Hermeneutic Method of Hans-Georg Gadamer

Abstract

It is commonly argued that Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics rests upon a criticism of the method of natural sciences that, by establishing a monopoly of what might be deemed as true knowledge, would exclude different forms of non-scientific experiences of truth. Thus, the article aims first at examining this assumption based on an analysis of his hermeneutic dialectics and ontology of language, which he develops in the third part of Truth and Method. This analysis reveals that his criticism of scientific method rests upon the idea that the being is related to the happening of meaning and of human beings as individuals whose understanding of the world is questioned and caused by such happening. These ontological approaches make possible to characterize what might be the
true method of thinking and access to truth. Secondly, the article aims at identifying three methodological
principles that would guide a genuine exercise of hermeneutic thinking: a) The principle of determining the topos of understanding, which demands to reveal the relations of meaning that connect us to what we desire to understand; b) Principle of correction, which makes possible that understanding continuously “improves” both our interpretations and self-descriptions that actors provide of their own actions; and c) Principle of sensitivity towards happening, which demands to carefully listen to every possible relation of meaning that shape phenomena, as well as to the variations and mutations of meaning they experience.