Weinsheimer makes a case that Gadamers hermeneutics is aesthetic.

Gadamer subverts the dualism of something that has meaning and something that has no meaning, whether this is the expression and interpretation or vice versa. Gadamer does not make a distinction between the real text and its interpretations. In Truth and Method, Gadamer argues that beauty, unlike the good, is the only quality that requires no mediation. the beautiful of itself presents itself, that its being is such that it makes itself immediately evident (einleucht). Beauty is self-evident. His hermeneutics is aesthetic? Has no new method for interpretation. No critique of existing interpretive methods. He proposes a theory of how understanding happens, rather than of how we should approach understanding. o Hermeneutic method is not a method of understanding but understanding itself. one cannot choose to apply it or not o Our prejudices are pre-conscious but not subjective prejudices do not derive from a private unconscious, but an intersubjective, communal tradition. Gadamer argues that there are improvements to be made in the way we understand understanding. o Habermas critique: truth is not to be found in being. being is the historical being of distorted communicated relations class relations

Is his theory persuasive?

o

All understanding is ultimately self-understanding (251). Heideggers hermeneutic circle

Application (Warnke 91-9) o An exposition of Gadamers hermeneutics would be incomplete without an account of his thoughts on application. because his hermeneutics is active (? Citation) o Subjective side The dialogic structure of understanding (Warnke 100-6) o Warnke: tension between idea of anticipating completeness (82-91) and the account of application (91-9) can be resolved in dialogic structure of understanding? o The true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between (295). Gadamer is convinced of the fact that, quite simply, we need to learn from the classics (537). This statement illustrates Gadamers [put later?]

fundamental prejudice . . . is We are always prejudiced (43 Gorner)

At some point say that a text is always past and therefore when you speak of interpreting a text you will also always mean interpreting a past.

[why does ones knowledge of oneself matter?] With historically effected consciousness, one Mediation, for Gadamer, is not a defect, but it is in fact productive of knowledge. , in mediation, and that the object of history does not exist in itself at all put truth part at end of essay? Not just occasionally but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity as well (296). this would be to lose the benefit of temporal distance anyway