Hans-Georg Gadamer
1900–2002 · Phenomenology · Prominent
Gadamer was the German founder of philosophical hermeneutics, the study of how understanding works. Prejudice gets a defence in Truth and Method, his book of 1960. You understand anything only from inside a tradition that hands you your questions, so inherited assumptions enable understanding as much as they bend it. Against the Enlightenment he rehabilitated tradition and authority. Understanding happens in language, when two horizons fuse.
Signature
The position Gadamer is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Individualism
- Knowledge
- Tradition / Phronesis
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Individualism (88 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (81 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (19 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Gadamer refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Knowledge
- Tradition / Phronesis
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Time
- Phenomenological Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Custom
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language?