Gadamer's Linguistic Turn

What is it about?

Gadamer’s linguistic turn has been criticized for eclipsing ontological grounds for truth by conflating the meaning of existence with history. Chung-ying Cheng’s recognizes the nihilistic implications of a ceaseless quest for meaning that cannot but perpetually slip away and in response, discloses the cosmo-ontological grounds that Gadamer’s interpretive acts presuppose. In so doing, Cheng initiates a theoretical appropriation and integration between Western philosophy and the Yijing tradition. However, Cheng also interprets Gadamer from a Heideggerian perspective without due regard to Plato. When Gadamer’s turn to language is understood in terms of his claim that Socrates removes the contradiction between the Pythagorean One and the many by studying the forms in language, then there is room in the said turn for temporalizing the meaning of Being in the dialogue form. It is through the dialectical interplay between the auditory and visual dispositions underlying orality and literacy, the two mediums in which human understanding is entangled for Gadamer, that the “creative” emerges in his thought from within and out of a prior (Platonic) metaphysical orientation that in the final analysis attests to the universality of Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics

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Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Why is it important?

For the most part, notably with the exception of Jean Grondin, Gadamer's metaphysics and related ontology have been suppressed by modes of thinking that suppress them. Although Chung-ying Cheng is a profound critic of important seams in Western thought, he also prolongs a view of Gadamer that overlooks possibilities that coordinate with his own position.

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