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5 1 Gadamer’s Hidden Doctrine: The Simplicity and Humility of Philosophy James Risser In a conversation with Riccardo Dottori conducted around the time of his hundredth year, Hans-Georg Gadamer speaks about many of the issues that over time have shaped his project of a philosophical hermeneutics . Surprisingly, there is little discussion of the specific issues developed in Truth and Method, the book published forty years earlier that established Gadamer once and for all as a philosopher for the twentieth century . Instead, we see once again how Gadamer relies on Greek sources to clarify issues such as the character of hermeneutic finitude, the ethical and the rhetorical dimensions of philosophical hermeneutics, and the nature of philosophy itself as it is practiced through hermeneutics. Of course, the content and the direction of the conversation was dictated by the initial framework for discussion, which was for Gadamer to consider “what remains valid within the philosophical and cultural tradition, or what is still to be salvaged from its highest invention—metaphysics— after the two attempts at dismantling it emanating from Heidegger and analytic philosophy.”1 In this context the opportunity to directly reflect upon the importance of Truth and Method did not present itself, but the ensuing conversation is telling nonetheless. From it we have added confirmation of what we read in other published interviews and in Gadamer ’s own self-critique published in his collected works: hermeneutics and Greek philosophy always remained the two foci of his work, and, regarding hermeneutics, the problem of understanding in the historical human sciences—a problem that appears to be the overriding concern of Truth and Method—was not in fact his only goal.2 He always considered the hermeneutical problem of understanding to incorporate broader considerations, most notably the fundamental linguisticality of human beings in which those same Greek sources come to play a significant role in the conceptual formation of this notion. 6 J A M E S R I S S E R It is not surprising, then, to read in the self-critique, which was written more than three decades after the appearance of Truth and Method, that Gadamer considered “the dialogues of Plato, even more than the works of the great thinkers of German Idealism,” to have a lasting significance in his thinking.3 Gadamer actually raises the question here of whether his emphasis on the historical human sciences in Truth and Method, which directly connects with the great thinkers of German idealism, is outdated. In response to his own question, he confesses that he was well “aware of the way in which the points of departure in the formation of my thinking were captive to the times,” and for this reason he supplements Truth and Method, which appears as volume 1 in his collected works, with a second volume of essays on hermeneutics that carries the same title as volume 1, “Hermeneutics.”4 In a lifetime that spanned more than a century, it should not at all be surprising that the expression of his basic position should not be limited to what was said in his most important book. But what then are we to say about his philosophical project in a year that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Truth and Method? In order to not force a separation between his overall project and his magnum opus, as if to make a case for an early and a later Gadamer, let us proceed here with a more directed question.5 Looking back at this text, what is it that this text attempts to accomplish? The answer to this question would appear to be simple enough: following the work of Heidegger , Gadamer was concerned with continuing to turn hermeneutics into the form of philosophy. This answer is not only simple but (it should be) obvious to any careful reader of Truth and Method. However, as we see from the preface to the second edition ofTruth and Method, Gadamer had to insist in response to criticism that he was not attempting to propose a new method for the human sciences, nor was he attempting to provide a theoretical foundation for work in the human sciences.6 Rather, by following Heidegger he was attempting to embrace “the whole of Dasein’s experience of the world.” The specific way in which Gadamer captures this experience of the world, and thus to continue to turn hermeneutics into the form of philosophy, is to look within the human sciences to the experiences...

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