Hans-Georg Gadamer's "Correction" of Heidegger

Abstract

Among the remarkable range of thinkers to have come under the influence of Martin Heidegger, the figure perhaps most deserving to be regarded as Heidegger's proper and faithful heir has been Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer himself has always been quick to acknowledge the intellectual debt to his predecessor. Although the two men were only eleven years apart in age, their relationship to all appearances was very much one of master and pupil; never does Gadamer seem to take umbrage at being described as a Heideggerian. Indeed, he has characterized himself as a student of Heidegger who has learned the craft of classical philology.2 However, Gadamer's reference to the classics in this connection raises an interesting question. Gadamer has also been known to say, quite flatly, I am a Platonist.3 How could this be possible? How could Gadamer consider himself a and a at the same time? At the least, the expression Heideggerian Platonist is an oxymoron that must refer to a strange sort of paradoxical figure. We may add to this the puzzling difference simply in the surface of the two thinkers' work, in their writing styles. Although Gadamer has described his project in Truth and Method, his magnum opus, as following the later Heidegger's line of inquiry,4 his straightforward discursive prose stands in marked contrast to the later Heidegger's oracular or quasipoetic ruminations. Clearly language plays a central role to both thinkers-it is the house of the truth of Being to Heidegger, and ac…