Recovering Ontology in Gadamer

What is it about?

Whereas a selective yet representative sample of Anglo-American scholarship undermines its own intentions to explain Gadamer’s language-ontology and theory of time by confusing the ground of beings with beings, Cheng and Gadamer explain how a transformation in human existence allows for a temporalization of Being in time that incorporates the subjectivity of the human subject. This argument draws on the dual structure of their cosmogenic worldview in the source and origins of their traditions (Lao Zi/Heraclitus) and has implications for Cheng’s organistic model of causality: It depends on mechanical causation to understand things in themselves.

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Photo by Irina Iriser on Unsplash

Photo by Irina Iriser on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article develops an interpretation of Gadamer based on his "Platonism" or rather, the hidden doctrine of the One and the many - how the movements within that structure constitute a theory that explains the movements in his thought and understanding. This coordinates with "one and many" in Chinese philosophy - which in turn attests to the universality of Gadamer's hermeneutics.

Perspectives