Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth:

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Distinctive Understanding of Truth

Thomas Kiefer
Fordham University, New York, NY
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Hermeneutical Understanding as the Disclosure of Truth:

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Distinctive Understanding of Truth

1. Introduction
Recent scholarship on the nature of truth within Hans-Georg Gadamer’s and Martin
Heidegger’s philosophies has focused primarily on identifying and explicating the commonality
between their respective accounts of truth.1 However, as Jean Grondin and Richard J. Bernstein
note, this commonality often remains unclear in part because Gadamer provides no explicit
formulation or “theory” of truth (Wahrheit) throughout his works.2 Robert Bernasconi points to
this absence as one reason for the assumption that Gadamer’s conception of truth is merely a
development of Heidegger’s understanding of truth as alētheia (unconcealment) rather than a
distinctive account in its own right.3 Against this assumption and although Gadamer’s
conception of truth is clearly indebted4 to Heidegger’s own, Gadamer’s emphasis on truth as the
disclosure (Erschlossenheit) of human being through hermeneutical understanding (Verstehen) is
not merely a development of alētheia (Unverborgenheit) but a distinctive departure from the
specifics of Heidegger’s understanding of truth in relation to the question of Being. Gadamer’s
distinctive understanding of truth has been minimized in recent scholarship in part because
suitable attention has not been paid to Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s characterization of truth in
relation to their often conflicting critiques of the correspondence theory of truth, here
exemplified by the metaphysics of presence and objective methodology respectively.5 However,
as the essence of truth is fundamentally important for both of these thinkers, the specific
philosophical treatment devoted to truth can reveal the more general areas of similarity and
difference between Heidegger and Gadamer.
This paper defends the claim that the specific manner in which Gadamer and Heidegger
critique the correspondence theory of truth is indicative of their distinctive conceptions of truth
more generally. Although Gadamer clearly agrees with Heidegger that truth entails a disclosive
emergence of being through which the ontological and hermeneutical dimensions of human
being are unconcealed, this general similarity does not collapse the specifics of Gadamer's
understanding of truth into Heidegger's own. Instead, throughout his works, Heidegger argues
that the correspondence theory of truth is the result of the concealment of the question of Being
(Sein) such that Being is reduced to permanent presence and truth to propositional correctness.
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Heidegger's emphasis on the ontological difference between Being and beings entails that truth
properly understood is ontological, whereas any correspondence theory of truth is necessarily
ontic insofar as it fails to take heed of this ontological difference. Contrastingly and instead of
focusing on this fundamental ontological distinction, Gadamer argues that the correspondence
theory of truth and its relatedness to the strictures of methodological objectivity necessarily
denies the essence of truth as it emerges through finite and historical aspects of the interpreter.
Thus for Gadamer, the essence of truth is not understood insofar as the ontological conditions of
Dasein6 are explicated or the call of Being is heeded. Rather, truth emerges in acts of
understanding that embrace rather than deny the disclosure of human being, a process which
requires a hermeneutical and dialogical engagement with an other (e.g. a text, a historical
horizon, a concrete individual, etc).
In distinguishing Gadamer’s understanding of truth from Heidegger’s own, I focus on
both the “early” and “later” Heidegger exemplified by Being and Time and the essays following
the Kehre respectively.7 Although Gadamer produced a large body of work covering various
philosophical issues, I focus primarily on his magnum opus Truth and Method because I believe
this text contains the most explicit distinctions to be made between Gadamer and Heidegger on
the issue of truth, up to and including Gadamer's essays concerned nominally with truth such as
“Truth in the Human Sciences,” “What is Truth?,” and "On the Truth of the Word."8 In my
analysis, I identify three main aspects of the correspondence theory of truth to which Heidegger
and Gadamer respond, specifically 1) the subject-object schema of knowledge and truth, 2) the
purification of the subject by the removal of contingencies, and 3) reference to objective reality
independent of all human minds.9 Distinguishing their respective accounts of truth requires an
expository analysis, and for this reason, I devote a large portion of this essay to an analysis of the
similarities between Heidegger and Gadamer on the concept of truth prior to emphasizing the
discrepancies. Following, I combine this analysis with contemporary scholarship focused on
three areas of particular disagreement between Heidegger and Gadamer to reveal the specific
distinctions to be made between their accounts of truth more generally, specifically
considerations of a) dialogue, b) dialectic, and c) the reinterpretation of Aristotelian phronēsis.10
This paper concludes that Gadamer’s conception of truth as the disclosure of human
being through hermeneutical understanding differs from Heidegger’s characterization of alētheia
in how the being of truth ontologically emerges and what truth about human being is disclosed in
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instances of such emergence. Throughout his works and despite a shift in terminology,
Heidegger remains focused on the emergence of truth through an analysis of the ontological
conditions for the possibility of this disclosure through Dasein as Being-in-the-world, and later,
Dasein's relatedness toward Being in mytho-poetic language. While Heidegger understands
truth as the unconcealment of beings through the disclosure of Dasein as Being-in-the-world as
such, Gadamer concludes that truth is the disclosure of human being through hermeneutical
understanding as realized in concrete dialogical engagement in particular. These similar, but
often conflicting, accounts of truth cannot be subsumed within one another without overlooking
and thereby misunderstanding the philosophical insights found in Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s
distinctive philosophies. Additionally, the inability or unwillingness to distinguish their
conceptions of truth prevents any subsequent analysis of which thinker provides a more
compelling critique of the correspondence theory of truth and which account is more plausible as
an understanding of the phenomenon of truth broadly construed. Although Gadamer and
Heidegger are in agreement11 on many general points concerning truth as disclosure as opposed
to correspondence, we must not let this general similarity conceal the distinctiveness of the
details of their respective accounts. For these reasons, I end this essay by briefly defending the
claim that Gadamer provides a more compelling critique of the correspondence theory of truth,
and correlatively, a more compelling philosophical account of truth.

2. "The" Correspondence Theory of Truth

Although the correspondence theory of truth has been thoroughly studied, a brief
background on the historical influence of the theory in relation to Heidegger and Gadamer is
required. This background is not meant to oversimplify the correspondence theory of truth nor
minimize the outstanding philosophical difficulties that surround the theory. I have identified
three general claims to which many proponents of correspondence theories of truth adhere; this is
a rejection of the claim that there is one single, recurring, or consistent theory of correspondence
in the intellectual history of the West. Instead, by 'the' correspondence theory of truth, I mean the
general attempt to rationally identify truth as a type of connection between human beings and an
external, extra-mental reality by way of particular thoughts, judgments, or propositions.
More specifically, the correspondence theory of truth can be understood as the
proposition that if a thought, judgment, or proposition is true, then it is true owing to some state
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of the world.12 This emphasis on correspondence as the regulative ideal of truth has been
prevalent throughout Western philosophy as almost all canonical philosophers prior to the 18th
century endorsed the correspondence theory in some form or another.13 The prevalence of the
correspondence theory is due in part to its intuitive appeal to philosophers and non-philosophers
alike, and as D.J. O’Connor notes, the correspondence conception of truth can be interpreted as a
systematic development of the everyday dictionary understanding of truth.14 Thus, the
correspondence theory of truth can be understood as one attempt to define the specific conditions
under which a given thought, judgment, or proposition qualifies as true in relation to an objective
state of affairs and an explication of how such relations of correspondence are metaphysically,
conceptually, or semantically possible.
The philosophical roots of the correspondence theory as a historical tradition can be
found in Aristotle’s argumentation concerning the definition of truth, perhaps most explicitly
within his Metaphysics, but also in important passages from his Categories and De
Interpretatione as well.15 Although a similar conception of truth can be found earlier in Plato’s
Cratylus and Sophist, Aristotle lays the groundwork for the development of a theory of truth
predicated on the ability to accurately represent reality conceptually or propositionally; "to say of
what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of
what is not that it is not, is true."16 In these works, Aristotle is concerned with the conditions for
and limits of human understanding in relation to scientific knowledge (epistēmē) concerning
physical and metaphysical topics. Following, he argues that thoughts are “likenesses”
(homoiosis) of underlying things (pragmata) which cause statements (logos) to be true or false
owing to accurate representation.17 While Aristotle’s conception of truth is not synonymous with
more contemporary conceptions of truth as correspondence, accurate conceptual or propositional
re-presentation through a rational principle remains one of the guiding and regulatory aspects of
truth throughout Western intellectual history.18 More specifically, it is Aristotle’s conception of
truth in relation to Being to which Heidegger turns in his attempt to reclaim the ontological
essence of truth by distinguishing between ontic and ontological such that Being and truth cannot
be equated with permanent presence.
Following this Platonic-Aristotelian groundwork, the correspondence theory of truth was
given an onto-theological articulation by medieval scholastic philosophers, perhaps most notably
by Thomas Aquinas with the proposition that veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus (truth is the
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adequation [equation] of thing and intellect).19 Subsequently, this scholastic conception of truth
as correspondence was reinterpreted with an emphasis on epistemology before ontology by late-
medieval and early-modern thinkers. For instance, Rene Descartes’s emphasis on
epistemological certainty, Francis Bacon’s emphasis on scientific induction, and the
methodology of the modern natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) set the standard for truth as
correspondence since the Enlightenment.20 This early and late-modern development of the
correspondence of truth is fundamentally important for Gadamer’s attempt to maintain an
ontological conception of truth outside of truth as understood within the objective methodology
of the natural sciences and the Enlightenment prejudice against prejudice.
As noted in the introduction, I have identified three major features of the correspondence
theory of truth with which Gadamer and Heidegger take issue. These features include 1) the
subject-object schema of knowledge and truth, 2) the purification of the subject by the removal
of contingencies, 3) and reference to objective reality independent of all human minds.
The 1) subject-object schema of knowledge is implicit in the vert definition of truth as
correspondence because a proposition or judgment can be said to be true if and only if the
relationship between its subjective, mental or propositional existence accurately reflects its
referent in objective, external reality. Following, an appeal to an external, objective reality
serves as the absolute regulatory ideal for such reference, and as such, 2) the contingent elements
of the subject (e.g. history, tradition, accidents etc.) must be minimized, if not purged completely,
to guarantee that the apprehension of the relation of correspondence is not contaminated. Given
these two aforementioned concepts, it is possible for such relations of correspondence to reflect
the 3) external state of affairs without reference to a particular human mind or even the general
human apprehension of reality. Consequently, truth becomes identified with a univocal,
absolute, and static quality of propositions and judgments which serves as the locutionary,
metaphysical, and ontological ideal for reference.21
Against this background of the correspondence theory, Heidegger and Gadamer develop
an alternative understanding of truth as a disclosive ontological event into which human beings
enter rather than a rationally identifiable relation of correspondence. The disclosive approach is
an attempt to reclaim the ontological and hermeneutical importance of truth through an analysis
of the way in which derivative theories of truth such as the correspondence theory of truth are
ontologically possible at all.
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3. The Disclosure Approach to Truth

Before turning to the specific differences between Heidegger and Gadamer on the nature
of truth, I provide a necessary background on the disclosure approach to truth as presented
initially by Heidegger in Being and Time and then expanded upon in his essay "On the Essence
of Truth." As noted, in contrast to the correspondence theory of truth, the disclosure approach
characterizes truth as an emergent, ontological event rather than a static quality that thoughts,
judgments, or propositions somehow "possess." Instead of the attempt to rationally identify a
relation of correspondence (angleichung) between a human being and the external world, a
disclosure approach attempts to elucidate the conditions for the possibility of any such relation of
correspondence through an ontological analysis of human being. That is, Heidegger provides an
analysis of Dasein in an attempt to explain how an understanding of truth as correspondence is
ontological possible at all based on a phenomenological ontology of what had hitherto been
identified as the “subject," "cogito," or "transcendental ego." Following, Heidegger argues for an
understanding of truth that deals with both the truth of particular phenomena that appear to
Dasein, and perhaps more importantly, the ontological process by which such phenomena can
emerge at all through Dasein as Being-in-the-world. However, we must remember that Gadamer
and Heidegger do not completely deny the importance of correspondence in relation of truth.
Instead, they both argue that correspondence considered in isolation fails to reveal the
ontological and hermeneutical essence of truth, and thus theories of correspondence actually
conceal the essence of truth.
Heidegger’s attempt to reclaim a properly ontological understanding of truth results from
his primary philosophical goal of reintroducing what he calls "the question of Being" (die
Seinsfrage), or the fundamental ontological question concerning the basis of Being and the being
through which the question of Being comes to exist, Dasein.22 Thus Heidegger begins Being and
Time with an analysis of classical metaphysical consideration of Being focused on the canonical
priority given to presence and self-identity as the ontological and metaphysical ideal of Being
and truth respectively. According to Heidegger, the ontological prioritization of the ratio-
conceptual ability to apprehend beings and identify truth based on the extent to which such
beings can be made present to the consciousness of a knowing subject entails that Being has been
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reduced to the objective existence of entities (Seiende) and truth to correct conceptual
representation.
In response to this presumed overemphasis on presence, Heidegger attempts to rethink
what he takes to be the ontological implications of the ancient Greek word for truth, a-letheia
(literally “not-covered”), as opposed to truth understood as orthotes (correctness in
representation) or subsequently veritas (verification).23 Heidegger refocuses the essence of truth
from the ability to identify external facts about the world and duplicate them in thoughts,
judgments, or locutions, to the ontological conditions for the possibility of any correspondence
prior to rational, philosophical, and active attempts to "obtain" truth. Thus, as Mark Wrathall as
recently reminded us, the phenomenological characterization of truth as alētheia is a) a rejection
of the proposition that entities exist externally and independently from the conditions under
which they manifest themselves, and by correlate, b) a fundamental critique of the overemphasis
on correctness as propositional correspondence to external entities.24
In his analysis, Heidegger focuses on the ontological conditions for the possibility of the
historical overemphasis on presence. Heidegger claims that the prioritization of presence is only
possible derivatively insofar as the being of entities is always already unconcealed for Dasein.
That is, the unconcealment of entities within the world as present-at-hand (vorhanden) or ready-
to-hand (zuhanden) is possible on account of Dasein’s more fundamental ontological
disclosedness within the world as a being who is its own disclosedness through its unique
relation to Being.25 Subsequently, the phenomenological recognition of unconcealment as
opposed to correspondence becomes possible when the being of entities is allowed to emerge and
truth is not understood as an entity or quality to be actively acquired or conceptually grasped.
Instead, truth is related to Dasein's primordial Being-in-the-world such that truth cannot be
reduced to any rationalistic or intellectual philosophical programs because truth exists prior to
such approaches.
Consequently, according to Heidegger, Dasein is always already “in the truth” as the
being through which unconcealment occurs owing to the existential-ontological structure of
Dasein.26 In this sense, if truth is disclosed based on the ontology of Dasein, then truth does need
to be identified, isolated, and guaranteed as per some entity or relational state external to Dasein.
Instead, Dasein must engage in the hermeneutical self-interpretation of factical life to disclose
the ontological basis of truth as unconcealment exemplified by Heidegger’s analytic in Being
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and Time, and in his later writings, Dasein must heed the call of Being without rational
domination.27 The caveat is that Dasein is always simultaneously in “untruth” insofar as the
finitude of Dasein inherently limits the extent to which the being of entities can be unconcealed.
Accordingly, falsity or “untruth” is not merely a function of incorrectness or the lack of
correspondence, but is better understood, as Jean Grondin has suggested, as a type of ontological
“hallowness” which entails the temporary concealment of the being of entities and the
ontological nature of Dasein.28
Given this background, I turn to Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s development of the
disclosure approach to truth as a critique of correspondence theory in three areas typically
understood to be areas of great similarity between these two thinkers, specifically a) the
experience of art, b) the hermeneutic circle, and c) the nature of language.

A. The Subject-Object Schema and the Experience of Art

Both Gadamer and Heidegger focus on the experience of art as a site for the emergence
of truth that cannot be reduced to the correspondence between a subject, the viewer and an
object, the work of art. Additionally, both Heidegger and Gadamer argue that the subject-object
schema is not only inadequate for understanding the truth involved in the experience of art, but
this schema even prevents the openness required for the emergence of the being of truth.
However and despite these agreements, the experience of art also reveals a fundamental
difference between Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s considerations of truth in how the being of truth
ontologically emerges and what truth about human being is disclosed in instances of such
emergence.
Heidegger’s considerations in the essay “the Origin of the Work of Art” influenced
Gadamer’s own philosophical interest in the experience of art exemplified most clearly in the
early sections of Truth and Method. Both Gadamer and Heidegger agree that the subject-object
schema cannot adequately explain the being of aesthetic phenomena in particular and truth in
general. Heidegger begins “the Origin of the Work of Art” with a phenomenological claim that
the artist and the work of art are both ontologically implicated in the essence of art in its being.
That is, according to Heidegger, the being of art as a phenomenon does not emanate solely from
one source or the other considered in abstraction. Instead, the work of art “sets up a world” and
allows truth to emerge as the unconcealed self-presentation of Being to Dasein.29 Gadamer
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echoes this phenomenological insight in Truth and Method by arguing that the truth involved in
the experience of art involves the emergence of hermeneutical “play” which cannot be reduced to
the subject-object schema nor the application of objective methodology alone.30 That is, the play
involved in the experience of art is not merely the subjective mindset of a viewer, nor a
recreation of the artist’s creative intent, nor even the objective quality of the work of art, but “the
mode of being of the work itself.”31
In addition to the general agreement between Heidegger and Gadamer on the subject-
object schema in relation to art, Gadamer agrees with Heidegger that this schema and an
application of correspondence to art conceals the true being of art and correlatively the
ontological essence of truth as such. According to Heidegger, the artistic being of a painting like
Van Gogh’s Peasant Women’s Shoes cannot be reduced to considerations of correspondence,
verification, or presence. That is, the truth involved in the painting of the pair of shoes does not
rest on its correspondence with an actual pair of shoes in external reality (its object-being), nor
its material or formal nature (its thingly existence), nor even its usefulness as a piece of
equipment (its work-being).32 Thus for Heidegger, the work of art represents an emergent, self-
presentation of Being from the concealing ontological ground of "earth," the undifferentiated
source of phenomena, to its unconcealment in "world," the ontological horizon of the world's
significance for Dasein.33 In this way, the work of art and its creation points to the essence of
truth as alētheia rather than correspondence through Dasein’s own disclosedness as the
unconcealing-concealing being through which the being of entities emerges. If the being of a
work of art has been forgotten or concealed, then the true being of art itself cannot emerge and
the experience of art becomes reduced to subject-object considerations or its usefulness as
equipment.34
Gadamer agrees with Heidegger that accounts of the experience of art that fail to
adequately address the true being of art must be critiqued. More specifically, Gadamer argues
against what he takes to be inadequate accounts of the experience of art such as subjectivist
accounts of aesthetic consciousness and creative genius exemplified by Immanuel Kant’s
aesthetics and Romanticism respectively. According to Gadamer, art and the humanistic sciences
(Geisteswissenschaften) have been denied legitimate access to truth since the Enlightenment
because truth has been erroneously identified with an application of a pre-determined
methodology predicated on the nomological standards of modern natural science.35 Gadamer
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points to Kant’s Critique of Judgment as the text wherein the experience of art becomes reduced
to a type of disinterested pleasure based on aesthetic judgments and directed toward aesthetic
objects. Gadamer critiques Kant's characterization of the “subjective universality” involved in
the aesthetic dispositions of the viewer as subject insofar as these subjective dispositions reduce
the experience of art to a subject-object schema outside of "rational" truth proper.36 Gadamer
continues his critique of aestheticism arguing that Kant’s “subjectivization” of the experience of
art leads to the Romantic backlash exemplified by the conception of artistic works as products of
creative genius sourced in the subject.37 The subjective capacity for creative genius entails that
the artist as creative subject has most of, if not all, the ability to impart meaning in a work and
thereby guide the experience of art for the viewer. Gadamer insists that the subject-object
schema and various forms of aestheticism mischaracterize the experience of art, and in so doing,
block conceal the truth of the aesthetic experience in hermeneutical play, an aspect of
understanding that Gadamer extends to the entirety of human being.38
Although Heidegger and Gadamer point to art as a site for the emergence of truth beyond
correspondence and the subject-object schema, the distinctive philosophical purpose behind
these analyses are not identical. Heidegger is primarily concerned with the experience of art
insofar as Dasein's relationship with aesthetic phenomena, poesis, and mythos can reveal how
Dasein unconceals and what it unconceals, namely the being of entities. Gadamer on the other
hand is concerned with the experience of art because it can reveal how human understanding is
fundamental hermeneutical insofar as that which is understood necessarily engages the
interpreter. More specifically, while Heidegger uses the experience of art to reveal the
ontological relationship between Dasein and Being, Gadamer focuses on art because of the
relationship between hermeneutical understanding and human being concretely. That truth
cannot be exhausted in a subject-object schema in the experience of art entails that, for
Heidegger, truth emerges in an engagement with a concern with Dasein's ontology as the being
who unconceals, whereas Gadamer concludes that truth emerges in concrete acts of
hermeneutical understanding rather than in relation to Being itself.

B. The Purification of the Subject and the Hermeneutic Circle of Understanding

The experience of art proved to be a site for the emergence of truth that lies outside of the
subject-object schema of correspondence for both Heidegger and Gadamer. However, the
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philosophical importance underlying their treatment of the experience of art differs for each
thinker. In a similar manner, both Gadamer and Heidegger argue that the purification of the
subject through the removal of all contingency is not only impossible, but such an attempted
purification inhibits the openness required for the emergence of truth by denying the finite and
circumscribed nature of all understanding (Verstehen). Despite this agreement, Heidegger and
Gadamer again differ on the question of how truth emerges in relation to understanding and what
ontological aspect of human being is unconcealed in such emergence. In this subsection, I begin
again with Being and Time before analyzing Heidegger’s essay “On the Essence of Truth” and
relating its importance to Gadamer’s own thought.
Both Heidegger and Gadamer reject any attempted purification of the subject in their
acknowledgement of the finite nature of all understanding. This recognition of human finitude
is a result of Heidegger's ontological development of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s cyclical
hermeneutic of textual interpretation known as the hermeneutic circle.39 In Being and Time,
Heidegger argues that insofar as Dasein is a contingent rather than transcendent being thrown
into the world, all ontological comportment and any given act of understanding is always already
within a prior framework of understanding consisting in a fore-having (vorhabe), a fore-sight
(vorsicht), and a fore-conception (vorgriff).40 That is, Dasein is unable to fully establish a
foundation upon which to base subsequent relations of correspondence precisely because Dasein
is always already within a certain framework of concepts and acts of understanding. Gadamer
comes very close to Heidegger's analysis of the hermeneutical nature of understanding by
acknowledging that attempts to purify the subject of all contingencies denies the hermeneutical
influence of prejudices (Vorurteile) and therefore cannot recognize the extent to which an
interpreter inherently “belongs” to a given text, work, or tradition.41 However, the difference
between Heidegger and Gadamer on the hermeneutic circle is that Heidegger analyzes
understanding in order to elucidate the ontological nature of Dasein in relation to Being, whereas
Gadamer focuses on the circular nature of understanding to indicate the general hermeneutical
character of human being as understood through concrete acts of hermeneutical understanding.
In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that the hermeneutic circle need not be a “vicious”
circle even though the circular nature of understanding can never be fully eliminated.42 In order
to render the hermeneutic circle philosophically meaningful instead of vicious, Dasein must first
acknowledge that this circle exists, cannot be removed completely, and thus can have no final
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resting spot or firm foundation. In the essay “On the Essence of Truth,” Heidegger focuses on the
connection between freedom and alētheia. Following a critique of correspondence, Heidegger
argues that truth is essentially characterized by a type of ontologically-oriented freedom that
consists in the “letting-be” of beings in their being as opposed to the desire to dominate beings.43
If Dasein allows beings to appear in the openness of unconcealment, then this is not merely a
passive or indifferent endeavor, but instead an ontological engagement with this open region as
an openness toward Being.44 Such ontological freedom exists in contrast to the consequences of
the correspondence theory of truth that prevent Dasein’s engagement with this open region with
the consequence of characterizing entities as raw materials to be manipulated by Dasein and
eventually modern human technology.
In his analysis of the hermeneutic circle and the nature of understanding in Truth and
Method, Gadamer rejects psychological and historical approaches to constructing generalized
hermeneutical criteria as exemplified by Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey. According to
Gadamer, although Dilthey and Schleiermacher recognize that interpreters are not ahistorical
purified subjects, historical and psychological approaches to hermeneutics overlook the play and
belonging involved in hermeneutical understanding. Schleiermacher’s psychological
hermeneutics assumes that the author can unilaterally impart meaning in a text and therefore the
interpreter can use generalized psychological criteria to reconstruct this meaning.45 Similarly,
Dilthey argues that although the methodology of natural science cannot be simplistically applied
to hermeneutics as a humanistic science, a general theory of understanding can be used to
analyze the historical structures underlying a given text and lead to the formulation of a general
hermeneutical subjectivity.46 Gadamer introduces the concept of historically effected
consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein) to emphasize the limited nature of the
interpreter by bringing out the hermeneutical importance of prejudices, a hermeneutical
dimension he later uses to critique the Enlightenment prejudice against prejudice.47 In so doing,
Gadamer undermines not only the attempt to purify the subject of all contingencies, but also any
attempt to characterize principles that govern an abstract hermeneutical subjectivity. That is,
historically effected consciousness entails that no general interpretive set of propositions can
adequately convey the relatedness of the interpreter to the particular historical contingencies that
constitute her or his ability to hermeneutically understand at all. Following and similar to the
hermeneutic circle of understanding, historically effected consciousness entails that “the
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prejudices of the individual, far more than his [or her] judgments, constitute the historical reality
of his being.”48
Although Heidegger and Gadamer agree that the purification of the subject is both
impossible and undesirable, the reasons behind such rejections are not identical. Heidegger
analyzes the hermeneutic circle of understanding to emphasis that Dasein is always already
within a specific temporal, historical, and hermeneutical context as a function of Dasein's
relatedness to Being, and thus any theory of truth that denies these contexts will be inadequate.
Contrastingly and although Gadamer also focuses on the hermeneutic circle to highlight the
inherent finitude of human being, the larger point of his analysis is that hermeneutical
understanding itself is disclosed as relational in the engagement of an interpreter with a particular
text, tradition, or concrete human other without recourse to Being. Heidegger's concern remains
the question of Being and the impediments to an authentic understanding of the disclosure of
Dasein and the detrimental ontological consequences of correspondence, whereas Gadamer
undermines any attempt to characterize general or abstract conceptions of subjectivity because
such attempts fail to acknowledge the finite and affected nature of human understanding.

C. External Reality and the Horizon of Language

In addition to critiques of the subject-object schema and the purification of the subject,
both Heidegger and Gadamer argue against the characterization of language as a tool for gaining
access to external reality as the referential and regulatory ideal of truth. Both Gadamer and
Heidegger argue that this conception misunderstands of the nature of language and blocks the
openness required for the emergence of truth. Nevertheless, Heidegger and Gadamer again differ
on the particularities of how truth emerges and what such emergence entails ontologically. I
begin with Heidegger’s conception of language found in Being and Time, “Letter on
Humanism,” and “On the Way to Language” before turning to Gadamer’s understanding of
language in Truth and Method.
Both Heidegger and Gadamer agree that language cannot be properly understood as a
created tool for human use based upon an associated correspondence between words and external
objects. In Being and Time, Heidegger analyzes the conditions for the possibility of
propositional correctness and assertive or “apophantic” speech. According to Heidegger, the
ability to assert propositions or represent the world correctly in linguistic expressions
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presupposes an ontologically prior unconcealment of entities and the world as significance.49 For
this reason, assertive language and even pre-ontological talk are derivative as such conceptions
and usages of language presuppose, but cannot apprehend, the ontological foundation of
language in discourse (Rede).50 In the last section of Truth and Method, Gadamer argues that
hermeneutical understanding in particular and human thought in general is intimately tied to
language. According to Gadamer, language is both the medium of hermeneutical understanding
and the limited horizon in which interpreters engage with texts, prejudices, and other concrete
individuals. Given this emphasis on the linguistic dimension of understanding, Gadamer
concludes that “language is being (Sein) which can be understood;” that is, understanding only
occurs through and on account of language.51 As concrete historical beings, interpreters are
constituted by the linguistic conventions and communal understanding (soziales Einverständnis),
which occurs prior to any active manipulation or systematization.52 Similar to Heidegger’s
criticism of the misunderstanding of language as primarily apophantic, Gadamer rejects any
attempted systematization of language with the aim of gaining access to reality in-itself.53
In “On the Way to Language” and “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger attempts to uncover
the primordial nature of language (Sprache) in connection to Being and alētheia. In contrast to
derivative modes of language, Heidegger characterizes language as an ontological facet of
Dasein through which worldhood and Dasein’s being-in are disclosed. Heidegger puts forth a
conception of language as “the house of Being” in which Dasein dwells rather than an outgrowth
of human technology or innovation.54 Heidegger returns to Aristotle’s De Interpretatione to
emphasize the “saying” (die Sage) of language through which the being of entities are revealed
(alētheia) as a type of “showing” (die Zeige).55 Ontologically, saying underlies and presents the
boundaries of ordinary speech and in so doing opens up the possibility of a world for Dasein as
Being-in-the-world. Heidegger then relates the ontological essence of saying to what he calls the
Ereignis,56 the ontological event of propriation in which the saying of language emerges through
Dasein’s own receptivity toward Being. 57 Saying and the Ereignis shift the focus from an
emphasis on the utterance and the attempt to utilize language as a tool to Dasein’s openness
toward language, the emergence of truth, and Being through an ontological comportment of
silence(erschweigen), a conclusion that calls in to question metaphysics in general as
traditionally understood. In contrast to the utilization of language to access external reality
through correctness, Heidegger emphasizes the failure of apophantic speech to capture Being as
 16

well as the disclosive ontological importance of poetic language.58 Similar to a work of art,
poetry sets up a world of significance and in so doing discloses Dasein as Being-in-the-world
and truth as alētheia. Poetic language resists the conceptualization associated with classical
metaphysics and undermines artificial utilizations of language such as the products of the logical
positivist philosophers of the early 20th century. In so doing, Heidegger bypasses the misguided
attempt to utilize language to access external reality by analyzing the conditions of the possibility
this misuse of language and disclosing the primordial relationship between Dasein, Being,
poetry, and language.
Gadamer focuses on the connection between language and dialogue to elucidate the
importance of language for the hermeneutical disclosure of human being through understanding.
Gadamer understands dialogue as a type of interpretive engagement that entails the possible
emergence of a mutual understanding between two otherwise disparate interpreters through the
hermeneutical play of language, otherwise known as the "fusion of horizons."59 Although the
fusion of horizons is not a guaranteed or absolute mixture of worldviews (Weltanschauungen)
between an interpreter and an other, language provides the medium for any potential dialogical
engagement that allows the intelligibility of the subject matter (die Sache)60 in question to
emerge across particular cultural and historical boundaries. The emergence of die Sache as the
intelligibility of hermeneutical understanding in dialogue occurs through the openness of the
interpreters toward hermeneutical play and therefore dialogue cannot be localized in one
individual nor predicted by a preconceived methodology. That being said, dialogue is not
restricted to the interaction between two concrete individuals, but provides an analog for
hermeneutical understanding in general.61 Gadamer refers to this aspect of hermeneutical
understanding the “logic of question of answer,” the ongoing dialogical process of understanding
through which an interpreter engages, questions, and is transformed by a given text, tradition, or
concrete human other.62 Gadamer emphasizes the dialogical nature of understanding and the
historically circumscribed horizon of language to counteract the artificial and objectifying
utilization of language to access external reality outside of human finitude.
Heidegger and Gadamer both agree that the attempt to access external reality through
language is a misunderstanding of the nature of language and inhibits the openness required for
the emergence of truth. Both question the extent to which we can make reference to reality apart
from human individuals and human reality. However, Heidegger continues to focuses on the
 17

specific ontological conditions revealed by an analysis of Dasein or remaining open to the call of
Being through poetic language, Gadamer emphasizes that hermeneutical understanding reveals
the ontological nature of human being in the interpreter's engagement with an other. That is,
while Heidegger attempts to reorient our conceptions of language in order to reveal the larger
relationship of Dasein and Being as such, Gadamer focuses on language as the primary condition
for all understanding that mediates, shapes, and constitutes concrete human individuals and any
conception of Being in particular.

4. The Philosophical Relationship between Gadamer and Heidegger

In this concluding section, I combine my prior analysis of the critique of correspondence
theory with three general topics to elucidate the difference between Gadamer and Heidegger on
the emergence and thus the essence of truth. Although there are many topics63 on which
Heidegger and Gadamer do not completely agree, it is beneficial to focus on three main topics of
disagreement, namely dialogue, dialectic, and the reinterpretation of Aristotelian phronēsis
Generally, Heidegger’s thought is considered by some scholars and critics to be more
“radical” than Gadamer’s own, an interpretation not isolated to Gadamer’s most notable critics
Jürgen Habermas and Gianni Vattimo.64 Ingrid Scheibler notes that Gadamer's thought differs
from Heidegger's insofar as Gadamer does not commitment himself to the positive destruktion of
Western philosophy exemplified by a “language of metaphysics,” nor the attempt to counteract
the forgetfulness of being (Seinsvergessenheit) through the question of Being as such.65 More
explicitly, as Rod Coltman argues, “what Gadamer seems to overlook is nothing less than being
itself” because Gadamer does not explicitly ask the question of Being and seeks instead to
reestablish the authority of traditions and certain classical philosophical ideas.66 That being said,
it is unclear if Gadamer and Heidegger are truly in disagreement on this point or merely
emphasize different aspects of the same underlying philosophical project by utilizing different
methods for obtaining similar ends. However, on the topics of dialogue, dialectic, and phronēsis,
Gadamer and Heidegger often reach opposite conclusions.
The importance of dialogue as a site for the emergence of truth exemplified by Platonic
philosophy is a crucial point of difference between Heidegger and Gadamer. As Francisco
Gonzalez and Daniel Dahlstrom note, it must be remembered that Heidegger’s interpretation of
Plato is nuanced and does not represent an outright rejection or the mere repetition of Aristotle’s
 18

interpretation of Plato.67 However, Heidegger does point to the Republic as the beginning of the
forgetfulness of Being wherein the understanding of truth shifts from alētheia to participatory
correspondence in the eidos of the Good.68 I am in agreement with Scheibler who insists that
Heidegger remains suspicious of dialogue as a pathway to philosophical truth throughout his
works in part because of the historical misunderstanding of Being beginning with Plato and the
tendency of everyday language to consist of merely idle talk (Gerede) which conceals the
ontological basis of Dasein.69 Instead of emphasizing dialogue as pathway to truth as alētheia,
Heidegger places the focus on the conditions for the possibility of unconcealment in Being and
Time and in his later works on poetic language and silence toward the call of Being, ontological
aspects which cannot be subsumed or arrived at through the dialogical engagement between
concrete individuals as such.
Gadamer distances himself from Heidegger’s interpretation of Platonism and focuses
instead on the retrieval of dialogue as the model of hermeneutical understanding and
philosophical insight. Francis J. Ambrosio calls this aspect of Gadamer’s thought the “discipline
of dialogue” such that dialogical engagement is the effective universal criterion of truth revealed
in the play between an interpreter and an other, though I suspect that Gadamer was explicitly
arguing against any restrictive, monological criterions of truth.70 Through the medium of
language and contingent upon openness toward other interpretations, dialogue can disclose
hermeneutical understanding, human finitude, and by consequence truth as the being of this
hermeneutical disclosure. For these reasons, the dialogical nature of understanding and the
model of dialogue are essential for Gadamer’s conception of truth in contrast to Heidegger’s
understanding of alētheia. That is, Gadamer heavily criticizes any situation wherein a privileged
access to truth is granted to an individual on account of intuitive, eidetic, or transcendental
capacities. In so doing, Gadamer locates the emergence of truth between participants and across
rationally identifiable poles.
Heidegger and Gadamer also come to different conclusions about the importance of the
philosophical concept of dialectic in relation to truth. Similar to his worries about dialogue,
Heidegger remains skeptical of dialectic as a pathway to truth throughout his works especially in
its Platonic and Hegelian formulations.71 Robert J. Dostal emphasizes this point explicitly by
identifying Heidegger’s conception of the experience of truth as an immediate emergence of
being like a flash of “lighting” (Lichtung) in the openness toward Being rather than the
 19

Aufhebung of a dialectical process.72 That is, unconcealment is not a dialectic process in which
the terms concealment and unconcealment pass into each other, but rather a coextensive and
equiprimordial aspects of Dasein, truth, and Being. For Heidegger, in asking the question of
Being, Dasein answers the calling and discloses the conditions for the possibility of
unconcealment, a process which does not "progress" or obtain some ontological position that was
unavailable prior to a teleological process of development.
In contrast to Heidegger, Gadamer retrieves the notion of dialectic in the service of
hermeneutical understanding and truth. The fusion of horizons and the logic of question and
answer represent the ongoing process of hermeneutical understanding and transformation. Rod
Coltman addresses this point explicitly in arguing that Gadamer provides a hermeneutical
conception of Aufhebung. For Gadamer, dialectic is not the teleological process of Spirit (Geist)
or Reason (Vernunft) unfolding throughout history, but the ongoing event of understanding as the
disclosure of human finitude which alters and expands the horizon of the interpreter.73 This
unending dialectical process of hermeneutical disclosure cannot be predetermined by a
methodology or grasped absolutely by reason because such a process only exists through finite
interpreters and based upon concrete acts of interpretive understanding. In contrast to
Heidegger’s emphasis on the non-dialectical emergence of Being and alētheia, Gadamer
emphasizes that the being of truth emerges only through a mediated process of disclosure
between an interpreter and particular texts, prejudices, and other concrete historical individuals
over time.
The reinterpretation of Aristotle’s conception of phronēsis is also an topic on which
Heidegger and Gadamer differ in relation to truth. Robert Bernasconi provides a detailed
analysis of Heidegger’s phenomenological reinterpretation of phronēsis in Being and Time by
noting that Heidegger retranslates phronēsis into “circumspection” or “circumspective insight”
(Umsicht) in relation to Dasein’s self-interpretation of factical existence. 74 This circumspective
aspect reveals Dasein’s ontological comportment as a being that is not given predetermined,
absolute principles (epistēmē) or generalized goal-directed rules for a particular craft or work-
being (technē). Instead, the “practical wisdom” of circumspection entails the disclosure of the
worldhood of the world as the ontological basis upon which the world can have any intelligibility
and significance for Dasein.75 Thus for Heidegger, the term phronēsis acts not as the communal
 20

ethico-practical principles that one learns through experience, but the disclosure of Dasein as
Being-in-the-world and the being through which unconcealment comes to be.
Gadamer expands Heidegger’s phenomenological characterization of phronēsis to
include the distinctly hermeneutical act of interpretation, application, and the horizon of the
particular community within which an interpreter understands. Gadamer agrees with Heidegger
that interpretation requires a type of knowledge that cannot be articulated in abstract principles or
generated through a predetermined schema. However, Gadamer argues that interpretive ability is
developed through and therefore limited by the historical and traditional standards of the
community to which an interpreter belongs rather than a particular understanding or
comportment toward Being. Thus Gadamer’s reinterpretation of phronēsis differs from
Heidegger’s not only insofar as it is primarily hermeneutical rather than ontological, but because
phronēsis functions as an expression of the specific communal and cultural aspects of an
interpreter rather than the disclosure of Dasein as Being-in-the-world as such.

5. Gadamer’s Distinctive Understanding of Truth

To return to the recent scholarly discussion outlined in the introduction, Robert
Bernasconi is correct to highlight the absence of a clearly articulated theory of truth in
Gadamer’s thought as one reason for the presumption that Heidegger and Gadamer share the
same account of truth. Additionally, I agree with Rod Coltman that it would be simplistic and
reductionistic to conclude that Gadamer and Heidegger either completely agree or completely
disagree in all areas. However, I disagree with Coltman and any interpretation based on the
belief that Gadamer and Heidegger merely emphasize different aspects of the same underlying
account of truth, and as such, Gadamer’s conception of truth should be understood primarily as a
hermeneutical expansion of alētheia.76 Instead, Gadamer's development of Heidegger's
consideration of alētheia results in a starkly different understanding of truth, specifically insofar
as how truth emerges and what about human being is unconcealed. Although the consideration
of the specific nature of truth may appear to be a secondary or minor issue, the way in which
Gadamer and Heidegger understand truth is fundamentally important for understanding larger
philosophical ideas, specifically as the philosophical consideration of truth relies upon other
metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological concerns.
 21

It may be tempting to conclude that Heidegger’s account of truth is focused primarily on

phenomenological ontology or eventually mytho-poetic language while Gadamer’s philosophical
project is distinct insofar as it is one of hermeneutical ontology. However, the difficulty with this
possible interpretation is that both Heidegger and Gadamer engage in hermeneutics to reveal the
ontological nature of truth, and as such, the use of hermeneutics is not confined to Gadamer’s
account of truth alone. Instead, Gadamer’s distinctive conception of truth is tied directly to the
shortcomings he identifies with correspondence theories, specifically why correspondence
theories are obstacles to truth and how such obstacles can be addressed. Gadamer critiques
correspondence theories because they tend to overlook the hermeneutical nature of all
understanding and the engagement of the interpreter in favor of objectivity. Thus Gadamer's
understanding of truth is dialogical, dialectic, and phronetic precisely because these dimensions
of truth are concealed when truth and understanding is reduced to rational certainty or the
application of methodology. Further, it is clear that Heidegger's understanding of truth differs at
base from Gadamer's insofar as it circumvents the necessity of a dialogical or dialectic
engagement with an other, opting instead for a focus on the relatedness of Dasein to Being.
Based on this analysis and in conclusion, I want to defend the claim that Gadamer
provides a more compelling understanding of truth and critique of the correspondence theory.
Although a full defense of this claim would require a separate essay, I believe a general sketch of
this interpretation can be put forth after distinguishing Gadamer's understanding of truth from
Heidegger's own. The popularity of the correspondence theory of truth is, I believe, based in part
on a pre-ontological intuition of realism and the desire to obtain a suitable objective foundation
to adjudicate between competing beliefs, claims, and values. However, Gadamer is correct when
he argues that if the dialogical and hermeneutical dimension of human understanding is
concealed, then agreement and a justifiable account of realism are necessarily impossible from
the outset. Neither truth nor objectivity can be gained by denying the being of the interpreter
through which all claims to truth and objectivity arise.
Although Heidegger's insight into the nature of truth as alētheia is fundamentally
important for the attempt to reclaim a properly ontological understanding of truth, his focus on
Being and eventually poetic language prevents many philosophers and non-philosophers alike
from engaging with his work due to the obscurity of his terminology. The result may only be
silence, for it is often unclear what type of agreement or community of interpreters can arise out
 22

of Heidegger's conclusions about Dasein, truth, and Being. This is not to deny Heidegger’s
insistence that Dasein is ontologically constituted by the other as a being-with (Mitsein), I wish
only to acknowledge that many otherwise inclined individuals may be disinterested in
Heidegger's work precisely because it fails to provide an adequate account of the motivations
behind correspondence theories through reference to Being and the fundamental ontological
difference.77 Contrastingly, Gadamer not only diagnoses the shortcomings of correspondence
theories, but he also addresses the motivation behind correspondence insofar as his
understanding of truth fulfills the human need for a human community based upon the agreement
that results in a shared hermeneutical situation. Thus I am in agreement with Gadamer that
correspondence theories of truth do not result because the question of Being has been forgotten
or Dasein is constituted by ontological fallenness as such. Instead, correspondence theories arise
out the hermeneutical situation of concrete human beings who attempt to understand the world
around them; the error amounts only to the willingness to deny this hermeneutical dimension of
understanding in the name of an inhuman objectivity.
23
1
There is a general trend in this scholarship to downplay the differences between Gadamer and Heidegger on the topic of
truth, and, when these differences are recognized, they are often attributed to a superficial difference of emphasis rather than
indicative of genuine distinction. For select and specific instances of this trend, see for example, Joel C. Weinsheimer,
Gadamer's Hermeneutics (New Have and London: Yale, 1985); James DiCenso, Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth:
A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoueur (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1990); Brice R.
Wachterhauser, ed., Hermeneutics and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1994); Rod Coltman, The Language of
Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Heidegger in Dialogue (Albany: SUNY, 1998); Ingrid Scheibler, Gadadmer: Between
Heidegger and Habermas (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); Rudolf Bernet, "Gadamer on the Subject's Participation
in the Game of Truth" in The Review of Metaphysics 58.4 (2005): 785-814; and Lawrence K. Schmidt, Understanding
Hermeneutics (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2006). Two notable exceptions to this trend can be found in Walter Lammi’s essay
“Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ‘Correction’ of Heidegger” in Journal of the History of Ideas 52.3 (1991):487-507, and Robert J.
Dostal’s essay “The Experience of Truth for Gadamer and Heidegger: Taking Time and Sudden Lightning” in
Wachterhauser , Hermeneutics and Truth, 47-67. However, even within these exceptions, Gadamer’s understanding of truth
is still considered merely a development of Heidegger’s conception of truth as alētheia, even though it is acknowledged that
Gadamer diverges from Heidegger on specific points and in important respects.
2
Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 151-52; Jean Grondin, "Hermeneutical Truth and its Historical Presuppositions" in Anti-
Foundtaionalism and Practical Reasoning (Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing, 1987), 1-8. See also Jean
Grondin, Hermeneutische Wahrheit? Zum Wahrheitsbegriff Hans-Georg Gadamers (Konigstein: Forum Academicum,
1982); Francis J. Ambrosio, “Dawn and Dusk: Gadamer and Heidegger on Truth” Man and World 19.21 (1996): 21-53, 39,
wherein Ambrosio makes a similar point in stating that “Gadamer himself seldom mentions truth directly and nowhere
formulates a coherent characterization of it in his own terms." Notable critiques of Gadamer’s philosophy in general and his
(lack of a) conception of truth in particular have been made by Jürgen Habermas in Zur Logik Der Sozialwissenschaften
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970) and "A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method" in Understanding and Social Inquiry, ed.
Fred Dallamyr and Thomas McCarthy (Notre DameL University of Notre Dame Press, 1977). Additional critiques include
Gianni Vattimo's The End of Modernity, trans. Jon Snyder (Cambridge: Polity, 1988); Jacques Derrida by way of Diane
Michelfelder, Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989); and Eric
Donald Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). For a further list of scholars who focus
on the lack of an explicit articulation of truth in Gadamer’s thought see Brice R. Wachterhauser’s “Must We Be What We
Say? Gadamer on Truth in the Human Sciences” in Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986).
3
Robert Bernasconi "Bridging the Abyss: Heidegger and Gadamer” in Research in Phenomenology 16.1 (1986): 1-24, 3.
4
This indebtedness is emphasized by Gadamer himself, see Gadamer’s essays “Heidegger’s Later Philosophy,” “Heidegger
and the Language of Metaphysics,” and “On the Problem of Self-Understanding” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans.
David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California, 1976); within these essays, Gadamer makes an explicit connection
between Heidegger's thought and Gadamer's own Truth and Method. For an extensive treatment of this indebtedness see
also Gadamer’s Heidegger’s Ways, trans. John W. Stanley (New York: SUNY Press, 1994). Additionally, this indebtedness
is clear to other thinkers, for example, in a well-known laudatio in Jürgen Habermas's Philosophical-Political Profiles
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 190, he describes Gadamer as a “student of Heidegger” whose philosophy has the effect of
“urbanizing the Heideggerian province." More explicitly, Leo Strauss described Truth and Method as the most important
work by a “Heideggerian” in Leo Strauss - Gadamer Correspondence [Truth and Method 1961], last modified March, 2001,
http://www.archive.org/details/LeoStrauss-GadamerCorrespondencetruthAndMethod1961.
5
James DiCenso provides a detailed analysis of the disclosure approach to truth in contrast to correspondence in
Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth: A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricouer. That being said, DiCenso
focuses on Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s critiques of correspondence mainly to highlight the contrast between correspondence
and disclosure rather than to elucidate Gadamer’s understanding of truth as distinct from and not merely a development of
alētheia.
6
Dasein is of course the term Heidegger uses to bypass traditional philosophical assumptions about the being through which
the question of Being emerges. Rather than speaking of the ‘subject’ or ‘transcendental ego,’ Heidegger emphasizes the
way in which a human being is first Being-in-the-world prior to all conceptual or thematic considerations. The analysis of
Dasein is prior to and distinct from a philosophical anthropology of human beings, and represents Heidegger’s attempt to
focus on the being whose being is itself an issue and is in each case characterized by ‘mineness’ (Jemeinigkeit) or an
individuality that surpasses conceptual abstraction.
7
I deemphasize the importance of considering an “early” and “later” Heidegger in this essay. While it is clear that the
manner in which Heidegger articulates his views changes throughout his writings, the underlying focus on the question of
Being is found throughout his work. I do not think it is helpful or illuminating to partition Heidegger into the binary of
“early” and “later,” though a full treatment of this interpretive issue lies outside of the scope of this essay.
8
Of course this is not to deny the importance of these essays. However, these essays are concerned primarily with
understanding a disclosure approach to truth in contrast to, for example, truth within the natural sciences or apophantic
speech, rather than a focus on Gadamer's distinctive contribution over and above Heidegger's own.
9
These aspects do not exhaust the correspondence theory of truth, but represent the major tenets of correspondence targeted
explicitly and implicitly by Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s critiques.
10
Similarly, these areas of dis-agreement do not exhaust the many philosophical issues on which the thought of Heidegger
and Gadamer could be analyzed. I have chosen these three areas because they indicate the larger distinction to be made
between Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s conception of truth.
11
It cannot be denied that Gadamer generally endorses Heidegger’s conception of truth as alētheia, “What we mean by
truth, the revealedness and unconcealedness of things, thus has its own temporality and historicity” (“What is Truth?” in
Wachterhauser, Hermeneutics and Truth, 46). Nevertheless, this general endorsement is put forth in contrast to truth as
propositional content or a relation of correspondence rather than a wholesale endorsement of Heidegger's understanding of
alētheia in particular.
12
Gerald Vision, Veritas (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004), 1. This is one general formulation of the correspondence theory of
truth, for an even more general characterization, cf. Lawrence Johnson, Focusing on Truth (London: Routledge, 1992), 40
who argues that the correspondence theory understands truth “in terms of a relationship between those things which are true
and brute facts that make them true.”
13
Richard Schantz, What is Truth? (New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2001) makes note of this general trend in tracing the
history of truth in the Western intellectual tradition and Johnson echoes this sentiment. There are other notable theories of
truth, but by and large, Western philosophers since antiquity have argued for some conception of truth as correspondence.
Theories of truth based on coherence, pragmatics, and semantic or linguistic content exist in the history of philosophy, but
these competing theories have not enjoyed the same type of historical endorsement.
14
D.J. O’Connor, The Correspondence Theory of Truth (Tiptree: Anchor, 1975), 17.
15
“To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that
it is not, is true” (Metaphysics 1011b25). See Marian David’s concise Stanford encyclopedia article "The Correspondence
Theory of Truth" for an in-depth analysis of the correspondence theory in relation to Aristotle
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence); David specifically references Aristotle's Metaphysics 1011b25,
Categories 12b11, 14b14, and De Interpretatione 16a3.
16
David, "The Correspondence Theory of Truth," 1-3; Specifically, Plato's Cratylus 385b2; Sophist 263b.
17
Ibid., 5-6. David points to De Interpretatione 16a3 and Categories 12b11, 14b14 for explicit formulations of this
principle. This aspect of Aristotle’s conception of truth is also analyzed in Heidegger’s essay “On the Essence of Truth,”
Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1977).
18
Again, this is not to deny that rival theories of truth have existed throughout this history, but recognition of the tendency
of Western thinkers to prioritize correspondence as the standard of truth in particular and philosophical insight in general.
For a detailed treatment of the topic of truth in Aristotle see, Paolo Crivelli, Aristotle on Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2004); Christopher Long, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth (New York: Cambridge UP, 2011).
19
De Veritate, Q.1, A.1-3; cf. Summa Theologiae, Q.16 This well known conception of truth in Aquinas is highlighted by
Heidegger’s treatment and critique of traditional conceptions of truth found in his essay “On the Essence of Truth."
20
Weinsheimer, Gadamer's Hermeneutics, 9. Weinsheimer astutely notes that Gadamer understands the method of natural
science to be an outgrowth of the Cartesian/Baconian emphasis on induction, and by correlate, the establishment of natural
physical laws through an application of a pre-determined though repeatable method. He goes on to argue that Gadamer’s
fundamental insights on the shortcomings of method remain valid even though 20th century philosophy of science has by
and large jettisoned the Cartesian/Baconian characterization of natural science in favor of fallibility famously characterized
by Karl Popper. More recently and more explicitly, philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and Ludwig
Wittgenstein have argued for a type of correspondence theory focusing on states of affairs, truth-makers, and the linguistic
signs through which such facts are relayed. For a contemporary discussion of the correspondence theory of truth and its
relation to the so-called "minimalist" or "deflationary" conceptions of truth including disquotation, see Paul Horwich's Truth
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), Marian David, Correspondence and Disquotation: An Essay on the Nature of Truth (New York:
Oxford UP, 1994) and Andrew Newan, The Correspondence Theory of Truth (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2002).
21
Johnson, Focusing on Truth, 41; This understanding of truth as the transmission of reality “as it is” is so prevalent that it
constitutes the “common sense” naïve realism which assumes that human beings have an unmediated access to reality, a
point emphasized explicitly in Marold Westphal, Whose Community? Which Interpretation? (Grand Rapids, Baker
Academic, 2009), 17-18.
22
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time 7th ed. trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row,
1962), 1-5; 262-3.
23
Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in Basic Writings, 115; Heidegger’s usage of the terms unconcealment and
truth changes over the course of his thought. Although in Being and Time he attempts to rethink “truth” as
“unconcealment,” eventually he explicitly denies that truth should be equated with unconcealment and comes to speak of
unconcealment in place of truth, a fact noted in Mark Wrathall, Heidegger and Unconcealment (New York: Cambridge UP,
2011), 11. In my view, this switch is in part Heidegger’s attempt to distance his thought from the language of metaphysics
and correspondence’s monopoly on “truth.” I have retained Heidegger’s understanding of truth as alētheia not to reduce
this philosophical point, but for the sake of clarity in connection with Gadamer’s own conception of truth.
24
Wrathall, Heidegger and Unconcealment, 1-2. Wrathall draws this implication out sufficiently; I note that Gadamer
echoes this very point in “What is Truth?” by noting that in principle “There can be no proposition that is purely or simply
true," see "What is Truth?" in Wachterhauser's Hermeneutics and Truth, 41.
25
Heidegger emphasizes that Dasein is thrown into the world (Geworfenheit) and exists through attunement (Befindlichkeit)
and interpretive understanding (Verstehen). This understanding of Dasein contrasts with the tenets of the correspondence
theory of truth because there are be no absolute reference points on which Dasein is established either in abstract first
principles of external reality.
26
This is not an indication of Heidegger’s existentialism of the sort Karl Jaspers and Jean-Paul Sartre endorse, but an
emphasis on the ontological importance of the existence of Dasein (ontically - existentiell and ontologically – existential) in
connection to primary motivation of asking the question of Being.
27
Martin Heidegger, Ontology - The Hermeneutics of Facticity, trans. John Van Buren (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2008), 2-
5. The self-interpretation of factical life is the primary motivation of Heidegger’s Ontology – The Hermeneutics of Facticity,
Following, he develops this idea most completely in Being and Time, a development that influences the entirety of his later
thought as well, though he uses different terminology.
28
Jean Grondin, The Philosophy of Gadamer (Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2003). As truth is not an object to be obtained
or grasped, but the condition for Dasein as being-in-the-world, the concealment of this ontological condition of Dasein’s
being is the result of the finite nature of Dasein as well as the tendency to conceal and even forget the ontological
importance of Being.
29
Martin Heidegger, "On the Origin of the Work of Art" in Basic Writings, 170.
30
Hans-Georg Gadadmer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York:
Continuu, 2006), 470.
31
Ibid., 102.
32
Heidegger, "On the Origin of the Work of Art," 166.
33
Ibid., 180.
34
Heidegger uses the example of an ancient Greek temple to illustrate the way in which a work of wordly significance can
lose its ontological resonance for a community disconnected by the breadth of time.
35
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 4-5. In arguing for this point, Gadamer claims that the “knowledge of regularity” has
become the yardstick of truth and the criterion for considering a discipline legitimate. More specifically, Gadamer identifies
the methodos of modern natural science as the attempt to render concepts themselves as absolute and univocal as
mathematical concepts. This differs from the ancient Greek conception of science which held that mathematics could form
the absolute metaphysical and philosophical ideal as Wachterhauser notes in Hermeneutics and Truth.
36
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 37.
37
Ibid., 37, 49.
38
Although I do not have room in this essay for a full treatment of this issue, Gadamer extends the concept of play to the
plastic arts as well. He notes that the play involved in a picture is in instance wherein the ontological relationship of being
is “no longer one-sided;” that is, reality is not somehow flowing from the object and giving the picture its being. Rather, a
picture is a presentation or emanation of being and can even be more meaningful and real than the original object in some
instances. In this way, Gadamer reverses the ontological prioritization of an original source of being and meaning generally
associated with Plato’s metaphysics of the Ideas.
39
Heidegger, Being and Time, 190-194. Schleiermacher originally developed the idea of the hermeneutic circle to capture
the way in which the meaning of a given text only emerges for an interpreter through an ongoing process between various
parts of the text and the totality of the text as a whole. Gadamer emphasizes Schleiermacher’s use of the hermeneutic circle
as well in noting that understanding is not simply an immediate apprehension of the author’s intent in a given work, but
necessarily relies on preconceptions and pre-understandings of the text to exist at all (e.g. an understanding of the author’s
life, particular passages of the text, prior acts of interpretation, etc.); see Gadamer, Truth and Method, 184-190.
40
Heidegger, Being and Time, 191.
41
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 278.
42
Heidegger, Being and Time, 194.
43
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” 124-125.
44
Ibid.
45
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 189.
46
Ibid., 214-234.
47
Ibid., 296, 301.
48
Ibid., 278.
49
Heidegger, Being and Time, 196-7.
50
Ibid., 203-4; For Dasein, language as discourse is ontologically equiprimordial with understanding (Verstehen) and
attunement (Befindlichkeit) as constitutive aspects of Dasein’s ontological structure.
51
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 470; I utilize Walter Lammi’s retranslation of this line in the original German: Sein, das
verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache found in his essay "Hans-Georg Gadadmer's 'Correction' of Heidegger."
52
Ibid., 469; Heidegger, “What is Truth?,” 39.
53
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 440. Gadamer is explicitly and implicitly critiquing the views of logical positivism endorsed
by thinkers such as Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Bertrand Russell, and Charles W. Morris, see the introduction of
Weinsheimer's Gadamer's Hermeneutics for a detailed treatment of this topic.
54
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings, 217; Additionally, in “On the Way to Language,” Heidegger’s
primary aim is to bring language as language to language or in other words disclose the ontological importance of language
rather than its origin in human ingenuity or technology.
55
Heidegger, “On the Way to Language,” 401.
56
Heidegger’s use of Ereignis is difficult to render into English. Although it is often translated as a ‘happening’ or ‘event,’ it
must be noted that Ereignis has a number of associations and connotations. In general Ereignis is a term for an event which
comes from sich ereignen, ‘to happen, occur,’ and is related to Auge, ‘eye.’ Further, Ereignis is associated with (sich) eigen,
'to be suitable, belong,’ as well as aneignen, ‘to appropriate,’ and eigen, ‘(one’s) own.’ Michael Inwood, A Heidegger
Dictionary (Malden: Blackwell, 1999), provides a detailed treatment of this philosophical etymology on pages 54-56. Due
to these definitional connections, I have combined the usage of event and propriation for the purposes of this essay to
illustrate the happening event of the Ereignis while retaining the appropriate of Dasein by the calling of Being. In their
translation of Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana UP,
1999), Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly choose to translate ‘Ereignis’ to ‘enowning’ instead of leaving it in the original
German. They choose this route to emphasize that translation is implied even if Ereignis is left in the German because
subsequent explanatory sentences will always be required for explication. Enowning emphasizes the presence of eigen in
Heidegger’s use of the Ereignis as an event ontological proper to Dasein’s own being.
57
Heidegger, “On the Way to Language,” 415-18; This point is also captured in Heidegger’s usage of es gibt (it gives) in
relation to language, Being, and truth. Being and truth are not generated by accessing the world or even produced through
active unconcealment, but are given over to Dasein as the self-presentation of Being in language.
58
Heidegger’s treatment of poetry deserves much more analysis than I am able to give in this essay. Throughout his works,
Heidegger focuses on the poetry of Friedrich Hölderin and Rainer Maria Rilke, to name only two poets. See the essay
“What Calls for Thinking?” in Basic Writings; “Hölderin and the Essence of Poetry” in Heidegger's Elucidations of
Hölderin's Poetry, trans. Keith Hoeller (New York Humanity, 2000); and Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, and
Thought, trans Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper-Collins, 1976).
59
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 305.
60
Die Sache acts as the hermeneutical ideal of dialogue and understanding. Gadamer uses this concept to reject a simplistic
dichotomy between subject and object while clearing highlighting the inherent intentionality and intelligibility of
hermeneutical understanding through linguistic interaction. Due to its similarities to the phenomenological goal of
returning to “the things themselves,” this aspect of Gadamer’s thought has led to charges that he endorses some conception
of correspondence in the form of realism as Brice Wachterhauser argues in "Gadamer's Realism: The 'Belongingness' of
Word and Reality" in Hermeneutics and Truth.
61
With the emphasis on understanding as both understanding and application, Gadamer consciously blurs the traditional
scholastic distinction between subtilitas intelligendi, subtilitas explicandi, and subtilitas applicandi, a point Dicenso, among
others, have made explicitly. This is similar to Hegel’s conception of the ongoing process of dialectic, but differs insofar as
Gadamer rejects the possibility of the culmination of this process in absolute knowledge or an infinite intellect. Instead,
Gadamer settles for what Hegel calls the “bad infinity” of the never-ending dialectical process.
62
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 364-371.
63
These three points do not exhaust the differences between Gadamer and Heidegger, but as I will show they are crucial for
evaluating Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s critique of correspondence theory and disclosure approach to truth. For an
alternative account of the difference between Heidegger and Gadamer see Walter Lammi’s essay “Hans-Georg Gadamer’s
‘Correction’ of Heidegger” which focuses on Heidegger’s prioritization of the future and discontinuity as contrasted with
Gadamer’s emphasis on the past and continuity with philosophical tradition (Lammi 1991).
64
This characterization of Gadamer’s philosophy in relation to Heidegger’s is the result of assuming that the rehabilitation
of the authority of prejudices and tradition is a mark of conservativism.
65
Scheibler, Gadamer: Between Heidegger and Habermas, 146; This is not to say that Gadamer does not follow Heidegger
in the critique of modern subjectivism and the methodologism of the natural sciences, but rather that Gadamer localizes the
misunderstanding to developments rooted in specific Enlightenment ideals rather than the totality of Western thought.
Gadamer does not associate the specific overemphasis of modern scientific methodologism with the entirety of the Western
philosophical tradition and advocates for the reappropriation and engagement with this tradition for the latent philosophical
insights found therein.
66
Coltman, The Language of Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Heidegger in Dialogue, 67. Continuing: “Gadamer, in other
words, seems to turn away from the question that lies at the very heart of Heidegger's lifelong project. For what could be
more anathema to Heidegger’s persistent attempts to de-subjectify the phenomenon of human being-in-the-world than the
notion of “wirkungsgeschictliches Bewußtsein” or “historically effected consciousness?” What could be more retrograde to
the Heideggerian turn away from metaphysics than a turn back toward Hegelian dialectic?” Although Coltman eventually
argues that Gadamer and Heidegger agree despite apparent differences, it is nevertheless unclear which differences should
deserve the most attention and the extent to which these mark differences of emphasis of distinctive disagreements.
67
For a detailed analysis of this two-fold trend in Heidegger’s thought, see Jean Gonzalez, "Plato and Heidegger: A
Question of Dialogue" in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 49.2 (2010): 322-24; Additionally, Daniel O.
Dahlstrom provides an extensive analysis of the relationship between Heidegger, Plato, and truth as alētheia in Heidegger’s
Conception of Truth (New York: Cambridge UP, 2001).
68
Dalstrom, Heidegger's Conception of Truth, 5; see also Heidegger’s “Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit” in Essence of
Truth: On Plato's Parable of the Cave and the Thaetetus (New York: Continuum, 2004).
69
Scheibler, Gadamer: Between Heidegger and Habermas, 159-60.
70
Ambrosio, "Dawn and Dusk: Gadamer and Heidegger on Truth," 19-20; This retrieval is in part what makes Gadamer a
self-proclaimed “Platonist” despite the negative connotations associated with this label in reference to Heidegger.
71
Heidegger appears to retain his suspicion toward dialectic first expressed in the Ontology – the Hermeneutics of Facticity
due the dialectic’s lack of radicality and reliance on already constructed contexts. For Heidegger, although Hegel critiqued
Enlightenment philosophy, the emphasis on dialectic reinforces many of the totalizing aspects objectivism and forgetfulness
of Being associated with Western metaphysics. It must be noted however that Heidegger does present ambivalence even
toward his own suspicion of dialectic in the late work The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.
72
Wachterhauser, Hermeneutics and Truth, 47-66; Heiddegger makes use of this metaphor in “On the Way to Language” on
page 418, 424-6 of Basic Writings.
73
Coltman, The Language of Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Heidegger in Dialogue, 110.
74
Bernasconi, "Bridging the Abyss: Heidegger and Gadamer," 1989.
75
This is most explicitly articulated in part 1 section 3 of Being and Time, but resonates throughout Heidegger’s writings.
76
Coltman makes this point in the conclusion of his The Language of Hermeneutics.
77
Heidegger, Being and Time, 153-163.