Gadamer and Wittgenstein on the Unity of Language: Reality and Discourse without Metaphysics

by Horn,Patrick Rogers

• ISBN13: 9780754609698
• ISBN10: 0754609693
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this innovative comparison of Gadamer and Wittgenstein, the author explores their common concern with the relation of language to reality. Patrick Horn's starting point is the widely accepted view that both philosophers rejected a certain metaphysical account of that relation in which reality determines the nature of language. Horn proceeds to argue that Gadamer never completely escaped metaphysical assumptions in his search for the unity of language. In this respect, argues Horn, Gadamer's work is nearer to the earlier rather than to the later Wittgenstein. The final chapter of the book highlights the work of Wittgenstein's pupil Rush Rhees, who shows that Wittgenstein's own later emphasis on language games, while doing justice to the variety of language, does less than justice to the dialogical relation between speakers of a language, wherein the unity of language resides. Contrasting Rhees's account of the unity of language with those given by Gadamer and the early Wittgenstein brings out the importance of understanding reality in terms of the life that people share rather than in terms of what philosophers say about reality.

Author Biography

Patrick Rogers Horn is Associate Dean and Assistant Professor at the School of Religion, Claremont Graduate University, USA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(4)
1 Prejudices as Conditions of Understanding	5	(26)
Practical Difficulties with Gadamer's Use of 'Prejudice'	7	(4)
The Source of Gadamer's Peculiar Use of 'Prejudice'	11	(3)
A Technical Understanding of 'Prejudice'	14	(5)
Understanding as a Process	19	(12)
2 Historicity: Limit or Limitation?	31	(24)
'Universal History' as a Task	32	(4)
The Unity of History as an 'Experience'	36	(3)
The Epistemological Problem of Historicity	39	(6)
'Overcoming' the Epistemological Problem	45	(10)
3 Universal Hermeneutics	55	(26)
Gadamer's Path to Language	56	(2)
Gadamer's Theory of the Unity of Language	58	(5)
Theory and Phronesis	63	(2)
An Assessment of Gadamer's Theory	65	(16)
Human Experience as Openness	66	(6)
The World-in-Itself	72	(1)
The Game Analogy	73	(8)
4 Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the Unity of a Calculus	81	(30)
The Sense of the Tractatus	82	(5)
The Problem of Posing Philosophical Problems	87	(11)
Language as a Calculus	98	(6)
Difficulties with the Unity of a Calculus	104	(7)
5 Rush Rhees and the Unity of a Life	111	(22)
Wittgenstein's Language Game Analogy	111	(9)
The Contrast Between Gadamer and Rhees	120	(8)
Language and Life	128	(5)
Bibliography	133	(4)
Index	137