Gadamer and Rorty on the History of Philosophy

Abstract

If we look at Hans-Georg Gadamer and Richard Rorty from the point of view of the history of Western philosophy, it is beyond question that they both belong to the relativist tradition of post-Nietzschean European and that of post-Darwinian American philosophy. However, they are still different philosophers. Gadamer, as a disciple of Heidegger, worked out a philosophical hermeneutics, but Rorty established neopragmatism. Despite their dif-ferences, it may be shown, on the one hand, that some part of their philosophies is primus inter pares·, on the other hand, they both claim that we do not need any metaphysical basis when we interpret other philosophers.First I will show my general interpretational framework; then I will discuss the main char-acteristics of Gadamer's philosophical herme-neutics and his hermeneutical approach to the history of philosophy. After that, I will turn to Rorty's neopragmatism in general, and then to Rorty's neopragmatist relationship to the his-tory of philosophy. In the final part of my pa-per, I will draw the conclusions that follow re-garding the history of philosophy in general.The General Interpretational FrameworkTruth is one of the most central and largest subjects in philosophy. Truth has been a topic of ongoing discussion for hundreds of years. Much of the contemporary literature on truth shows that the most significant theories are the correspondence, coherence and pragmatist theories of truth. However, if we raise the ques-tion, What is truth at all? I would say that I do not know. More exactly speaking, I know that in choosing a definition of truth I have al-ready chosen an ontology. I am persuaded that it is worth following this methodological track for a while. According to my first thesis, then, epistemology and ontology hang together inseparably, especially regarding the question of truth.The necessary and inherent connection be-tween epistemology and ontology is beyond question. Epistemology is always determined by the philosopher's ontology. Thousands of different philosophies have been born since its Greek beginnings, but in some kind of form, in a direct or an indirect way, every philosophy addresses the relationship between the human being and the world in general. This seems self-evident from ancient Greek philosophy, through mediaeval Christian philosophy, to the end of the modern period. We can always find some ontology-usually in a latent form, that is, without elaboration-even behind so-called contemporary philosophies. Examples include Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre re-searching first of all the individual and its exis-tence, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Austin, and even the young Richard Rorty, researching mind and language. All based their work on an ontology based on the same question as the first philosophers: Who is the human being in the world? I am per-suaded that this is the main question of philos-ophy, because every philosophical theory has been produced by a finite and historical human being who, first of all, wanted to understand himself in the world. Philosophy can be de-fined in several concrete ways, but I think the essential structure of philosophical thinking does not change. The formal structure of this thinking works not only in the traditional metaphysical philosophies, but also in con-temporary analytic and continental philoso-phies. The formal structure of philosophical thinking might be regarded as the theoretical and historical self-reflection of the human being that is the permanent condition of exis-tential inquiry. However, if philosophy is a per-manent, theoretical self-and world-under-standing and interpretation, then-drawn from its concept!-the ontological question must be the dominant within every philosophy. The reason this is so is that the main structure of the world and our place in the world can only be comprehended on the basis of an ontological principle (which is always an answer to the question: what is the world like? …