His fundamental work “Truth and Method” postulates that hermeneutics is one of the most important currents of contemporary philosophy. It is interesting that for him it ceases to become a method of acquiring the status of a true philosophy.
Gadamer could be said to be inspired by Dilthey and Heidegger, also taking some topics from Husserl's phenomenology. Hermeneutical philosophy is thus a theory regarding the phenomenon of understanding, a central dimension of man that affects all socio-historical existence.
For Gadamer, understanding has a clear objective character. In fact, it is not a question of “understanding the other” but of “understanding the other about something”. It is important to clarify that the concept of “text” extends and extends, not only refers to a writing, such as a document or essay, but also a historical event or a work of art, also make up a “text”. Understanding is always historical, in the sense that it is always realized as a historically mediated event.
In analysing the phenomenon of understanding, the following dimensions should be considered, inter alia:
Prejudice and traditions: Gadamer accuses the Enlightenment of introducing the negative nuance to the concept of prejudice. From its approach, a pretrial (prejudice) does not necessarily have to be a false judgment. In the same way, tradition does not always mean “conservation” as it always represents “a moment of freedom in history”, in fact, Gadamer observes, even in revolutionary times it is preserved much more than one can believe. The understanding of a text is only possible from a pre-understanding or prejudice that is projected on the text and must be confirmed by it. All understanding is realized within a “hermenetuic circle”.
Historical distance: In the text, this is an advantage and not an obstacle. It is not necessary to go back mentally to the time when the text was written, tradition links the text and interpreter, so a text can be paradoxically “strange” and “familiar” at the same time. The text is part of tradition and historical distance allows to reconstruct an “effect history”, or the effects produced by such text through history. It can be said that the interpreter has the possibility to understand the text even better than its author.
