Gadamer Hans-Georg - Gadamer and the transmission of history

Gadamer and the
Transmission of History

STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT

John Sallis, editor

Consulting Editors

Jerome Veith

This book is a publication of

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

2015 by Jerome Veith

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Veith, Jerome, 1981

Gadamer and the transmission of history / Jerome Veith.

pages cm. (Studies in Continental thought)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01598-3 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-01604-1 (eb) 1. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900-2002. I. Title.

B3248.G34V45 2015

193 dc23

2014049506

1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15

FOR MY PARENTS

Jede Antwort bleibt nur so lange als Antwort in Kraft, dass die Frage auch bewusst bleibt.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER,
Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes

I project the history of the future.

WALT WHITMAN,
To a Historian

IN THE CONSIDERABLE TIME THIS BOOK SPENT COMING TO fruition, many people contributed to its course. I owe my initial fascination with Gadamers ideas to James Risser, who introduced me to hermeneutics as a student and who remains an ongoing interlocutor in all matters philosophical. The core thoughts presented here took shape in my years at Boston College, during which I gained immensely from conversations with colleagues, friends, and mentors. John Sallis, Bill Richardson, and Susan Shell provided both sustaining encouragement and strengthening criticism. In many Gadamer reading groups over the years, I gleaned insights from Fred Lawrence, John Cleary, Robert Kehoe, William Britt, James Brennan, and Byron George. Through conversations with Vanessa Rumble, Jeffrey Bloechl, and Dennis Shirley, I was able to develop several tacit themes of my project. In their own ways, the following friends aided my thoughts and abetted my writing: Madeline Ashby, Kevin Berry, Paul Birney, Jon Burmeister, Neal and Tanya Deroo, Daniele DeSantis, Shane Ewegen, Emily Johnson, Ariane Kiatibian, Emmaline McCourt, Nicola Mirkovic, Paul Prociv, Erin Stackle, Laura Tomlinson.

I am grateful to the Ernest Fortin Memorial Foundation for a generous summer grant in 2011, and to the Fulbright Scholarship Board for a research grant to Freiburg in 20112012, during which I enjoyed a wonderfully rich environment of discussion and insight. I owe special thanks to Gnter Figal and Tobias Keiling for helping sustain an atmosphere so conducive to thinking. Finally, I would like to thank the publishers Vittorio Klostermann (Frankfurt am Main) and Mohr Siebeck (Tbingen) for permission to use previously published material for .