Science and Humanity:

Hans Georg Gadamer

by Paul A. Schons

Originally published by the Germanic-American Institute in November, 2002

Hans Georg Gadamer, one of the world’s great philosophers of the 20th century, died this year on March 13. He had just celebrated his 102nd birthday a few weeks earlier. He was living in his long time home of Heidelberg at the time of his death. He had become the successor to the eminent philosopher, Karl Jaspers, at the University of Heidelberg in 1949. He had retired from his chair at the university in 1968 but had remained very active as a professional philosopher.

Gadamer was born on February 11, 1900 in Marburg. His father was a professor of chemistry at the university there. In 1902 his father was offered a position at the University of Breslau and the young Gadamer grew up in that city with its rich intellectual traditions. He initiated his university studies at the University of Breslau but when his father returned to a position as professor at the University of Marburg, the son also transferred to the university there as a student. He completed his doctoral studies under the direction of Paul Natorp in 1922 with a dissertation on Plato.

Gadamer undertook post-doctoral studies beginning in 1923 at the University of Freiburg where he encountered the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Those two giants of 20th century philosophy would have a profound and lasting effect on the thinking of the young man. He completed his post-doctoral studies (Habilitation) in 1929 with another work on Plato, Platos dialektische Ethik (Plato’s dialectic Ethics).

In 1937 he began teaching at the University of Marburg. In 1939 he was offered a position at the University of Leipzig. He became the dean of the school of philosophy there in 1945 and in 1947 the rector of the university. In 1947 he was able to leave East Germany, accepting an invitation to a chair of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. In 1949 he was called to the University of Heidelberg where he would remain through the end of his career.

Gadamer grew to feel at odds with a prevailing 20th century dominance of the methods of the natural sciences. He noted that those methods and the claim to certain knowledge in the natural sciences had spread to the disciplines of the social sciences and the humanities. He found that restriction to be more and more oppressive and felt that there should be a broader more human/cultural/historical set of understandings. There was clearly a strong influence from the work of Martin Heidegger in his approach. The earlier work of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) provided him also with a foundation in questioning the dominance of the scientific method in fields outside of the natural sciences.

Gadamer finished the book which was to become the central work of his career in 1960, Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method). In that book he challenged the validity of the methods of the sciences in their application to the broad scope of human understanding. He developed a new approach to thinking and understanding which he termed philosophical hermeneutics. In Wahrheit und Methode he did extensive analysis of the nature and role of language in human perception and understanding. Gadamer developed the concept of understanding as opposed to the approach of the natural sciences to discover through rigid empirical method. In regard to the natural sciences too he called for a sensitivity to human meaning in research and application. He led the way to questioning the extent of real objectivity in the sciences and, in any case, the wisdom of a solely technological approach to human knowledge.

In the years after the publication of Wahrheit und Methode Gadamer developed an international reputation as one of the world’s leading philosophers. He was frequently invited to lecture at universities throughout Europe as well as in the United States and Canada. In Europe he found himself in conflict with some of the other major thinkers of the times. His public debates with Jürgen Habermas from 1967 through 1971 evoked wide ranging interest as did his public debate in 1981 with the French deconstructionist and nihilist, Jaques Derrida. (At one point Derrida refered to Gadamer as "a lost sheep in the dried up pastures of metaphysics.")

In addition to his most influential book, Truth and Method, Gadamer was continuously active in writing and editing. Some of his other significant works include, Kleine Schriften (Philosophical Hermeneutics), published in 1967, Vernunft im Zeitalter der Wissenschaft (Reason in the Age of Science), 1976 and Dialogue und Dialectic (Dialogue and Dialectics) in 1980.

Gadamer’s theories have been widely influential and have had impact not only in philosophy but also in literature and literary criticism, theology, history and sociology. His “hermeneutics” predate the “deconstructionist” direction of postmodernism and form a more developmental and constructive counterpoint to the ultimately nihilistic conclusions of deconstructionist theory.

In his late years Gadamer gave increasing thought to the matter of religion and grew more and more concerned with the antagonistic relationships between world religions. On the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2000 he said, “Die großen Weltreligionen müssten bei dieser Lage der Dinge ein gemeinsames Interesse vertreten, dass jede Ausartung religiöser Gegensätze durch Gewaltanwendung unmöglich gemacht wird.” (“The great world religions in the current state of affairs must represent a common interest such that any degeneration to violence because of religious differences would become impossible”.)