Abstract

Gadamer offered a paradigm of hermeneutic experience and understanding as a humanist alternative to the scientific rationality that dominates Western modernity. He derived his perspective in great part from the philosophy of his mentor, Martin Heidegger, but he was grounded less in ontology than in his own humanistic training in classical philosophy, art, and literature. It was only somewhat late (in his debates with Habermas) that he grappled with the political relevance of his theory, but even in that context, he continued to insist on its universal applicability. This paper takes the position that Gadamer’s account of hermeneutic understanding provides an inadequate approach to the political dimensions of modernity, but that there is a radical kernel in his theory of experience that is relevant to political engagement. I suggest a way to reconfigure his model of hermeneutic experience that highlights this radical feature as the basis for viable political hermeneutics.