Abstract

According to two critics, Georgia Warnke and John Caputo, Gadamer's hermeneutics is inherently "conservative" insofar as he appeals to tradition as a constituent in understanding. They insist that he simply preserves the ideals, norms and values of the Western metaphysical tradition without critically examining them. I do not agree and will argue that views like this depend upon several false assumptions -- for example, that Gadamer reifies the text as a "thing-in-itself" and remains trapped in subjectivism. I will begin by examining some of the ways in which these charges might be warranted before proceeding to defend him