preview

Gadamer Compare And Contrast Essay

Decent Essays

In this paper I examine two essays, Gadamer and the Fusion of Horizons by David Vessey and The Concept of the Subject in the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer by Flemming Lebech. Each essay explains a piece of Gadamer’s work and includes critiques of that work. I use these two texts in order to show the importance of the individual and to make clear that we are autonomous beings to Gadamer. In Flemming Lebech’s work, The Concept of the Subject in the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, he takes a close look at what Gadamer means by “play” and examines the subject’s role in shaping and creating history. Lebech is concerned that the two critics of Gadamer’s concept of the subject, Manfred Frank and Hans-Herbert Kögler in particular, focus on the conception of history in a very narrow sense. He believes that we most incorporate both the active and passive aspects of the subject in order to fully understand the individual’s relation to their cultural, historical, and social context (Lebech, 221). …show more content…

We examine the individual in relation to their historical background, cultural environment, and social life world, or in other words, the context in which they exist. We can see that the individual is able to rise above their cultures through reflection, they are not stuck. We also see that there are more possibilities to understand philosophical subjects such as ethics, political philosophy, etc (Lebech, 221). However, he says that this could also be wrong, since we would expect one to be completely autonomous and free from cultural influences. Lebech thinks this example leads to some misunderstanding the concept of the subject and how it is related to its culture, history, and tradition (Lebech,

Get Access