso», en vez de ser un verdadero utilizar, se cumple de modo peculiar en un demorarse contemplativo en la apariencia.

Desde el momento en que el concepto de «arte» adoptó el tono que para nosotros le es propio y la obra de arte empezó a existir totalmente por sí misma, desprendida de toda relación con la vida, convirtiéndose el arte en arte, es decir, en musée imaginaire en el sentido de Malraux, desde que el arte no quiso ser ya nada más que arte, comenzó la gran revolución artística, que ha ido acentuándose en la modernidad hasta que el arte se ha liberado de todos los temas de la tradición figurativa y de toda inteligibilidad de la proposición, volviéndose discutible en ambos lados: ¿es esto todavía arte? ¿De verdad que eso pretende ser arte? ¿Qué se oculta en esta paradoja? ¿Acaso el arte ha sido siempre arte, y nada más que arte?

En el caso del arte, siempre nos encontramos ya, en realidad, en una tensión entre la pura aspectualidad (Aspekthaftigkeit) de la visión y del Anbild, según lo he llamado, y el significado que adivinamos en la obra de arte y que reconocemos por la importancia que cada encuentro semejante con el arte tiene para nosotros. ¿En qué se basa este significado? ¿Qué es ese plus que se añade, y sólo por el cual llega la obra de arte a ser lo que es?

El juego es una función elemental de la vida humana, hasta el punto de que no se puede pensar en absoluto la cultura humana sin un componente lúdico.

Con seguridad, la esencia de una gran obra de arte no ha consistido nunca en procurarle a la «naturaleza» una reproducción plena y fiel, un retrato.

La significatividad inherente a lo bello del arte, de la obra de arte, remite a algo que no está de modo inmediato en la visión comprensible como tal.

The great principles of the limit and unlimited as announced in the Philebus make possible the becoming of being as well as the delay of presence. It is being that cannot be one with itself because it is (being) and it is and is not (appearance). Being cannot be one with itself because it is one (a limit) and two (the unlimited as indeterminate dyad). In saying that being that can be understood is language, Gadamer, now following Plato, knows that we can never say all that we want to say, we can never bring the intended thing into the full unity of its aspects.

Gadamer se apoyó en el concepto de Wirkung (efecto) de Dilthey, que incorporó en su propia idea de Wirkungsgeschichte

Jedes du ist ein Alter Ego

Betti wrote on philosophy, theology, and law, and many regard him as third in importance behind Gadamer and Ricoeur in twentieth-century hermeneutics. He argues that hermeneutics fosters “open-mindedness” and “receptiveness” to such an extent that the subject should be obligatory in all universities. It nurtures tolerance, mutual respect, and reciprocal listening one to another with patience and integrity.

In an interview for a BBC TV programme in 1999, Hans-Georg Gadamer recalled asking an old man in Messkirch if he had known Martin Heidegger as a boy. The man replied: ‘Martin? Yes, certainly I remember him.’ ‘What was he like?’ ‘Tscha [Well],’ answered the man, ‘What can I say? He was the smallest, he was the weakest, he was the most unruly, he was the most useless. But he was in command of all of us.

Sein Ausgangspunkt ist, daß die Sprachen Erzeugnisse der menschlichen „Geisteskraft“ sind. Überall, wo Sprache ist, ist die ursprüngliche Sprachkraft des menschlichen Geistes am Werk, und eine jede Sprache weiß den allgemeinen Zweck, der mit dieser natürlichen Kraft des Menschen intendiert ist, zu erreichen.

in my view, Gadamer’s theory with his two horizons, for all its very real fecundity, will not suffice for Christian biblical interpretation. What we need is a philosophical hermeneutics shaped by three horizons, not only that of the reader and the text but that of God and his revelation of himself in Christ. In my view, the Kuyperian tradition is best poised to produce such work, which with theological interpretation would be an enormous gift to biblical scholars today.

I thought of Bouchard's discovery of a curious stone slab in Rosetta, and Gadamer peeping through the trees at the goblin city. Was this what they had felt? It was awe, of course, mingled with stunned disbelief. I suppose that when one spends their career working towards a goal, constructing all sorts of fantasies about what that goal will look and feel like, one is left a little senseless when the scaffolding comes crashing down around them.

- Tej - odezwała się Chyłka. - Jak cię zwą? - Słucham? - Pytam, jak ci na imię, hekso. Oryński szturchnął lekko Joannę. - Co ty robisz? - szepnął. - Gadam po poznańsku. Przygotowałam się. - Chyba niespecjalnie dobrze ci to idzie. Uniosła brwi i cofnęła się, jakby właśnie ją czymś obraził. - Pyra, wuchta, Kolejorz, tej! - Jezus Maria, wyjść gdzieś z tobą...

Philosophical hermeneutics, as Gadamer himself put it, is concerned with ‘understanding understanding’. As a philosophical discipline, hermeneutics examines and describes what happens when understanding of any kind takes place.

We learn to understand ourselves in and through it because the artwork is not a timeless present for a pure aesthetic consciousness (i.e., it is not an encounter with an object for which one can only express feelings of pleasure or displeasure), but rather, a real encounter with a world that presents itself historically. The self-understanding that occurs in relation to the experience of art, Gadamer tells us, is only possible when our experiencing is not discontinuous with “the unity and integrity of the other.”17

A great mystery lies in the repetition and continuity of the renewal of that which is past. Culture perpetuates itself in memory and the big job is the reawakening of memory.

We weten allen uit eigen ervaring dat bijvoorbeeld het bezoek aan een museum of het luisteren naar een concert een inspanning van grote geestelijke activiteit is. Wat doen we in dergelijke situaties? Zeker, er zijn hier verschillen: het ene betreft uitvoerende kunst, in het andere geval gaat het niet om de uitvoering maar staan we direct voor de originelen die aan de wand hangen. Als we door een museum hebben gelopen, gaan we niet met hetzelfde levensgevoel waarmee we naar binnen gingen, weer naar buiten; als we werkelijk een kunstzinnige ervaring hebben beleefd is de wereld stralender, lichter, luchtiger.

It is agreeable to imagine a future in which the tiresome ‘analytic–Continental split’ is looked back upon as an unfortunate, temporary breakdown of communication – a future in which Sellars and Habermas, Davidson and Gadamer, Putnam and Derrida, Rawls and Foucault, are seen as fellow-travelers on the same journey, fellow-citizens of what Michael Oakeshott called a civitas pelegrina. (Rorty 1997a, pp. 11–12)