Abstract

The essay analyses the difference between Hans-Georg Gadamer’s and Alasdair MacIntyre’s conceptionsof hermeneutic philosophy, on the one hand, and Nietzschean genealogy, on the other. It argues thatRicoeur’s famous distinction between ‘hermeneutics of faith’ and ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ in thelight of the ontological reading of Nietzsche’s genealogy is misleading. Rather than trying to understandNietzsche’s philosophy as the hermeneutics of suspicion, it is more accurate to see Nietzsche’s andFoucault’s interpretive philosophy in terms of genealogy. The contrast between Gadamerianhermeneutics and Nietzschean genealogy, the one hand, as well as reading Gadamer hermeneutics inthe light of MacIntyre’s conception of tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive philosophicalinquiry, on the other, allow us to formulate an alternative conception of hermeneutics. The essayargues that hermeneutics is inevitably linked to tradition: hermeneutics depend on and draws itsmoral and intellectual resources from tradition as well as determines and continues tradition further.Keywords: Hermeneutics, genealogy, tradition, ontology, will to power.