Heidegger and Gadamer on hermeneutics: a comparative study

Abstract

Martin Heidegger is a German contemporary philosopher. He is also called “The philosopher of Being”. There is also another interesting aspect of Heidegger which is phenomenological hermeneutics. Even though, Heidegger never mentioned this method in his later works again. Hans Gadamer was a student of Heidegger but he goes beyond Heidegger by positing what we call philosophical hermeneutics. Both of them were interested in hermeneutics, they drew their inspiration from Edmund Husserl‟s phenomenology as a method. The difference between Heidegger and Gadamer is that Gadamer says one cannot interpret reality without presupposition or background. Whereas, Heidegger believes one can interpret reality without background, since man is thrown into this world without his consent, it means every object is out there and no one needs any background to interpret them. Our method is textual analysis. We are reflecting on the original works written by Heidegger and Gadamer and also commentaries written on them by other authors to discover the similarities and differences.

Keywords: Heidegger, Gadamer, Hermeneutic, Romantic Dilthey