As Befits It -- Ethics and Humanism in Gadamer's ...



“AS BEFITS IT”

Ethics and Humanism

In

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s

Hermeneutical Philosophy

Andrew Schouten

Philosophy 4200:

Advanced Topics in Philosphy

Final Paper

Dr. Daniela Vallega-Neu

December 16, 2003

A quick review of the history of moral philosophy shows an enduring concern amongst its participants about how man should be in the world, but it quickly becomes clear that philosophers are incapable, or do not seem inclined to correctly address the fundamental questions that underlie the concrete situations of social and political life. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), thinks otherwise, and finds as a result of his formative philosophical encounter with Aristotle’s ethics, that “the ways of thinking of philosophy” do address the entirety of our practical lives, and while it cannot settle its fundamental issues, philosophy can help us to better ask the questions we ourselves must ask as we take care in the world. In his philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer deploys from the co-terminal nature of understanding, interpretation and application, an ethics of humanism that achieves expression as traditionary concepts in the general repository of our language), which finds it fulfillment in phronesis (“moral knowledge”, i.e., “ethical know-how”) a sense of what is appropriate for the necessary concretization of “right” action within a particular situation.

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In a short essay published in 1989 entitled On the Political Incompetence of Philosophers Gadamer considered a commonly-held view of philosophers namely, that while they consider every issue down to its ultimate generality, they remain woefully immature in relation to their political and social reality. This unfortunate deficiency, Gadamer says, calls into question the nature of philosophic knowledge itself.[1] Gadamer names two philosophers and discusses their political mistakes, Plato’s tenure in Syracuse educating its future tyrant, Dionysius II, and Martin Heidegger’s support for the Nazi regime. In the case of Plato, his latent Pythagoreanism caused him to see that since morals and politics are changeable they were not genuine knowledge,[2] Accordingly, Gadamer notes that Plato’s “Good” was nothing more than an empty generality.[3] Thus, when Plato sought to teach the young tyrant his ideas on a just state and equitable ordering of society, his ignorance of court politics eventually led to his imprisonment during two successive tenures in Syracuse.[4]

As for Heidegger, he wanted to call into question the centrality of the human being in the universe, a position afforded to him on the basis of his ability to reason. Instead, man was to be seen more as a “shepherd of Being,” who in order to transcend to a higher understanding of Being had to repudiate humanism.[5] Thus we can follow Gadamer’s thinking that Heidegger equated the chaos of the Weimar Republic to man’s ontological deficiency brought on by modern technology, and seeing this within a grand sweep of human history, he saw a “much needed, radically fresh start” in the events of 1933.[6] In both cases, Plato and Heidegger privileged a naïve supra-human Good/Being over human knowledge and for that reason, fell victim to their own political immaturity and myopia. It would fall to their interpreters, Aristotle and Gadamer, to circumscribe and rehabilitate their mentors’ intellectualisms while legitimizing humanism, i.e. practical philosophy.[7]

Gadamer himself acknowledges his relationship to Aristotle, when he observes that “hermeneutic philosophy is the heir of the older tradition of practical philosophy whose chief task is to justify this way of reason and defend practical and political reason against the domination of technology based on science.”[8] Practical philosophy like the human sciences (Geisteeswissenschaften), concerns themselves with praxis – changeable, temporal issues, such as politics, economics, and laws – such that “the purpose of practical philosophy is not comprehension of the thing-in-itself but learning to how relate to things.”[9] This begs the question, how does hermeneutics teach us to relate to things?

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Much like traditional hermeneutics, hermeneutic philosophy is grounded upon three subtleties, subilitas intelligendi (understanding), subilitas explicandi (interpretation), and subilitas applicandi (application). The term subilitas (subtlety) is itself significant, implying “a sophisticated skill and distance from purely intellectual method.”[10] Hermeneutics sees understanding as being a primarily historical phenomenon; insofar as how understanding is changed by historical momentum and demands a skilled interpretation in order for knowledge to be applied to the current situation. Unlike its traditional counterpart, hermeneutic philosophy sees these subtleties in a unitary fashion, i.e., they are inseparable.[11] We can see this by turning to the example of legal hermeneutics.

Within legal hermeneutics, the jurist is concerned with understanding the law in terms of the present case, for the present case. For this to occur, the judge must concern himself with the law itself, and its historical relevance within the continuity of the law from inception to the current day.[12] While Napoleonic and Common law systems differ somewhat on the vehicle of continuity (codified statue vs. precedent), a law’s relevance can never be determined dogmatically, i.e., it is never a circumstance of subsuming the particular under the universal. Thus, a legal jurist is concerned with the historical origins of a law and the particular instances of its application, only insofar as it enables him to interpret the significance of the law.[13] By coming-to-an-understanding on the law vis-à-vis a legal issue, he “concretize[s] the law in each specific case – i.e., it is a work of application.”[14]

Deliberating on the sache lies at the heart of jursiprudence. We can see this in the German word’s deep meaning, when it correspondence with the Roman legal concepts of both res (thing) and causa (matter, or “issue before the court”). In the Roman tradition, the disputed thing was placed between the litigating parties until a decision was reached regarding it, thus symbolically ensuring that the proceeding abjured partiality toward either party. For the jurist, this emphasis toward equity and away from arbitrariness is also repeated, not by physical proximity to the item in question, but by limiting his findings to an interpretation of the law. [15] Unlike a silver-tongued advocate, both the jurist and the philosopher must “not try to argue the other person down, but that one really considers the weight of the other’s opinion.”[16] What is presupposed here is that the interpreter, to gain a sense of the sache, must keep himself open to what the law says, by asking questions, in a specific way.

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This orientation toward openness is found in dialogue, and in the dialectical logic of question and answer. When one asks a question, it means to bring the sache into the open; insofar as the answer is undetermined – the matter is not yet settled. What is gained through this play is the “revealing [of] the questionability of what is questioned.”[17] This is the art of questioning, the dialectic of Plato: to place into the open the sache as well as all of its fluid possibilities. As we saw earlier, for both legal and philosophical questions, the practice of dialectic consists,

[N]ot in trying to discover the weakness of what is said, but in bringing out its real strength. It is not the arguing (which can make a strong case out of the weak one) but the art of thinking (which can strengthen objections by referring to the subject matter).

This strengthening, furthermore, occurs in the process of transforming what is said about the sache in the dialectic into the “uppermost possibilities” of its truth, over and against attempts to “limit its validity.”[18] Moreover, conversations are more than mere arguments; they are also the “forming of concepts” accomplished “through working out a common meaning”. By participating in the give-and-take, question-and-answer of spoken dialogue in language, the partners share in the production of meaning. Bringing the sache is to presence in language, is precisely equivalent to finding the significance of the law in legal hermeneutics.[19]

For Gadamer, we find that language is a medium, one where substantive understanding and agreement can take place between two people, as seen in the phenomenon of conversation.[20] Language’s medial character comes from its inherent metaphoricity: metaphor (Meta-ph(rein) means “to carry-over”, and it is through metaphorical transference that meaning arrives. Thus, the focus of languages is what comes into meaning in verständigung (“shared-coming-to-an-understanding”). Verständigung presupposes that language is itself, a life process in which the community of life is lived out. [21]

On this point, Gadamer is in perfect correspondence with Aristotle, who classifies the nature of man as the living being who has logos, i.e. language.[22] Like animals, humans are able to make themselves known to each other. Unlike animals, man has a variability of expression within language, enabling him to speak about matters of fact, best exemplified by the world. From this factualness in the relation of language and world, man is able to recognize, within his relationship to the other, that the other is an independent other.[23] Thus, we see that language is not a system of representation, sign, and meaning, but a self-forgetting, communal, and all-encompassing aspect of being; whose operation is not one of cognitive reference, but of interpretation.[24] For this reason linguistic fact has the value of truth – the basic correspondence of knowledge to an object – which reveals to us the true being of things. Within this relationship, objects are not simply objects; they bring themselves to expression in language,[25] addressing us as a Thou.

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A relationship to the Thou implies, first and foremost, a moral position. Gadamer compares and contrasts three such relations to the Thou. First, we can attempt to derive patterns “human nature” from seemingly empirical observations on the behavior of other men, and attempt to make predictions based on those observations, much like Rousseau attempted.[26] Such a view, according to Gadamer, is self-regarding and “contradicts the moral definition of man,” ultimately reducing man to nothing more than a means for an end.[27] Second, we can relate to the Thou via a dialectic grounded in self-consciousness, much as Hegel and the Hegelian Left attempted. Instead of speaking with one another, each effectively reflects himself out of their relation as a means for self-recognition as well as mastery of the other, and in doing so, robs the other’s claim to legitimacy.[28] Although reflective philosophy also evidenced a “formal superiority,” their claims were self-refuting as they inappropriately describe immediate relations with analyses intrinsic to reflective activity. When combined with the denial of the other’s legitimacy, theses self-refuting claims of reflective philosophy constituted the ultimate act of philosophical self-abolition.[29]

The third way, however, points the way toward genuine human community. As found in the dialogue, this is a comportment characterized by openness, and constitutes the universal task of reaching out to the other person, whose result is “the actual relationship of men to each other.”[30] For Gadamer, this is the most important thing in human relations: to genuinely experience the Thou as a Thou, and by strongly considering his claim, thereby come-into-agreement with him.[31] Hence, in coming-to-agreement man finds the common ground of his kinship, i.e., the bonds of community that ground the relationships of praxis, i.e., social life, political constitution, and economics,[32] Gadamer emphasizes that within praxis, the ability to come-to-agreement by virtue of the logos, is a kind of practical knowledge. Since it is performed through social life, practical knowledge corresponds precisely to Aristotle’s phronesis. [33] Expressly developed in opposition to Plato’s “empty generalities” of the Good, Aristotle restores the value of moral knowledge as an intrinsically humanly good in terms of human action. Differentiating between theoretical knowledge and moral knowledge, he finds in his “moral sciences” (ethics) the need to answer what knowledge is proper to govern our action.[34] Thus, ethics means precisely a combination of praxis and ethos.[35] The philosophical issues contained within ethics arise from the fact that the “person acting must view the concrete situation in light of what is being asked of him in general.” Moreover, as seen in the cases of the Plato, Heidegger, Rousseau, and Marx, these difficult methodological questions gain moral relevance; especially when one considers that under these conditions a misreckoning of either the concrete situation or of the general moral principles can obfuscate the sache with tragic consequences.[36] Finding that serious philosophical and moral questions arise from the misunderstanding of ethics, we must now turn the raison d'être of its study: phronesis.

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As the founder of philosophical ethics, Gadamer feels deeply indebted to Aristotle’s architectonic treatment of phronesis. Of the latter’s achievements, Gadamer says,

“[He] succeeded, however, in rendering the nature of moral knowledge so clear that … is covers just as much the subjectivity of judges in the case of conflict as the substance of law and custom which determines its moral knowledge and its particular choices. His analysis of phronesis recognizes that moral knowledge is a way of moral being itself…”[37]

Through Gadamer’s reading of the Magna Moralia, as well as the Nichomachean and Eudemian Ethics, we see that Aristotle defines phronesis in contradistinction to techne, as both seem to indicate an art, a skill, i.e., a real knowledge of how to make something, involving the “same task of application,” but they are , in fact, very distinct. Techne can be learned as well as forgotten, phronesis, on the other hand, is not something that we can acquire. Instead, as we are always already acting in the world, we “must already possess and be able to apply moral knowledge.” [38] This implies a fundamental distinction between techne and phronesis with regard to the implementation of an intended plan toward the production of a artifact A craftsman possesses the image of that which he wishes to craft, whereas “what is right … cannot be fully determined of the situation that requires right action.” The images of what a man has of what he ought to be namely, the virtues, are by no means absolutely determined. Aristotle advances a subtle explication of natural law as a critical example to show that, even something like law which prima facie, seems to exist in a perfect state, remains in a strained relationship with concrete action, because it “cannot contain practical reality in its full concreteness” and, consequently does not allow for a simple application of the law.[39]

Thus, in the case of a judge true wisdom in jurisprudence comes not from a strict, literal application of the law, but an appropriate application of the schemata of the law, i.e., its significance, proportionate to the concrete situation of the sache before him. It is the same with moral principles (arche): they are “concretized only in the concrete situation of the person acting.” They exhibit the character of convention, although the principles correspond to the nature of the sache, even as the arche is determined by the use the moral consciousness makes of them in each and every individual case.[40] This entails the second fundamental aspect of phronesis.

Unlike technical knowledge, which is particular and serves particular ends, phronesis has no particular end, but instead, concerns itself with right living in general. And, although techne does concern itself with particular ends, it is not mutually exclusive from moral knowledge, one beginning where the other ends. We see this because the latter necessarily demands a “kind of self-deliberation”, and as such, is not knowledge in the manner of a techne. There is no a priori knowledge of means and ends, and by virtue of the fact that right ends are not objects of knowledge, they cannot be taught. Consequently, Aristotle’s theory of virtues discusses the general forms of right action, as well as the knowledge that is guided by these forms in actionable response to concrete situations; it is a “knowledge-for-the-sake-of-oneself.”[41] Furthermore, in the act of deliberation of means – which is “itself a moral consideration” – the “moral rightness of the end” is concretized. The application in phronesis necessarily employs knowledge of a particular situation in order. Thus phronesis enjoins both means and end and attests to the self-knowledge at its core: an experience (erfahrung) of the finitude of man namely, that “all foresight is limited and all plans uncertain.”[42]

The realization that moral knowledge contains an experience of self-relation, confirms a third aspect namely, that it has the ontic characteristic of “being-with-an-other.” Aristotle acknowledges this by introducing phronesis’ correlate sunesis (sympathetic understanding), which as a capacity for moral judgment, presupposes a relationship with other beings. Unequivocally, this is the concretion of moral knowledge in a particular situation, which is neither technical knowledge nor its application in the production of a good.[43] Moral self-knowledge, finds its acme in friendship, when, two people acknowledges themselves in the other, and behave in a reciprocal manner with one another in accordance with commonly-held forms of right action. This attests not to only to good will or disposition, but “a real embedding in the texture of communal human life.”[44]

So then, what can we say is the proper ontology of ethos? As we can see from the example of natural law, ethos has the characteristic of a natural, typical form.[45] From Aristotle, Gadamer sees three kinds of concepts: universal, general (née natural), and particular. Universal concepts are like scientific concepts, standing forever; while particular concepts are specific to one event. Gadamer distinguishes natural concept formation by its accidental quality: natural concepts begin to take form when a person speaks, and are firmly situated within a particular event, such that everything he says “acquires a share” in the particularity of the concrete situation. This means that these linguistic concepts are essentially alive. Moreover, by virtue of the fusing recombination of concept-bearing linguistic tradition and experience that further informs these concepts; the results do greater justice to concrete situations than particular or universal claims, as they are concretized into further actions in a way that universals and simple particulars are not.[46] To illustrate this, Aristotle uses the allegory of an army in flight – suddenly, the army comes to “stand” just as general concepts do – much like ethos is born along in tradition, i.e., the historical realization of these linguistic forms, that is always “coming to a stand.”[47]

In his treatment of the Geisteeswissenschaften (human sciences) Gadamer advances an outline for a contemporary curriculum based on linguistic concepts in tradition for the development of phronesis, and its ultimate product the phronimos – “a person imbued with practical wisdom who is able” to fuse both his own life-situation and the communal shared life.[48] Part of this occurs via socialization, as “we integrate ourselves into society though education and the control exercised by life within the family,” and later on through language.[49] But phronesis is more fully developed in the moral-practical disciplines of the Geisteeswissenschaften, which can help to “elucidate the distinctive type of knowledge and truth that is realized when we authentically understand.”[50]

We can see this in his treatment of the “guiding concepts” of the humanist tradition namely, Bildung, Sensus Comunus, Judgment, and Taste. [51] Their order is not accidental, presupposing each other in their respective order from former to latter, even as they develop each other in the opposite direction: bildung, a rough cognate of education, indicated a constant state of cultivation with no goals outside itself;[52] sensus comunus, i.e., common sense which connotes a moral and ethical dimension;[53] judgment, the sense of proper application;[54] and taste, the true sense– an immediate, yet sufficiently distant disposition-toward the common agreement – of a community.[55] Thus, the cultivation of the person in the Geisteeswissenschaften, perfectly echoes the schemata of ethics, leading to what Balthasar Gracián called “un hombre en su punto”[56] – who is able to “evaluate the object in relation to a whole in order to see whether it fits in with everything else – that is, whether it is fitting” – in other words, capable of interpretation.[57]

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In the final analysis, Aristotle’s ethics of mean and Gadamer’s hermeneutical philosophy are “always hos dei or hos ho orhtos logos. What can be taught in the practice ethics is logos also, but not akribes (precise) beyond a general outline. The decisive thing is finding the right nuance.”[58] To that end, ethics is concerned with three inseparable facets, the seamless application in concrete situations of our understanding of the factuality of convictions, values, and habits that we all share.[59] The purpose of hermeneutics and the Geisteeswissenschaften alike is the return of “practical philosophy to its ancient privilege of not merely recognizing the good, but demanding it as well.”[60] In this fashion as Aristotle once said, we may come to know what is right, “as befits it.”[61]

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[1] Gadamer, H.G. “On the Political Incompetence of Philosophy”, Diogenes, Summer 1998 v46 il82.

[2] Gadamer, H.G. “The Ideal of Practical Philosophy” (1994), In J. Weinsheimer (Ed.), Praise of Theory, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, p. 51.

[3] Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 312.

[4] Attributed to Diogenes Laertius, from Smillie, W.M., Plato: Life, Retrieved December 7, 2003, from Carroll College, Philosophy Department web site,

[5] Grondin, J. “Gadamer on Humanism” (1992), The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Chicago: Open Court, 1997, p. 160.

[6] Gadamer, “On the Political Incompetence of Philosophy”, Diogenes, 1998.

[7] C.f. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 312, and Grondin. “Gadamer on Humanism”, p. 161.

[8] Gadamer, Hermeneutics and Social Sciences, quoted in Bernstein, R.J. “From Hermeneutics to Praxis” (1982), In B.R. Wachterhauser (Ed.), Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986, p. 88 (internal quotes omitted).

[9] Dobrosavljev, D. “Gadamer’s Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy”, Facta Universitatis: Series Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology, vol. 2, No 9, 2002, p. 606.

[10] Ibid., p. 64.

[11] Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 307-308.

[12] Ibid., pp. 324-327.

[13] Ibid., p. 328.

[14] Ibid., p. 329 (original emphasis).

[15] Gadamer, “The Nature of Things and the Language of Things”, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. by Linge, D.E. (Berkeley: UC Press, 1976), p. 71.

[16] Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 367.

[17] Ibid., p. 363.

[18] Ibid., pp. 367-368.

[19] Ibid., p. 368.

[20] Ibid., p. 384.

[21] Ibid., pp. 445-446

[22] Gadamer, H.-G., “Man and Language”, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 59.

[23] Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 445.

[24] Gadamer, H.-G. “Man and Language”, Philosophical Hermeneutics (UC Press, 1976), trans. and ed. by Linge, D.E . pp. 64-66, 68.

[25] Gadamer, “The Nature of Things and the Language of Things”, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 77.

[26] This is easily seen in Rousseau’s polemics against the excessive dislocations caused by the Enlightenment. Rousseau contrasts the noble savages from “the warmer climes” with the northern people, who subject as they are to harsh conditions, “are easily irritated; everything that happens around them worries them,” and accounts for their violent nature; and thus reduces man to an ugly caricature for the sake of his argument, and his legacy of misanthropic environmentalism. Rousseau, J.J., Essay on the Origins of Langauge, trans. and ed. by Victor Gourevitch (New York: Harper & Row), p. 274.

[27] Gadamer, H.-G., Truth and Method, p. 358.

[28] Ibid., pp 359-360.

[29] Ibid., p. 344. After the conclusions of dialectical materialism (the result of the transformation of Hegelian thought into a political theory) failed to account for real transformation of the world, intellectuals within the Hegelian-left tradition became dogmatists, working to “reconcile” the world to the “formal supremacy” of their reflective theory, even as the adherents of Marxism robbed others (non-Marxists) of the legitimacy of their lives, rationalizing theft and mass-produced slaughter in the name of “social justice”.

[30] Gadamer, “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem”, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 17.

[31] Ibid., p. 361 C.f. Risser J. “Shared Life”, Seattle University, 2003, pp. 5-7.

[32] Gadamer, H.-G., “Man and Language”, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 60.

[33] Risser J. “Shared Life”, p. 4.

[34] Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 314.

[35] Praxis: “Points to the totality of our practical life, all our human action and behavior, the self-adaptation of the human being as a whole in this world” and Ethos: “Living network of common convictions, habits, and values” from, Gadamer, “Practical Philosophy”, Gadamer in Conversation, , trans. and ed. Robert E. Palmer, by New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

[36] Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 313.

[37] Gadamer, H.-G, “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics” (1963), In J. Weinsheimer (Ed.), Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 28-29.

[38] Ibid., p. 316.

[39] Ibid., pp. 317-318.

[40] Ibid., p. 320.

[41] Ibid., pp. 321-322. Here Gadamer also notes that Aristotle’s definitions of phronesis have an element of uncertainty contained in them because, although he stresses that it is concerned with the means and not the ends, the capacity to determine the right means also sees the end toward which the human aims.

[42] Ibid., pp. 322, 357.

[43] Ibid., p. 323.

[44] Gadamer, H.G. “Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics” (1985), In J. Weinsheimer (Ed.), Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 139.

[45] Gadamer, Truth and Method,

[46] Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 428-429.

[47] Gadamer, “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem”, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 17.

[48] McGee, M.C. Phronesis in the Habermas vs. Gadamer Debate. Retrieved 12/07/03, from (f)ragments,

[49] Gadamer, H.G. “On the Political Incompetence of Philosophy,” 1998.

[50] Bernstein, R.J. “From Hermeneutics to Praxis” (1982), p. 88 (original emphasis).

[51] Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 9.

[52] Ibid., p.13. Bildung is seen as the proper way of developing the whole self, leads to a character which can “reconcile itself with itself, to recognize oneself in other being.

[53] Ibid., pp. 22-23. Sensus Communus is a synonym of phronesis, “an element of moral and social being,” devoted to the “common good”and living within a community.

[54] Ibid., p. 31. As we have seen, in its thematic operation in legal hermeneutics, judgment has no given principle to guide it, as is developed for concrete situations on a case-by-case basis.

[55] Ibid., p. 34. Also p. 38, from Gracián: “It follows that taste knows something—though admittedly in a way that cannot be separated from the concrete moment in which that object occurs and cannot be reduced to rules and concepts” Since it is concerned precisely with the evaluation of general, natural concepts, “taste is in no way limited to what is beautiful in nature and art, judging it in respect to its decorative quality, but embraces the whole realm of morality and manners.”

[56] This translates literally from Spanish as “Man at his peak”, akin to “pinnacle” and “acme”, signifying “excellence” and “mountain top”, and figuratively with the Greek phronimos.

[57] Ibid., 38 (internal quotes omitted).

[58] Gadamer, Truth and Method, footnote p. 40

[59] Gadamer “The Ideal of Practical Philosophy”, Praise of Theory, 1998, p. 58.

[60] Gadamer, H.-G, “The Ethics of Value and Practical Philosophy” (1963), In J. Weinsheimer (Ed.), Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 116.

[61] Gadamer, “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics”, Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p.29.

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