Abstract

Gadamers idea of the task of philosophical hermeneutics – namely, bringing the frozen words of a text to life while always bringing it to language in a new and different way – is critically distinguished for two reasons: First, it is a critique of the view that the text is something that is substantively present-at-hand. Second, it is a critique of the notion that something already known is something fixed rather than something that can be understood as more differentiated and more complex than in its original interpretation. In the following essay, I will show how both points of critique can be drawn from Gadamer’s understanding of philosophical hermeneneutics. I will also suggest a solution to the problem of justifying and explaining how the object of understanding allows more than one interpretation.