Hans-Georg Gadamer

Abstract

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was born in Marburg, Germany and died in the course of his 103rd year in Heidelberg. For over 80 of those years he was active as a philosopher of unusual breadth and consistency. Gadamer’s interests encompassed a historical range from the pre-Socratic to the postmodern, and spanned the full range of the humanities, including poetry, aesthetics, philology and theology, as well as philosophical and political thought. This variety is complemented by an equally noteworthy continuity of form and approach. Gadamer’s favoured literary form was the short essay, which he produced in abundance and which provide the basis of his many works, the most significant of which is his canonical Truth and Method. Regardless of the complexity of the subject under discussion, these essays are typically marked by a distinct clarity of expression and conversational tone. Their clarity is partly attributable to the origins of many of the pieces, which were typically first presented as lectures, but is also a testament to Gadamer’s determination to make his work as accessible as possible to as wide an audience as possible. In this ambition Gadamer’s work departs from that of many Continental philosophers, whose writing self-consciously seeks to breach the boundaries of grammar and vocabulary in search of novel forms of thought and expression that are ostensibly less conventional or restrictive than those complying with prevailing linguistic norms.