The philosophical orientation of Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenology is explored in this paper. Gadamer offers a hermeneutics of the humanities that differs significantly from models of the human sciences historically rooted in scientific methodologies. In particular, Gadamer proposes that understanding is first a mode of being before it is a mode of knowing; what this effectively offers is an alternative to the traditional way of understanding in the human sciences. This paper details why the work of hermeneutics is not to develop (...) a procedure for understanding, but to clarify the conditions of understanding. In this explication, the author examines the hermeneutic experience and, in the process, relates it to both the practical and the historical horizons of the lifeworld of health professionals, particularly nurses. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology<, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

In this article, an attempt is made to analyse important implications of the hermeneutic approach in qualitative studies. The article discusses the hermeneutic circle with regard to reasoning contexts, on which the researcher's interpretation is based. Problems in connection with achievement of ‘proper’ understanding in an interpretative process are discussed in light of Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy. Some features of qualitative studies are addressed. This is concerned with arguments in the presentation of findings in qualitative studies using the hermeneutic approach. The (...) essence of the article is there are grounds for reasonable understanding, even though it cannot be absolute in the hermeneutic. (shrink)

Gadamer claims that an essential form of truth is disclosed in the search for, and discovery of, a shared language in and through which the matter at issue between the participants in a conversation can come to presentation. He maintains in this regard that the thing itself is given in language. This contention is grounded in his account of the “belonging together” of word and thing. To help us understand this idea I turn to his discussion of the image, since—in (...) a comparison that Gadamer explicitly makes—here, too, the image “gives” the thing. (shrink)

Résumé Dans cet article, je défends la signification contemporaine de la pensée de Hegel sur la subjectivité et la dialectique en impliquant Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel et Hans-Georg Gadamer dans un dialogue, puis en clarifiant les caractéristiques de l'esprit et du concept. La théorie de la subjectivité de Hegel et sa pensée sur la dialectique font face à de nombreuses critiques. L'un de ces critiques est Gadamer ; cependant, la philosophie de Gadamer est, en fait, assez proche de celle de (...) Hegel. Je prends la relation Hegel-Gadamer comme une illustration de la pertinence et de l'influence de Hegel. Je démontre ensuite l'importance contemporaine de Hegel en analysant les caractéristiques de l'esprit et du concept. Enfin, je propose que l'esprit absolu et le concept de Hegel restent significatifs. (shrink)

Some more recent scholarship that challenges received wisdom about Gadamer not withstanding, it remains common to associate his hermeneutical approach to art and literature, along with his hermeneutics generally, with political and cultural conservatism. In this essay, however, the author argues that some of Gadamer’s significant, but underappreciated, later essays on Hegel’s aesthetics further support and nuance the rising recognition of Gadamer’s sensitivity to the discontinuities, dislocations, and fractures that pervade any experience of the past. Specifically, Gadamer’s critical response in (...) these essays to Hegel’s familiar thesis that art is a “thing of the past” sheds light on the special hermeneutical difficulties faced in the present historical juncture—a time, which Gadamer suggests is increasingly alienated from its own heritage. As I wish to show, Gadamer believes this schism to signal not an end of Western art, but, rather, a liberation of art that releases novel possibilities for artistic practice and for the interpretation of art. Far from being a conservative who might deny or lament the rupture of tradition, then, Gadamer’s take on the Hegelian thesis reveals Gadamer to acknowledge and even embrace this withdrawal of tradition as a source of new meaning and experience. (shrink)

There has been a longstanding and acrimonious debate in the human sciences over the role played by classic texts. Advocates of the classic insist its value is timeless and rests on the intrinsic superiority of its cognitive insights and aesthetic virtues. Critics, by contrast, argue that the respect accorded the classic is spurious because it conceals the ideological assumptions, tensions and discontinuities of tradition. This paper seeks a solution through the account of ‘the classical’ brought by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth (...) and Method, which acknowledges a text’s ‘eminence’ as well as its ‘historicity’. Following the introduction, the paper divides into four sections. Section one, notes that the hermeneutic account of tradition describes it as being open to challenge rather than closed and unchangeable, and that the classic, as grounded in tradition, will conserve difficulty as readily as comfortable certainty. Section two focuses on the idea that in the classic we find matter ‘properly portrayed’, while section three notes the importance of ‘application’ for an understanding of classic texts. It is noted that both ‘proper portrayal’ and ‘application’ depend on recognising the role of the fusion of historical horizons in generating classic texts. The final section challenges the criticism that the classic is no more than a reflection of the institutional power wielded by the canon, arguing instead that the classic and the canon are different entities, and conflating them in favour of the latter, misleadingly reduces classic-ness to being no more than an effect of canonicity. (shrink)

Philosophy has a complicated relationship with nursing practice. Selected concepts from Hans‐Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method specifically prejudice, conversation, and language are articulated. An exemplar involving nursing practice at an outpatient clinic for women seeking pre‐ and postbreast cancer care is offered to explicate these concepts. We considered the fit of Gadamer's philosophy, particularly the concept of conversation, within a public health nursing practice context in home and community settings of the client/family and offered tentative conclusions. To extend the discussion (...) of the relationship between philosophy and nursing practice, we posed questions developed to provide deeper insight into this complicated relationship. (shrink)