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Hegel's Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies
These five essays on Hegel give the English-speaking reader a long-awaited opportunity to read the work of one of Germany's most distinguished philosophers, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer's unique hermeneutic method will have a lasting effect on Hegel studies.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
117 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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422 people want to read
About the author
Hans-Georg Gadamer
273 books308 followersHans-Georg Gadamer was born February 11, 1900 in Marburg, Germany.
(Arabic: هانز جورج غادامير)
Gadamer showed an early aptitude for studies in philosophy and after receiving his doctoral degree in 1922 he went on to work directly under Martin Heidegger for a period of five years. This had a profound and lasting effect on Gadamer's philosophical progression.
Gadamer was a teacher for most of his life, and published several important works: Truth and Method is considered his magnum opus. In this work Heidegger's notion of hermeneutics is seen clearly: hermeneutics is not something abstract that one can pick up and leave at will, but rather is something that one does at all times. To both Heidegger and to Gadamer, hermeneutics is not restricted to texts but to everything encountered in one's life.
Gadamer is most well-known for the notion of a horizon of interpretation, which states that one does not simply interpret something, but that in the act of interpretation one becomes changed as well. In this way, he takes some of the notions from Heidegger's Being and Time, notably that which Heidegger had to say about prejudgements and their role in interpreting and he turns them into a more positive notion: Gadamer sees every act and experience (which is a hermeneutical experience to a Gadamerian) as a chance to call into question and to change those prejudgements, for in the horizon of interpretation those prejudgements are not forever fixed.
Gadamer is considered the most important writer on the nature and task of hermeneutics of the 20th century, which was still widely considered a niche within Biblical studies until Truth and Method was widely read and discussed.
He died at the age of 102 in Heidelberg (March, 2002).
(Arabic: هانز جورج غادامير)
Gadamer showed an early aptitude for studies in philosophy and after receiving his doctoral degree in 1922 he went on to work directly under Martin Heidegger for a period of five years. This had a profound and lasting effect on Gadamer's philosophical progression.
Gadamer was a teacher for most of his life, and published several important works: Truth and Method is considered his magnum opus. In this work Heidegger's notion of hermeneutics is seen clearly: hermeneutics is not something abstract that one can pick up and leave at will, but rather is something that one does at all times. To both Heidegger and to Gadamer, hermeneutics is not restricted to texts but to everything encountered in one's life.
Gadamer is most well-known for the notion of a horizon of interpretation, which states that one does not simply interpret something, but that in the act of interpretation one becomes changed as well. In this way, he takes some of the notions from Heidegger's Being and Time, notably that which Heidegger had to say about prejudgements and their role in interpreting and he turns them into a more positive notion: Gadamer sees every act and experience (which is a hermeneutical experience to a Gadamerian) as a chance to call into question and to change those prejudgements, for in the horizon of interpretation those prejudgements are not forever fixed.
Gadamer is considered the most important writer on the nature and task of hermeneutics of the 20th century, which was still widely considered a niche within Biblical studies until Truth and Method was widely read and discussed.
He died at the age of 102 in Heidelberg (March, 2002).
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October 27, 2025Incredible set of essays on Hegel, exploratory, explicatory, and critical.
Gadamer writes with a real clarity, and despite being translated, some sense of the multiplicity in the German comes through (likely the excellent translation and notes contributes to this). In fact, this multiplicity in language is of great concern for Gadamer in his Hermeneutical approach, and becomes most evident, I think, in the final essay, Hegel and Heidegger with a brilliant focus on the treatment of just one sentence both by Hegel and Heidegger.
In the first essay there is a very interesting analysis of Hegel's treatment of ancient thought in his own philosophy. Gadamer highlights Hegel's (rather egregious in fact) misreading/mistranslation of a certain passage in the Sophist and yet, as Gadamer contends, Hegel manages to go beyond into something quite fruitful (something of Zizek's sentiment of a productive misreading rings here).
The third essay in particular is also especially good: Hegel's Dialectic of Self-Consciousness. In some way it is a rather typical explanation of the Lordship and Bondage section of the phenomenology, but it has the distinct advantage of correcting previous thinkers (like Kojeve and his distinctly French reading) as well as making some interesting connections with Hegel's views of Death and work.
A really great work, immensely readable. If I could go back 4-5 years I would have read this before reading any Hegel.
Gadamer writes with a real clarity, and despite being translated, some sense of the multiplicity in the German comes through (likely the excellent translation and notes contributes to this). In fact, this multiplicity in language is of great concern for Gadamer in his Hermeneutical approach, and becomes most evident, I think, in the final essay, Hegel and Heidegger with a brilliant focus on the treatment of just one sentence both by Hegel and Heidegger.
In the first essay there is a very interesting analysis of Hegel's treatment of ancient thought in his own philosophy. Gadamer highlights Hegel's (rather egregious in fact) misreading/mistranslation of a certain passage in the Sophist and yet, as Gadamer contends, Hegel manages to go beyond into something quite fruitful (something of Zizek's sentiment of a productive misreading rings here).
The third essay in particular is also especially good: Hegel's Dialectic of Self-Consciousness. In some way it is a rather typical explanation of the Lordship and Bondage section of the phenomenology, but it has the distinct advantage of correcting previous thinkers (like Kojeve and his distinctly French reading) as well as making some interesting connections with Hegel's views of Death and work.
A really great work, immensely readable. If I could go back 4-5 years I would have read this before reading any Hegel.
May 16, 2019
This is the best book I have read on Hegel. Gadamer highlights, contextualizes, and draws conclusions about the author, and then moves on. The result is a clear, insightful, thematically organized work that –– rather than bogging the reader down in minutiae–– leaves you wanting more.
February 5, 2014
La claridad es meridiana. Excelente discipulo de Heidegger.
January 6, 2019
اگرچه احتمالن دیالکتیک پربسامدترین مفهوم در کتاب باشد، اما ساختار آن که متشکل از پنج مقالهی جداگانه است، فاقد پیوستاری است که به این وسیله به صورتی تماتیک در کتاب دنبال شود و همین موضوع، نکات فراوانِ راهگشا و آموزندهی نهفته در مقالات( چه اختصاصن در حیطهی دیالکتیک هگلی، چه دیالکتیک+ها) - که شاید حتی آن را به یک تکستبوکِ قابل توجه بدل کرده باشد- را در ذهن به صورتی پراکنده و شاید حتی پریشان درمیآورد، که به سختی بتوان بدون تکلف آن را متجلی در یک نوع کلیت متصور شد. نسبتی که گادامر در پارهای از این متون توأمان میان خودش، هگل و هایدگر برقرار میکند، بیش از آنکه نوعی فلسفهی تطبیقی را برساند، به آنچه که ژیژک « اتصال کوتاه» نام نهاده، نزدیک است.
October 8, 2023
Una mica massa difícil i acadèmic pel meu nivell, però m'ha ajudat molt en avançar en la meva formació sobre dialèctica. Una de les qüestions més suggerents és la continuïtat entre la dialèctica de l'antiga Grècia amb la dialèctica de Hegel. Si la concepció antiga de la dialèctica accentua les contradiccions com a treball preparatori per al coneixement, per a Hegel és empenyent les contradiccions a l'extrem que s'esdevé un pas cap a una veritat superior. El llibre també és una bona (però difícil) introducció a l'idealisme especulatiu (crec, pq tampoc en sé molt del tema). Per acabar, una cita:
"La raó és la reconciliació de la ruïna".
Petonets autoconscients i pura interioritat.
"La raó és la reconciliació de la ruïna".
Petonets autoconscients i pura interioritat.
May 14, 2023
Actually what I was already starting to feel regarding Heidegger. And the whole German analysis of Greek philosophy in general. Makes sense that Gadamer, a student of Heidegger, would write about Hegel in such a way.
January 15, 2020
Some really good stuff in here. I liked essays three and four the best—but the fifth one was also very interesting.
July 12, 2023
Puntuaria mas si me hubiese enterado de algo de lo que he leido
December 24, 2024
Los primeros tres.
December 28, 2024
Entendi muy poco, lo tengo que volver a leer despues
September 13, 2014
The success of any interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy hinges on how Hegel’s contradiction talk is cashed out. Gadamer’s account of the dialectic suffers from “too literal” (p. 25) a reading of contradiction talk in Hegel, which construes him as committed to the existence of true contradictions, or dialetheias. But, as Redding has argued correctly, Hegel was no dialetheist.
Arguably Hegel's use of the term “contradiction” is much more appositely thought of as an iconoclastic abstraction from the law of non-contradiction as applied in making immediate judgements on the basis of sensory deliverances. And, his aim in using that notion is to argue that inferences drawn from sensuous experience are radically under-determined by any conceptual norms governing their possible interpretations. So that, no set of conceptual norms can ever safeguard interpretations of sensuous experience from all possibility of error.
Furthermore, Gadamer takes the peculiar view that Hegel thought genuine philosophical explanation demands that demonstration can only be conducted in “live discussion.” Not only is this a very odd claim, it’s also arguably a misreading of Hegel’s view that truth can only be secured in the analysis of the process whereby inquiry is conducted; where, by process is meant the dominant suite of practices in the inquiring community. It is not, as Gadamer takes it (ibid.), that all utterances remain open to gerrymandering and “eristic exploitation” due to their inherently contradictory nature but that all utterances are generically undetermined by the conceptual frameworks in which they occur.
“[A]dequate formulation of the truth is an unending venture” (p. 33) but not because things in themselves are contradictory as Gadamer holds, but only because no matter what conceptual norms we subscribe to it is impossible in the long run to not fall into error. A theory, giving determinate content to the target of theoretical analysis, can never exhaustively describe it because the total number of facts about any phenomena is near infinite while theories are articulated and applied by intellectual faculties which are themselves finite. Thus, every determination is defeasible in that the cognizance of new information can negate the subject of cognition, or negate what is predicated of it; this occurrence Hegel calls determinate negation.
Another problem with Gadamer’s reading is his lack of sensitivity to distinctions between Aristotelian term logic, and modern sentential and predicate logics. This is probably why he finds Hegel to be actively pushing a thought to self-contradiction, and why he takes “contradiction” to be “a method of speculative logic.” As argued above the role of contradiction as a teaching aid for Hegel works to expose the wound of reason, namely the indeterminacy of categories of the understanding, or Verstand, for which he suggests Vernunft or intuition is the only available band-aid.
The lesson here, as Brandom has argued, is to understand Hegel to be recommending a more modest and realistic protocol for understanding fortified by openness to intuition, or Verstand mediated by Vernunft: get rid of contradictories experienced at each stage of inquiry; and, abandon any fixed idea of the appropriate destination of inquiry, as we cannot know what it should be given the indeterminacy of our theoretical claims.
Failing to unpack these consequences of Hegel’s logical commitments, and specifically their epistemological and ontological consequences, constitute Gadamer’s more significant failings in this work, compared to his other more feeble oversight: misattributing credit for the invention of propositional logic to Aristotle [it was invented by Russell in the 21st century].
*EDITED
Arguably Hegel's use of the term “contradiction” is much more appositely thought of as an iconoclastic abstraction from the law of non-contradiction as applied in making immediate judgements on the basis of sensory deliverances. And, his aim in using that notion is to argue that inferences drawn from sensuous experience are radically under-determined by any conceptual norms governing their possible interpretations. So that, no set of conceptual norms can ever safeguard interpretations of sensuous experience from all possibility of error.
Furthermore, Gadamer takes the peculiar view that Hegel thought genuine philosophical explanation demands that demonstration can only be conducted in “live discussion.” Not only is this a very odd claim, it’s also arguably a misreading of Hegel’s view that truth can only be secured in the analysis of the process whereby inquiry is conducted; where, by process is meant the dominant suite of practices in the inquiring community. It is not, as Gadamer takes it (ibid.), that all utterances remain open to gerrymandering and “eristic exploitation” due to their inherently contradictory nature but that all utterances are generically undetermined by the conceptual frameworks in which they occur.
“[A]dequate formulation of the truth is an unending venture” (p. 33) but not because things in themselves are contradictory as Gadamer holds, but only because no matter what conceptual norms we subscribe to it is impossible in the long run to not fall into error. A theory, giving determinate content to the target of theoretical analysis, can never exhaustively describe it because the total number of facts about any phenomena is near infinite while theories are articulated and applied by intellectual faculties which are themselves finite. Thus, every determination is defeasible in that the cognizance of new information can negate the subject of cognition, or negate what is predicated of it; this occurrence Hegel calls determinate negation.
Another problem with Gadamer’s reading is his lack of sensitivity to distinctions between Aristotelian term logic, and modern sentential and predicate logics. This is probably why he finds Hegel to be actively pushing a thought to self-contradiction, and why he takes “contradiction” to be “a method of speculative logic.” As argued above the role of contradiction as a teaching aid for Hegel works to expose the wound of reason, namely the indeterminacy of categories of the understanding, or Verstand, for which he suggests Vernunft or intuition is the only available band-aid.
The lesson here, as Brandom has argued, is to understand Hegel to be recommending a more modest and realistic protocol for understanding fortified by openness to intuition, or Verstand mediated by Vernunft: get rid of contradictories experienced at each stage of inquiry; and, abandon any fixed idea of the appropriate destination of inquiry, as we cannot know what it should be given the indeterminacy of our theoretical claims.
Failing to unpack these consequences of Hegel’s logical commitments, and specifically their epistemological and ontological consequences, constitute Gadamer’s more significant failings in this work, compared to his other more feeble oversight: misattributing credit for the invention of propositional logic to Aristotle [it was invented by Russell in the 21st century].
*EDITED
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews