Hans-Georg Gadamer - Truth and Method (1960)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Hermeneutic Turn in German Philosophy
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) occupied a special position in German postwar philosophy. As a student of Heidegger and an expert on Greek philosophy, he developed, with Truth and Method (1960), a philosophical hermeneutics that went far beyond traditional textual interpretation.[1] The work became one of the most influential philosophical books of the second half of the century and shaped the reception of Hegel lastingly—though in a way that both absorbed and transformed Hegel’s systematic claim.
Gadamer stood between the fronts of postwar philosophy: too old for the '68 movement, too young not to be touched by its questions. Too much a Heideggerian to belong to the Ritter school, too much a Hegelian to remain within Heidegger’s forgetfulness of history. His position was the attempt at a synthesis of his own—a hermeneutics that grasps historical understanding not as an obstacle but as a condition of truth.
The Rehabilitation of Prejudice: Against the Enlightenment with Hegel
Gadamer’s most provocative thesis appears right at the beginning of Truth and Method: the prejudice against prejudice itself is a prejudice of the Enlightenment.[2] The Enlightenment believed that by eliminating all prejudices, it could advance to pure reason. Gadamer shows: this is an illusion. We cannot step outside our historical situatedness. Every understanding begins with preconceptions, pre-understandings, that stem from our tradition.
But—and here Hegel comes into play—this does not mean arbitrariness or randomness. Prejudices can be productive. They alone make understanding possible in the first place, because they give us a horizon from which to interpret. The task is not to eliminate prejudices but to become conscious of them and to test whether they prove themselves in engagement with the matter at hand.
Gadamer calls this effective-historical consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein): we ourselves are part of the history we are trying to understand. Tradition acts within us, whether we want it to or not. But by becoming conscious of this effect, by reflecting on it, we can relate to it productively—not by elimination, but by critical appropriation.
This position is deeply Hegelian. Hegel had shown, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, how consciousness must pass through various shapes, uncovering and transforming its own presuppositions. Gadamer adopts this structure but forgoes Hegel’s systematic closure: there is no “absolute knowing” that leaves all historicity behind. Understanding always remains finite, always situated, always provisional.
The Hermeneutic Circle: Hegel Transformed
Gadamer’s most famous figure is the hermeneutic circle: understanding the whole presupposes understanding the parts—but understanding the parts presupposes understanding the whole.[3] This is not a logical error (circulus vitiosus) but the structure of all understanding (circulus fructuosus).
How does this circle function concretely? If you read a text—say Hegel’s Philosophy of Right—you already have a pre-understanding: what is a state? What is freedom? What does Hegel want? Without this pre-understanding you could not even begin to read. But as you read, your understanding changes. The text corrects your preconceptions, refines them, transforms them. You understand the individual sentences better because you understand where the whole is heading—but you understand the whole better because you have understood the individual sentences more precisely.
This is a movement that is never completed. Every new reading can disclose new aspects. The fusion of horizons—Gadamer’s second key concept—means: your horizon (your questions, your preconceptions, your historical situation) fuses with the horizon of the text (its questions, its preconceptions, its historical situation) into an expanded horizon.
Here Gadamer’s proximity to and distance from Hegel become apparent at once: proximity, because Hegel too thinks understanding as a process, as a movement passing through mediation. Distance, because Gadamer forgoes systematic closure. In Hegel the dialectical movement leads to absolute knowing—to the complete self-transparency of spirit. In Gadamer, understanding always remains finite, always in conversation, always dependent on new interpretations.
What Is True in This? The Lasting Significance of Finitude
Gadamer’s hermeneutics has fixed an important insight: the finitude of understanding is not a weakness but a constitutive condition.[4] We cannot step outside our historical situatedness. We cannot adopt a “view from nowhere” that surveys the whole of history. Every understanding is perspectival, situated, provisional.
This insight was important against two one-sidednesses:
Against scientistic objectivism: the notion that understanding is correct when it grasps the object “purely,” without the interference of the subject, is an illusion. Understanding is always already interpretation, always mediation between the horizon of the one who understands and the horizon of what is understood.
Against historicist relativism: the insight into the historicity of all understanding does not lead to arbitrary relativity. For the tradition from which we understand is not arbitrarily chosen but shapes us. And the matter we want to understand has its own claim, to which we must submit.
For the reception of Hegel this meant: we cannot understand Hegel “objectively,” as though we could reconstruct his era as it “really was.” We always understand Hegel from our own questions. But this does not mean arbitrariness—for Hegel’s texts make claims, they resist false interpretations, they compel us to more careful reading.
The Internal Tensions: Where Gadamer Reaches His Limits
But precisely Gadamer’s strength—the emphasis on finitude and historicity—contains its problems at the same time. For, on closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Gadamer wants to hold on to something that undermines his own presuppositions.
First contradiction: the universality of hermeneutics. Gadamer claims that all knowledge is hermeneutic—even the natural sciences, even mathematics. Wherever understanding occurs, the structures of the hermeneutic circle, of the fusion of horizons, of effective-historical consciousness apply.[5]
But here a performative tension arises: if all knowledge is historically situated, if there is no standpoint outside history—then this also applies to Gadamer’s own hermeneutics. It too is historically situated, it too raises its claims from a particular standpoint. But then it cannot be universal—it would be only one possible interpretation among others.
Gadamer tries to escape this consequence by saying: hermeneutics does not describe how we should understand, but how we in fact always already understand. But this description too is an interpretation—and thus in turn historically situated, provisional, corrigible.
The question of self-application becomes acute here: can hermeneutics apply its own principles to itself? Gadamer affirms this—but then he must concede that hermeneutics too is finite, perspectival, provisional. Thereby it loses its claim to universality.
Second contradiction: tradition as authority? Gadamer rehabilitates tradition—it is not an obstacle to understanding but its condition. We can understand only because we stand within traditions that shape us.
But here a problematic consequence threatens: if tradition is constitutive for understanding—does it then have a kind of authority that cannot be circumvented? Gadamer seems to suggest this. Tradition is not something we can reject at will. It acts within us, whether we want it to or not.
Jürgen Habermas criticized precisely this point: Gadamer’s hermeneutics tends toward affirmation of the existing order. It cannot sufficiently criticize power and domination that have sedimented in traditions.[6] For if tradition always already acts, if we cannot transcend it—then the critical standard is missing to say: this tradition is legitimate, that one is not.
Here a deficiency in participation and reciprocity becomes apparent: Gadamer’s hermeneutics too little thematizes that traditions contain power structures, that not everyone participates equally in transmission, that some voices have been systematically excluded. A feminist critique might ask: which women appear in the “tradition” that Gadamer rehabilitates? A postcolonial critique: which cultures are represented in this “Western tradition”?
Third contradiction: truth without method? The title Truth and Method suggests: there is truth beyond scientific method. Hermeneutics discloses a dimension of truth that transcends methodical procedure—the truth of art, of history, of experience.
But a problem arises here too: if truth cannot be secured methodically—how do we then distinguish true from false understanding? Gadamer says: through the matter itself, which asserts itself in conversation. But who decides what the matter demands? Different interpreters can arrive at different results—both appealing to the matter. How do we resolve the disagreement?
What is missing here is what Hegel called determinate negation: the possibility of showing that a position contradicts itself, that it cannot uphold its own presuppositions. Gadamer’s hermeneutics tends to recognize all interpretations as legitimate perspectives—but it has difficulty saying: this interpretation is false because it does not do justice to the matter.
The question of transparency and openness becomes relevant here: a system must disclose its criteria, must show how it distinguishes better from worse. Gadamer’s hermeneutics tends to obscure these criteria—it speaks of “fusion of horizons,” of “conversation,” of the matter “asserting itself”—but how this functions concretely remains vague.
Systematic Placement: Gadamer’s Legacy
Gadamer stands at an important crossroads in the reception of Hegel. He absorbs Hegel’s insights into the historicity and mediatedness of all thought—but he forgoes systematic closure. He shows that understanding is always situated—but he develops no criteria for distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate claims.
What remains of Gadamer? The insight into finitude: we cannot step outside our history. The rehabilitation of tradition: it is not only baggage, but a condition of understanding. The structure of conversation: truth does not arise monologically but dialogically.
But also the warning: a hermeneutics that dissolves all critique into understanding, that develops no criteria to distinguish ideology from insight, power from legitimacy—such a hermeneutics risks becoming affirmative.
The task of a contemporary reception of Hegel would be to preserve Gadamer’s insights while overcoming his limits: to recognize finitude without lapsing into relativism. To take historicity seriously without obscuring power. To cultivate conversation without renouncing rational criteria.
Charles Taylor and Robert Brandom later attempted precisely this synthesis—a hermeneutics with normative criteria, a recognition of finitude without renouncing truth.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Tübingen: Mohr 1960. On its placement see: Jean Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Eine Biographie, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 1999; Donatella Di Cesare, Gadamer. Ein philosophisches Portrait, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2009. ↩︎
Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 270–275. On the critique of Gadamer’s concept of prejudice see: Jürgen Habermas, “Der Universalitätsanspruch der Hermeneutik,” in: Rüdiger Bubner et al. (eds.), Hermeneutik und Dialektik, Vol. 1, Tübingen: Mohr 1970, pp. 73–103. ↩︎
Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 270–280. On the systematics of the hermeneutic circle see: Otto Friedrich Bollnow, “Was heißt einen Schriftsteller besser verstehen, als er sich selbst verstanden hat?,” in: Hermeneutik und Dialektik, Vol. 1, pp. 113–128. ↩︎
On the systematic significance of finitude in Gadamer see: Günter Figal, Der Sinn des Verstehens. Beiträge zur hermeneutischen Philosophie, Stuttgart: Reclam 1996, pp. 73–89; Jean Grondin, “Die Komposition von ‘Wahrheit und Methode’,” in: Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik 10 (2011), pp. 83–103. ↩︎
Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 465–478. On the critique of the claim to universality see, besides Habermas, also: Karl-Otto Apel, “Szientistik, Hermeneutik, Ideologiekritik,” in: Transformation der Philosophie, Vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1973, pp. 96–127. ↩︎
Habermas, “Der Universalitätsanspruch der Hermeneutik.” The debate between Gadamer and Habermas is documented in: Karl-Otto Apel et al. (eds.), Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1971. ↩︎