Abstract

Gadamer’s appeal to Aristotle’s ethics in the central part of Truth and Method shows that there is a close connection between hermeneutics and ethics. There is an attempt in Gadamer to analyze Aristotelian ethics, especially moral-practical knowledge, in light of the basic problem of philosophical hermeneutics, i.e., the relation between the concrete and the general. It is noteworthy that the generality of φρόνησις is a concrete, historical generality, which is fundamentally different from τέχνη. It is precisely on the basis of this generality that a hermeneutical ethics is possible.