Hans Georg Gadamer
In his philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer follows his teacher
Martin Heidegger in recognizing
that the ties to one's present horizons, one's knowledge and experience,
are the productive grounds of understanding. However, Gadamer
argues that these limits can be transcended through exposure
to others' discourse and linguistically encoded cultural traditions
because their horizons convey views and values that place one's own
horizons in relief. He stresses the role of language in opening
the subject to these other subjectivities and their horizons. In
forcefully stressing the role of language in opening the
subject to other subjectivities in constituting traditions,
Gadamer places language at the core of
understanding. Consequently, understanding for Gadamer does not
scientifically reconstruct a speaker's intention, but instead
mediates between the interpreter's immediate horizon and his emerging one.
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Martin Heidegger
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