Hans-Georg Gadamer was born February 11, 1900 in Marburg, Germany. (Arabic: 賴丕賳夭 噩賵乇噩 睾丕丿丕賲賷乇)
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).
This volume collects three essays by Gadamer on Celan, including his book-length essay "Who am I and Who Are You?" together with an Epilogue he wrote for a revised edition; as well as two much shorter essays - all preceded by an introductory essay by Gerald Bruns.
In "Who am I and Who Are You?" Gadamer does a meticulous close reading of all of the poems in section I of Celan's collection Breathturn (Atemwende), which was originally published a stand-alone volume entitled Breath-Crystal (Atemkristall). This made the essay especially riveting for me, since these were the very first poems by Celan I ever read: the poems that immediately gripped me and thus led to Celan becoming my favorite poet. Gadamer's close readings got me to read these poems more closely and carefully than ever before, and contain a wealth of insights into how we might understand the workings of Celan's constant and cryptic use of the 1st and 2nd person pronouns - I and you - in his poetry.
"Meaning and Concealment of Meaning in Paul Celan" is basically an essay-length close reading of "Tenebrae", one of Celan's most celebrated poems. Gadamer tackles head-on the seeming blasphemous nature of the poem, urging God or Christ: "pray to us". Gadamer makes a convincing case that the poem is no mere provocation against God, but rather an earnest exploration of religious themes. Gadamer's willingness to treat the poem as operating squarely within the space of Christian tropes is refreshing, although the absence of any reflection on what it could mean for Celan - for whom his own Jewishness and Jewishness in general were primary preoccupations - to write almost as if he were himself a Christian in this poem is an unfortunate omission.
"A Phenomenological and Semantic Approach to Celan?" is mostly skippable. It mostly re-hashes points made in the previous essays, and is less an essay about Celan and more a reflection by Gadamer (then in his late 80s) on his own development as a reader of Celan.
Uma aula de interpreta莽茫o po茅tica, que ilumina tremendamente a poesia de Celan.
E n茫o haveria qualquer coisa de epistola de perd茫o p贸stumo heideggeriano pelo nazismo, vinda nas palavras compreensivas de seu maior pupilo, Hans Gadamer, lendo uma v铆tima do holocausto...?