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(2015) The problem of objectivity in Gadamer's hermeneutics in light of McDowell's empiricism, Dordrecht, Springer.
A good way to begin a reconstruction of the notion of objectivity in philosophical hermeneutics is to sketch the ambiguous status of the idea of the transcendental in Gadamer's Truth and Method. On the one hand, understanding always takes place within and is therefore constitutively shaped by our historical pre-understanding. This view of understanding as essentially an expression of our being-in-world makes Gadamer highly sceptical of all traditional attempts to describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for experience from a position that does not presuppose the structures of our situated world-view. On the other hand, Gadamer claims that, by its very nature, the idea of understanding as essentially embedded in a world-view goes beyond a certain empirical domain and has a transcendental or universal reach. Gadamer never clarifies this tension in his view of the idea of transcendentality, and therefore there remains a fundamental ambiguity concerning the status of his hermeneutical account of understanding (Sect. 1 below).
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-18648-1_2
Full citation:
Thaning, M.S. (2015). The lack of objectivity in postmodern hermeneutics, in The problem of objectivity in Gadamer's hermeneutics in light of McDowell's empiricism, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 13-36.
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