Abstract
Gadamer tends to argue that a historical context is cognitively homogeneous in an unreflected way, and that the context-dependence of presuppositions has been underestimated. By contrast, philosophers in the Enlightenment tradition argued (a) that the influence of the historical context on the individual is relatively weak and may in principle always be overcome, and (b) that historical contexts are basically similar because universal forms of thought and conduct occur in them. Gadamer denies (a) and (b), arguing that the unreflectiveness of context-dependence results from general kinds of presuppositions, which are implicit in more specific claims without being spelled out as such, and that the persistence of such presuppositions in a historical context is easily overlooked precisely because of their general character.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bernstein, Richard. 1983. Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics, and praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bontekoe, Roland. 1996. Dimensions of the hermeneutic circle. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.
Collingwood, Robin George. 1998. An essay on metaphysics, ed. Rex Martin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Davey, Nicholas. 2006. Unquiet understanding. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Albany: SUNY Press.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1980. Holism and hermeneutics. Review of Metaphysics 34: 3–23.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1990b. A review of Gadamer’s Truth and method. Trans. Fred R. Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy. In The hermeneutic tradition from Ast to Ricoeur, eds. Gail Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, 213–244. Albany: SUNY Press.
Hahn, Lewis Edwin, ed. 1997. The philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. La Salle: Open Court.
Heidegger, Martin. 1985. History of the concept of time. Trans. Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 1996. Being and time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press.
———. 2000. Towards the definition of philosophy. Trans. Ted Sadler. London: The Athlone Press.
Husserl, Edmund. 1982. Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. First Book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology. Trans. Frederick Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Inwood, Michael. 1983. Hegel. London: Routledge.
Kant, Immanuel. 1965. Critique of pure reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
———. 1970. An answer to the question: What is enlightenment? In Kant’s political writings, ed. and Trans. Hans Reiss, 54–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1976. Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? In Was ist Aufklärung? Thesen und Definitionen, ed. Erhard Bahr, 9–17. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Plato. 2005. Meno and other dialogues. Trans. Robin Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Popper, Karl. 1970. Normal science and its dangers. In Criticism and the growth of knowledge, eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, 51–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1989. Conjectures and refutations. 5th ed. London: Routledge.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1992. Philosophical investigations, 3rd ed. Trans. Elizabeth M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Odenstedt, A. (2017). Context-Dependence: Its Nature and Depth. In: Gadamer on Tradition - Historical Context and the Limits of Reflection. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 90. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59558-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59558-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-59556-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-59558-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)