Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to "present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent.
EPZ Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"As a contribution to our understanding of understanding, it ranks with the work of Pierce, Husserl, Cassirer, Wittgenstein, Polanyi, and Lonergan as a highpoint of twentieth century reflection upon the constitutive conditions of knowing....It is impossible to praise the work too highly."—The Thomist
"The single-most important study of the origin, development, and nature of the concept and meaning of 'hermeneutical consciousness' extant."—Review of Metaphysics
"No one interested in hermeneutics and historical understanding can justify neglecting Truth and Method. Gadamer not only reinterprets the history of modern hermeneutics, but he offers his own phenomenology of understanding....His is our century's most creative and ambitious attempt to exorcise the demon of historicism."—Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"One of the major contributions to literary theory of the last few decades....It is a defense of the truth value of texts that seeks to accomodate both the process of historical consciousness and the contingency of the individual subject."—ACLA Newsletter --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"The single-most important study of the origin, development, and nature of the concept and meaning of 'hermeneutical consciousness' extant."—Review of Metaphysics
"No one interested in hermeneutics and historical understanding can justify neglecting Truth and Method. Gadamer not only reinterprets the history of modern hermeneutics, but he offers his own phenomenology of understanding....His is our century's most creative and ambitious attempt to exorcise the demon of historicism."—Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"One of the major contributions to literary theory of the last few decades....It is a defense of the truth value of texts that seeks to accomodate both the process of historical consciousness and the contingency of the individual subject."—ACLA Newsletter --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
104 of 108 people found the following review helpful
By Alex Golub
Format:Paperback
This is one of my favorite books of all time. It is Gadamer's masterpiece - published when he was sixty years old, and the result of a life time of scholarship. T&M is a critique of romantic hermeneutics -a doctrine that holds that the meaning of a text is identical with the intention of its author. On this account, the purpose of interpretation is to reconstruct the author's intention, the experience they had while writing it that is held in the text. To this Gadamer contrasts his own theory of historically effected consciousness. Gadamer claims that 'understanding a text' involves understanding the tradition of which it (and you) are a part. In the course of doing so, Heidegger ranges over the history of aesthetic theory, phenomenology, and hermenutics, biblical interpretation, as well as examining the nature of all human understanding.
Gadamer is a student of Heidegger. In this book he is interested in demonstrating the way a Heideggerian account of consciousness (and being in the world) can help us make sense of the act of interpretation. He is also interested in demonstrating that one can use Heidegger without being a Nazi or obsessed with anxiety and being-towards-death.
This book is highly technical, the prose if difficult, and demanding (it helps to have read Being and Time, Kant's Critique of Judgement, some Augustine and Aquinas, etc etc etc.). For people who can get into the work, however, it promises a comprehensive theory of human being, the history of philosophy (and indeed, western thought as a whole) and a holistic worldview of unmatched death and detail. And that's no small potatoes.
For those interested in in reading Gadamer but not ready to tackle T&M, I recommend some of the shorter volumes of his speeches and writings. One of these, _Philosophical Hermeneutics_, is (relatively) accessible and generally considered by Gadamerphiles to be 'Truth and Method Lite'.
42 of 44 people found the following review helpful
By david
Format:Paperback
First, Truth and Method is a true classic. Basically, it sees Gadamer revitalise 'nonscientific' truth, i.e. the experience of truth inaccessible to method and irreducible to bare statement. The book itself does have a structure/setting that makes it difficult to get into initially (it is usefully read in tandem with a good commentary eg. Joel Weinsheimer's 'Gadamer's Hermeneutics'), but it is simply worth the effort.
Second, the review below is mistaken when it attributes to Gadamer the idea that the Old Testament should be read literally. Gadamer refers to Luther's position that "the Scripture has a univocal sense that can be derived from the text", but he does this as part of an historical overview of hermeneutics and, on the very next page, Luther gets refuted by 18thC historicism. Gadamer moves beyond both these positions to reveal how 'literalism' (and - more pressingly - 'historicism') is a projection of unproductive prejudices. It is an "obstruction", that gets in the way of the truth Gadamer seeks. Also, while T&M is relevant to theology, it should be made clear that Gadamer is writing of a philosophical-universal hermeneutics and not something regional.
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
By J.S Hukka
Format:Paperback
Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method is a result of sixty years of reflection on the nature of the hermeneutic experience and an exemplary document of lucid and fascinating scholarship. The purpose of the treatise on understanding is `what takes place above our thinking and doing', in other words, the constitutive events in art, literature and ethics.
As Gadamer's examination of the romantic human sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften, is constantly referred back onto the tradition and the sources from which it emerges and supports itself, some background knowledge is required, particularly of classical philosophy, Hegel and Heidegger.
The project of Truth and Method opens by engaging the reader to a critique of Kantian aesthetic exposition, and uses it as a starting-point for an examination of hermeneutics, the art of understanding. In the course of the examination Gadamer does not, however, engage in a dialogue only with the philosophical tradition, but by continuously exploring the universality of the hermeneutic experience demonstrates its relevance and presence in history, study of languages, legal theory and theology.
For a reader coming from the analytic-linguistic tradition, the final section on the hermeneutic character of language should be of particular interest. In it Gadamer outlines his conception of language as the horizon through which the experience of the world is understood. But as throughout the book, the horizon of understanding is not determined solely on the basis of the grammatical or the logical structure present; indeed, the horizon itself is a constant possibility for the historically effected consciousness to gain further self-knowledge through its experience in language as a historically and temporally defined phenomenon.
The style of the book is thoroughly lively and engaging; despite the abstract subject-matter the argument is never lost from sight and Gadamer's sense of clarity in terms of expression makes the book a pleasure to read and come back to.
I recommend this book whole-heartedly, not as a conclusive and total life-philosophy, but as an exploration and fascination of the possibilities of human potential in its recurring activity of living and perpetuating, its own culture, tradition and being.
As Gadamer's examination of the romantic human sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften, is constantly referred back onto the tradition and the sources from which it emerges and supports itself, some background knowledge is required, particularly of classical philosophy, Hegel and Heidegger.
The project of Truth and Method opens by engaging the reader to a critique of Kantian aesthetic exposition, and uses it as a starting-point for an examination of hermeneutics, the art of understanding. In the course of the examination Gadamer does not, however, engage in a dialogue only with the philosophical tradition, but by continuously exploring the universality of the hermeneutic experience demonstrates its relevance and presence in history, study of languages, legal theory and theology.
For a reader coming from the analytic-linguistic tradition, the final section on the hermeneutic character of language should be of particular interest. In it Gadamer outlines his conception of language as the horizon through which the experience of the world is understood. But as throughout the book, the horizon of understanding is not determined solely on the basis of the grammatical or the logical structure present; indeed, the horizon itself is a constant possibility for the historically effected consciousness to gain further self-knowledge through its experience in language as a historically and temporally defined phenomenon.
The style of the book is thoroughly lively and engaging; despite the abstract subject-matter the argument is never lost from sight and Gadamer's sense of clarity in terms of expression makes the book a pleasure to read and come back to.
I recommend this book whole-heartedly, not as a conclusive and total life-philosophy, but as an exploration and fascination of the possibilities of human potential in its recurring activity of living and perpetuating, its own culture, tradition and being.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the struggle
This is an extremely difficult book to read, especially because it assumes a level of knowledge about German philosophy that most people, including me, simply don't have. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Papa Redden
4.0 out of 5 stars
Being that can be understood is language
Hans-Georg Gadamer's *Truth and Method* is a very interesting product of the midcentury German scene. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Jeffrey Rubard
4.0 out of 5 stars
Regarding the book's edition
If, somehow, you have the urge to read a theory on interpretation (with all of its philosophical ruminations),
then, Gadamer's Truth & Method is the one for you. Read more
then, Gadamer's Truth & Method is the one for you. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Fauzi Naeim
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Lilfetime of Scholarship in One Book
Gadamer's Truth and Method is a long, dense, and richly informative effort to find a solid and rational basis for understanding in the human sciences or Geistenwissenschaften. Read more
Published 14 months ago by not a natural
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Book, Terrible Printing
I have given the actual book 5 stars because it is a seminal work in the field of hermeneutics; I don't believe that a book should be given a poor rating based on its printing... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Seth Thomas
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mighty work on interpretation
Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method must be considered alongside the great works of Dilthey, Husserl, and Heidegger as a major treatise on hermeneutics, defined by Gadamer as... Read more
Published on January 1, 2007 by Steven A. Peterson
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very difficult -- although admittedly a classic.
I hate to admit it...especially because all the other reviewers have raved about it...but I find Truth and Method to be a real slog. Yes -- there is some good stuff here. Read more
Published on July 18, 2005 by Secret Squirrel
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bold and Daring Christian-Judaic Thought
Gadamer's _Truth and Method_ is both very profound and very readable; it is a vast improvement over other more widely-read philosophical texts from the same region and time period... Read more
Published on February 16, 2003 by Ross James Browne
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Truth and Method
Articulating the concept of wisdom (Bildung), its incomensurability with representational epistemology, its emergence in authentic conversation (understanding), and its application... Read more
Published on April 7, 2000
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good for theory of interpretation
This book is good for those who study philosophy and theory, but it is a difficult read. The theory of interpretation is a difficult topic and this book does shed some light on it. Read more
Published on November 10, 1999
