Truth and Method

Introduction

Gadamer’s main work appeared in Tübingen in 1960, when he was sixty; the subtitle calls it the outline of a philosophical hermeneutics. Its first part shows, by way of play and the artwork, that art conveys truth rather than mere pleasure. The second argues that understanding in the humanities is shaped by tradition, authority and the history of a text’s effects, and treats legal and theological interpretation as models of application to a present situation. The third part turns to language as the medium of all understanding: being that can be understood is language. The book provoked debates with Habermas in the late 1960s and with Derrida in 1981.

Connections

Builds on

• Nicomachean Ethicsc. 340 BCE · Aristotle
• Being and Time1927 · Martin Heidegger

Criticizes

• Critique of Judgment1790 · Immanuel Kant
• Hermeneutics and Criticism1838 · Friedrich Schleiermacher
• Introduction to the Human Sciences1883 · Wilhelm Dilthey