Emanation as self-presentation: the ontological foundations of Gadamer's hermeneutics

Abstract

Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is an explicit exegesis of his ontological commitment to a reformed interpretation of the concept of emanation. This reformed interpretation is grounded in Gadamer's assertion that emanation is an immanent rather than transcendent activity. Based on this interpretation, Gadamer argues that emanation is self-presentation. Understood as the essentially disclosive nature of being, Gadamer contends that self-presentation is the activity whereby being manifests itself as truth. Hermeneutics, or the activity of coming-to-an understanding, is for Gadamer the self-presentation of being as truth. Here, self-presentation becomes the activity of language, where language is the complete mediation of the manifestation of being as truth. -- In the introduction, I outline the basic structure of my thesis and introduce the principle arguments that expose the ontological foundations of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. The thesis concludes with an overview of the work and includes a brief comparison between Gadamer's ontology of emanation and Charles S. Peirce's ontology of communication that I hope to develop in future work.