Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamerwas a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus Truth and Methodon hermeneutics...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth11 February 1900
CountryGermany
understanding trying want
We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said...Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it.
artists creative doubt efforts german-philosopher last leaders mainly
There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.
art forms german-philosopher grasped history points primordial view
The primordial experiences that are transmitted through art and history are not to be grasped from the points of view of these forms of consciousness.
german-philosopher history
In fact history does not belong to us; but we belong to it.
real taken language
The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.
art fun distance
It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art. There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.
given thinker
From Gadamer I learned that to understand a given thinker requires one to presuppose that he is right.
historical consciousness form
It was clear to me that the forms of consciousness of our inherited and acquired historical education - aesthetic consciousness and historical consciousness - presented alienated forms of our true historical being.
cities mind metropolis
All cities we have visited are precincts in this metropolis of the mind.
book years
I basically only read books that are over 2,000 years old.
reality men thinking
What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself.
real self language
The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows from the self-forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it.
music silence listening
Unlike seeing, where one can look away, one cannot 'hear away' but must listen ... hearing implies already belonging together in such a manner that one is claimed by what is being said.
lying unique answers
The ambiguity of poetic language answers to the ambiguity of human life as a whole, and therein lies its unique value. All interpretations of poetic language only interpret what the poetry has already interpreted.